Asset Management

Canto is the leading supplier of Digital Asset Management products. Their leading product Cumulus is designed to manage and archive all types of digital assets used in production, publishing, communication, and other workflows, offering cross-platform and Internet technology that scales completely from Enterprise to Single Users.

Cumulus is the unique Digital Asset Management tool for creative professionals who need to find, create, and share digital assets such as images, layouts, multimedia, video, audio, and text.

Supporting both Mac OS X and Windows platforms, Cumulus makes it easy to manage your digital media... so you can spend your valuable time creating, not searching. It includes powerful search capabilities, multiple-size thumbnail previews and comprehensive customizing options.

Product Highlights include:

• best support for all standard formats
• customisable thumbnail quality
• customisable previews
• reads metadata such as EXIF and IPTC
• asset voice annotation
• convert assets into various file formats
• send assets via e-mail
• Auto cataloguing
• Multiple catalogs open in one window

Cumulus 6 offers many features including ease-of-use and multi-media, communication, internet and presentation capabilities. It supports drag and drop with popular graphics applications such as Adobe Photoshop.

Why choose Cumulus over other Digital Asset Management (DAM) solutions?

1. Cumulus is fully established and supported in Australia, New Zealand and SE Asia. It is DataBasics' approach that for any DAM solution to be successful it must be implemented and supported correctly... education holds the key to success. Services provided include:
   • Fully trained and certified reseller/integrator network
   • Customer Care Centre
   • Cumulus Training CD
   • On site services, installation through to user training
   • Software Maintenance Program for updates, new releases and tech support
2. Powerful desktop application to support high end users as well as provide ease of use. The Cumulus Workgroup/Enterprise Client is a graphical application for access to one or more Cumulus catalogues. The Client application supports administrative through to end user functionality. Capabilities of the Client application is defined by user permissions which are stored centrally on the Cumulus server. Cumulus Client supports drag and drop to a wide range of desktop applications, eg. Adobe Creative Suite.
3. Effective deployment to the web, for internal or public access and/or remote workflow - via Web Publisher Pro (WPP) and Internet Client Pro (ICP). Key features include:
   • unlimited usage for WPP, no cost for users performing search & retrieve.
   • Java based product so the interface and functionality can be fully customised.
   • LDAP/AD user authentication for deployment to a large community of users.
   • Deployment strategy adheres to most network security measures. A truly dynamic approach, WPP/ICP opens a connection to the Cumulus database and can see the same data as the Cumulus Workgroup Client.
4. Cumulus manages 100+ file formats and can be used to perform a range of specific tasks such as document management, picture library, creative workflow, etc. File format support includes:
   • Full range of graphic formats from tiff, jpg, vector, etc. See this PDF for a complete list.
   • Inbuilt support for business documents including full range of MS Word/Excel/PowerPoint, PDF, text, etc.
   • Video file formats supported by either QuickTime and/or specific filters
   • Complete RAW and DNG format support, including advanced features such as image source for preview, colour settings and colour interpolation.
   • Uses the concept of embedded assets, for example each page of a PDF document can be seen as an individual asset.
   • Third party add-ons to handle specialised formats, eg CAD.
5. Management of users and associated permissions
   • Cumulus user authentication can be either at a system level or integrated with a LDAP server.
   • Access to catalogues and extensive control of both permissions within catalogues and general application permissions can be defined on a user basis.
   • Various components within Cumulus are stored centrally on the Cumulus server with subsequent access being granted to users, eg Metadata templates, Collections, Asset Handling Sets, etc.
   • With Cumulus Enterprise permissions can be defined at a "role" level, users can be granted one or more roles.
   • Cumulus Enterprise allows "roles" to be associated with LDAP groups.
6. Powerful and flexible metadata management. Cumulus has the most flexible capabilities for customising the catalogue data structure with both prefilled and manually entered data fields.
   • Support for a wide range of metadata standards, eg IPTC, XMP, EXIF, etc.
   • Cumulus supports write back of metadata for IPTC, XMP and XML.
   • Automatted metadata extraction can be into any one or more fields in the Cumulus catalogue.
   • Centrally stored metadata templates available from many stages of the workflow.
   • Metadata can be managed at a single asset level or in batch mode.
7. Cumulus can be customised to provide a complete business solution. Fully developed programming interface allowing for complete customisation of all aspects of a Cumulus workflow. See http://www.canto.com/dev/.
   Companies in Australia, New Zealand and SE Asia who are fully trained in customising Cumulus and implementing third party solutions. See http://www.databasics.com.au/resellers.html.
8. Canto is focused on DAM. Cumulus and associated Options are Canto's one and only product line. Canto's entire company with all it's knowledge pool is dedicated to providing the best of breed DAM product.
9. Cumulus has fully developed training course material in Australia... written in Australia and delivered by the people who distribute Cumulus: DataBasics.

For more information, visit http://www.databasics.com.au/canto/