A Brief Story of How We Created Pics.io DAM Storage

Pics.io Team -

Digital Asset Management is a must in today’s digitized business environment. Centralized storage for assets, secure third-party sharing, easy access, and file management – these are just a few of many other reasons why companies adopt DAM worldwide.

Still, some businesses deprive themselves of this useful solution. These companies associate DAM with lengthy and tedious implementation. This is when you have to invest lots of time, money and human resources to make it work. If they only knew how wrong they are!

Digital Asset Management is and can be easy. And Pics.io is the primary evidence here. With our new post, get to know how Pics.io worked over the years to make DAM adoption as painless as possible for you. Also, read about our long-awaited release of Pics.io storage & a bit about different types of cloud storage users.

DAM as an Equation & Pics.io Release of DAM Plus Storage Solution

The number of digital assets is growing progressively today. Earlier, companies accumulated digital content only as raw materials while creating and managing their products and services.

Now digital assets are the visual representation of the same products or services. From your company logo to background fonts, digital content conveys your unique and memorable brand message. And this is why Digital Asset Management values so much today.

A good DAM solution means much more than simply storing your data. It’s also about keeping your materials connected and in one centralized place. It’s about easy access and management of your digital assets. Plus, distribution, version control, branding, etc., etc.

To understand DAM better, let’s look at it as the equation:

And so addressing the components, we see that a good DAM solution is composed of:

  1. File storage that helps you keep all your assets localized in one place and keep track of them.
  2. Metadata storage that keeps all the information about your files (who created them, how, and when) and allows you to access your info without extra effort.
  3. Tools like file comparison, version control, public websites, or analytics & reporting. These help you manage your assets in the most efficient way.
  4. Implementation depends on a particular DAM solution. And this is actually why many businesses hesitate to incorporate DAM. They’re afraid that this will be time-consuming and costly. But this is also what differs Pics.io from other DAM (we’ll return to it a bit later!).
  5. 24/7 support to solve your petty issues on DAM whenever needed. Unlike on-premise solutions, online DAM grants you quality aid at any time of the day.

For a long time, Pics.io existed as a DAM solution with 4 out of 5 components. But we’ve finally added the only missing puzzle. Thus, we’re glad to present you Pics.io storage – an all-in-one DAM provider.

But before we go any deeper into the benefits of Pics.io storage, let’s talk about this amusing story of how we came to our own storage.

A tell-tale of Pics.io DAM storage

What was wrong with traditional DAM solutions?

Everything started in far distant 2012 when the whole business idea of Pics.io Digital Asset Management was born. We understood that our prospecting customers needed to systemize and organize their files (= a quality DAM solution) but be able to do it without extra hustle and bustle.

At that time, the market of Digital Asset Management wasn’t so saturated as it is now. But still, the tool was in demand. With rapid digitalization and accessible cloud services, more businesses started to feel that they piled up too many digital assets.

And so companies across the world wanted to bring order to their files. Yet, they were afraid of the difficulties that accompanied that-day DAM implementation. In a nutshell, a traditional DAM meant long-time installation and configuration processes. Then, you had to distribute your DAM roles and give users a clear picture of all the DAM features and integrations.

The learning curve was so long that incorporating DAM could take forever. And during this time, you still tried to migrate your files. This usually ended with the loss of important assets. And then, your team could screw up with sharing, causing your private data to go public.

All in all, you ended up where you started – with a mess in your media library, plus lost time and money.

Act 1. Pics.io gets on stage – Pics.io on top of Google Drive

The Pics.io team knew about the limitations of traditional DAM solutions. And we set a goal to create the easiest DAM. This DAM shouldn’t make you waste time on configuring the tool but allow you to start managing your assets right away.

And so it was pretty obvious. We just took the most popular cloud storage – Google Drive and combined it with the Pics.io DAM solution.

At once, we received lots of thankful users. At the time of cloud technologies, many businesses stored their data in Google Drive one way or another. And with Pics.io, they didn’t have to go into trouble uploading or migrating their data. They connected DAM storage in a few clicks.

Of course, we also worked a lot to make our DAM as intuitive as possible. As a result, many of our customers name user-friendliness as one of Pics.io main strengths:

Pics.io is easy to get started with any quantity of assets. I really appreciate having my assets under "my" control on Google Drive.

David M., Landscape Architect

Act 2. Pics.io expands its storage options – Integration with Amazon S3

Comparing Amazon S3 vs. Google Drive Cloud Storage, it is the latter that rises out on top as the favorite. Still, not all business owners opt for it. And this is for a reason. Many criticize Google Drive for insufficient security measures. Add high prices and the lack of automatic migration.

