Canto Cumulus 8 Now Shipping

James Fritz

Canto has announced the release of Cumulus 8, a major update the company describes as the most significant in the product line’s 17-year history. Cumulus 8 introduces entirely new digital asset management (DAM) capabilities, and provides the technological foundation the DAM leader needs to push the platform even further.
“We set out to reinvent what DAM means,” explains Canto CEO Ulrich Knocke. “Cumulus 8 offers a new measure of power and capability for this industry, and redefines what users should expect from a DAM system, regardless of price point.”
Usage statistics and reporting is among the most noted new features. Customers can now value their assets by knowing which are being used most, and fine-tune their metadata by knowing the search terms users choose.
“Customers need be able to value their collections, so we wanted to offer something useful like Google Analytics for assets” explains Canto marketing director, Steffen Setzer.”
Cumulus 8 can also catalog assets via email, offering easy, network-secure uploads of photos taken with mobile devices, security cameras, etc., as Knocke explains.
“Realtors, insurance adjusters and other in-the-field pros can now safely catalog iPhone or other ‘smart’ device photos into Cumulus 8 before they even get back to the office.”
Performance has been dramatically improved too. For example, Cumulus 7 can assign a metadata set to 40 records in the same time Cumulus 8 assigns the set to over 8,000 records, offering an exponential boost in productivity potential.
Additional new Cumulus 8 features include:
• Enhanced collaboration through user commenting.
• Find files faster with user-defined filters that show only certain formats, approved, etc.
• Compare multiple assets at once with new full-screen preview.
• Protect downloaded images with licence-free watermarking, included in all editions.
• Create image variants from inside Cumulus 8, using built-in Image Editor.
The Cumulus 8 product line has also been update, offering a new entry-level edition and more affordable network-based licenses for add-ons. In addition, Cumulus 8 API updates extend performance gains to add-ons created by Canto developer partners, and also provides new business opportunities for Canto partners.
Cumulus 8 is available for download from the Canto website at no additional charge to customers on active software maintenance contracts. Out-of-contract upgrades are available.