In the world of rich media, it was the publishers, broadcasters, and marketing agencies who first found themselves about a decade ago swimming in a sea of digital photos, large digital videos, various types of audio files. Today any organization with a marketing or communications need, by which I mean every organization, has a need to manage rich media - whether it's for talking with customers, partners, or often just their own employees.

Today the content companies are rapidly exploring an important new phase of media management, one in which their content frequently traverses the corporate firewall. They do so because they have found that as compelling as their websites can be, there are many conversations of which they would like to be a part that are taking place across the greater internet, and in particular within both the very large and very small social networks from Twitter and Facebook to alumni and local community forums. The same need is rapidly growing among all companies seeking to be included in the extended conversations that the Web facilitates. However while such content distribution allows organizations to attract customers and interested parties to their core content, to date it has been difficult to track, control, and keep such distributed content up-to-date.

In the very near future, I am pleased to say, companies like Open Text will make available technology that builds on the dramatic progress around content management, distribution, and display over the last few years -- in particular, shared progress around interoperable standards -- so that organizations can now participate in these external discussions without losing control of their content. This notion of being able to monitor and update distributed content in real time no matter where that content may be represents a powerful new phase in content management.

When combined with dramatically improved navigation experience via the introduction of a third dimension to content browsing, the result is likely to be far richer, more interactive, and ultimately not just better and faster content experiences but entirely different experiences. If you are interested in learning more, I will be discussing these trends in more detail, and showing some compelling real world examples, during my session called Distribution and Control: The Next Important Phase of Media Management on November 9 out in LA at the Henry Stewart Digital Asset Management show. Hope to see you there.

Damian Saccocio is VP, Solutions Marketing and Strategy, Enterprise 2.0 at Open Text