The second new entrant to our DAM/MAM research I want to introduce you to is Elvis DAM by the aptly-named vendor, "Dutchsoftware." Random fact: I collect KLM Delft Blue miniature houses. Elvis joins my “Dutch vendors I evaluate” collection.

Elvis is a resident of the “Dutch software belt,” as I like to call it (more on this concept in a separate blog post). The estate of Mr. Presley, however, is not involved. Elvis DAM is not being coded from Graceland Mansion. The product name stems from its early versions and internal code name while it was been developed in Krommenie, the Netherlands, circa 2001, in a spin-off from Graphit BV (an SI in the Benelux media sector).

On the UI side, Elvis DAM is quite a good-looking contender in the DAM space. Users often compliment the elegance of Elvis’ interface. Also among strengths, is Elvis' comparatively strong Lucene-based search and filtering capabilities.

If you want to SOAP it up, or REST it down – there’s an API for that. But don’t hope for much depth, especially if you’re trying to pair up Elvis DAM with a Web CMS. Elvis will tell you they have a TinyMCE rich text editor plugin that gives you a button in the RTE to browse Elvis folders and insert assets into a page. But this is as far as you can go in Elvis’ current state of integration capabilities -- leaving much, much more room for gezelligheid.

For those of you European buyers doing DAM product selections, also consider Elvis’ close neighbors: ADAM and celum. If your needs depend heavily on strong video management capabilities, you may want to check out celum’s MOVIS server. If your budget is a bit tight for ADAM, or if prefer not to deal with a slew of add-ons to the core product, Elvis may have a more attractive price point and a more modern architecture. But these facts are simple illustrations, mere drops in the ocean of how we compare and evaluate these vendors in our DAM evaluation research stream.