Finding the Right Digital Asset Management Solutions

With the exciting advent of digital photographer, the claim was made that photographers would no longer have the expense of film.  So off we all went, shooting wildly with new-found freedom, amassing mountains of digital information.  Most people were not properly dealing with the storage of their information.  I saw many photographers – even many professionals – who’s digital asset management was shocking.  That was a great concern to me.  One of my friends actually had 264 SD cards as part of his digital storage solution – plus numerous hard drives of various brands.  So, when he was asked to find an image he had taken in the past, it was an almost impossible task.  When digital photography first came along, we really should have been educated, right from the start, about the correct way to manage our digital assets.  But I’ve met very few photographers who have done that.

Unaware that I needed to stay on top of this situation, I ended up having multiple hard drives in a fireproof data safe.  But even then, it was a difficult and time-consuming process to mount the correct drive to find a particular image.  Also, with hard drives, you need to spin them up every 3-4 months to ensure they are still working.  My safe became like a rabbit warren and I felt as if the hard drives were multiplying of their own accord!  I decided I had to deal with this looming digital mountain hanging over me.  So, I consulted many so-called experts on the subject and found they would just try to baffle me with technological jargon to sell me their product at – what seemed to me – ridiculously high prices.  I realised then that I had to learn about digital asset management and fully understand what steps I needed to take.

I was able to sit down for many hours with Alf Nguyen from Silicone Memory Technologies and he explained what all the confusing terminology meant.  So I was able to come up with a total solution for storing and managing my digital assets at a fraction of the costs I had been quoted by various companies. My life now is so much simpler, as everything is backed up on a large RAID system, which then backs up to another mirrored system.  Before I did this, I was always concerned about potentially losing digital images, as it was hard to achieve mirrored backups of multiple drives.  When I had finally completed this task and I knew that all the efforts of over 40 years of photography were now safely backed up, my relief was immense.

I know many other photographers are still unsure how to protect their digital assets.  So I want to share with you an end to end solution for protecting your digital images, video files and other data.  I have joined forces with a couple of industry specialists who helped me, and you will be able to speak directly to these people and to me at our Digital Asset Management Seminar on October 12^th.

The event has been priced just to cover our costs and to ensure those who say they are coming, actually turn up, as seating is limited for each session.  What I would like you to do before you come, is make sure you know how many Gigabytes or Terabytes of storage you need right now, and what your potential need is going to be five years from now.  Then we will be able to give you the very best advice for your particular needs.

I’m partnering with Synology and Silicon Memory Technologies for this event because they have been instrumental in helping me find the best solution. They will be offering significant discounts to people attending these seminars, but I do not receive any commission or kick back from those sales.  My motivation is – quite simply – to help you find the best digital asset management solution for your particular needs.