So it didn’t really surprise us when our prospects started to ask about alternatives to Drive storage. And we ourselves were not willing to limit our users in any way possible. This is when the idea of integration with Amazon S3 arose.

Why Amazon S3? It’s easy! This is the only storage that could compete with Google Drive. Counting on large enterprise-level businesses, Amazon S3 benefits you with an extra level of security, exclusive durability, and agreeable prices.

Besides, many of our prospects and existing users choose AWS because of its variety of services. Your company may use Amazon infrastructure for its app deployment. And so S3 storage will suit you best to be compatible with the rest of your infrastructure.

Act 3. All-in-one DAM solution – The Development of Pics.io Storage

It hasn’t even been a year when we noticed one more niche of potential customers. As it became evident, not all our customers had their own storage. And even if they had, they might not want to go into trouble with connecting it to Digital Asset Management.

As a rule, this type of user desperately needs a DAM solution. Their files may be scattered all around: in the cloud, on hard drives, or local servers. But they don’t have time (or simply don’t want) to bother themselves with any storage connection.

They just want to upload the assets and start managing them. For this audience, DAM is only an intermediate step to bring order to their digital assets. And so they could cut costs and boost their growth.

And so we decided to launch our own Pics.io storage. This online storage is primarily for those who want to get a full-stack DAM solution in one mouse click.

With Pics.io storage, you get a full range of benefits which are impossible to ignore:

  • Capacious cloud storage with as much storage space as needed, from 20 GB to 30 TB;
  • Full compatibility with Pics.io DAM solution. Get full DAM functionality together with your storage: easy access to your files, great search capabilities, third-party sharing, collaboration, versioning, and so on;
  • Reliable and secure storage with 99.99% durability;
  • Data at your fingertips thanks to an opportunity to choose your own location where to store your info;
  • Ability to store, structure, and manage your metadata in one place;
  • Unique scalability – your storage will operate the same fast and effectively, regardless of its changing size and volume;
  • No issues with synching as your storage is a part of your DAM solution;
  • Backup so you won’t lose a piece of your data;
  • Good prices with 20 GB delivered for free;
  • An automatic data migration service to help you move your data to a new location quicker.

So what about the types of cloud storage users?

As you see, Pics.io DAM has something to offer for any type of user. Let’s summarize our brief story and see what cloud storage will suit your needs when incorporating Pics.io DAM.

Opt for Google Drive if:

  • You’re already a Google Drive and/or Google Workplace user;
  • You’re in love with GD’s ease of use and intuitive interface;
  • You want to be charged based on the storage space only and not traffic or the number of operations;
  • You’re a small or middle-sized business with some budget restrictions;
  • You’re a nonprofit – Google usually has lots of interesting offers for this type of organization.

You’re an Amazon S3 user in the Pics.io hierarchy of cloud storage users if:

  • You’re already working / familiar with Amazon infrastructure;
  • You have a very strong IT department & the desire to deal with AWS particularities;
  • You’re a large enterprise or at least a middle-sized company with ambitious plans to grow in the nearest future;
  • You have a really tremendous number of digital assets. And so Amazon S3 will be cheaper for you. Its main rule is that the more you store, the less costly it gets;
  • You’re ready to spring for traffic and the number of operations next to the storage space.

Go for Pics.io storage if:

  • You don’t have any storage right now or you’re not satisfied with the ones available;
  • You want to get a ready-made DAM solution together with the storage;
  • You have no time for configuration and implementation processes. Instead, you’d like to start managing your files here and now;
  • You want to store and manage your files in one place. And you don’t plan to use multiple services at once;
  • You’re a small, middle-sized, or large corporation. The size doesn’t matter in this case! We have offers for all tastes and desires.

Summing up

If you want to keep pace with today’s business trends, you cannot pass by the benefits of Digital Asset Management. Advanced DAM solutions like Pics.io offer a whole variety of services in one place, from keeping your assets in one location to organizing and distributing them easily.

Some companies still avoid implementing DAM, being assured that it’ll be too troublesome for them. In response to this, the market of DAM has changed considerably over the latest years. Today there are DAM solutions that strive for ease of use and effortless implementation.

And Pics.io is one of them. First, we focused on making our DAM as intuitive as possible. We also made it on top of your storage (Google Drive or Amazon S3) so you didn’t spend much time on the implementation phase.

Now we tried to simplify implementation even further and created our own storage. Still having no storage but want to clean up the mess with your files? Don’t hesitate to try Pics.io storage and get a full DAM solution just in seconds.