PhotoShelter Acquires Third Light to Add More Data Management Tools
PhotoShelter has acquired United Kingdom-based digital asset management (DAM) software provider Third Light in a move that is designed to expand PhotoShelter’s capabilities for enterprises, organizations, and visual creatives.
What is Digital Asset Management?
Digital asset management companies offer software that stores, organizes, and shares digital media files like photos or videos. DAM companies would argue that a cloud storage platform like DropBox isn’t a DAM, but they share a lot of things in common. DAM software becomes more useful as the number of files that need to be managed increases. DAM software typically has better searching, keywording, and categorizing which makes it superior when dealing with more people accessing more files.
DAM software typically allows users to upload, preview, download, render, and share files of much larger size than a platform like DropBox can reasonably handle.
PhotoShelter’s Aquisition of Third Light
PhotoShelter currently allows 1,300 enterprises, brands, sports leagues, universities, and other large organizations the ability to work in its media collaboration platform, which includes capturing and storing images in real-time as well as content delivery and licensing.
The company says its purpose-built platform powers end-to-end efficiency and speed for even the most demanding workflows and storage requirements. In addition to powering name-brand organizations, PhotoShelter provides over 80,000 professional photographers with solutions for photo storage, portfolio websites, image delivery and monetization, and more.
The Third Light acquisition will give PhotoShelter the Chorus DAM application, which has a suite of collaboration tools that can enhance the digital work experience. PhotoShelter will also get Third Light’s entire team and its 300 global customers. Together, that’s an expansion of its DAM capabilities and international market share.
PhotoShelter says that the acquisition was made amid growing demand among creatives and organizations seeking faster speed and greater efficiency for organizing and managing digital assets. The global total addressable market for DAM software is approximately $5 billion today and growing 20 to 30% annually, with equal opportunity across both the U.S. and European continents.
The purchase of Third Lightt was organized by Clearhaven Partners LP, a Boston-based equity firm that is a large investor of PhotoShelter. The value of the acquisition was not disclosed.
Comparing the Third Light website and marketing to PhotoShelter shows how differently the two companies present themselves. PhotoShelter is image-heavy and clearly targets creatives, while Third Light is vector-heavy with an emphasis on business data management. The combination of the two tools is likely designed to give PhotoShelter a way to move more seriously beyond the creative space and into general digital asset management.
