The German textbook publisher Cornelsen Schulverlage, based in Berlin, offers a very comprehensive publishing program. For the safe and efficient management of its very large stock of five million assets - primarily images and PDFs - the publisher selectedWoodWing's digital asset management solution Elvis DAM. Unlike other DAM systems, Elvis DAM is not based on a database, but rather uses a powerful search engine ensuring maximum performance even for very large data sets. The user-friendly system can also be easily scaled up to meet increasing demands. Highly integrated with a range of specialized solutions at Cornelsen, Elvis DAM acts as a "production cockpit" in a VMWare environment, ensuring high availability. The sophisticated implementation was completed in just three months.
Cornelsen Schulverlage's publishing portfolio includes 17,000 titles from early childhood to adult education. The offer covers all subjects, types of schools and German states and ranges from textbooks via self-taught materials, reference books and technical literature, to digital learning environments.
Five million assets now, 10 million by mid-2014
Educational books and other media are inherently image-intensive publications. The library of Cornelsen Schulverlage is correspondingly large - the publisher currently manages more than five million assets, a volume of 15 terabytes. And that number is rapidly growing - by the middle of next year, the number of images will pass the 10 million mark. Unlike other DAM systems, Elvis DAM does not use a database - the system is based on the search engine Lucene, which is also used by Wikipedia and other well-known platforms. This approach ensures the highest performance even at extremely large file stocks.
Elvis DAM leverages common search concepts such as searching in a folder structure, or based on Google-like search phrases - an important prerequisite for the high usability of the system. Files can easily be imported via drag-and-drop. For the secure management of large file stocks, Elvis DAM supports more than 400 metadata fields and also allows the definition of individual fields, categories and groups.
"Due to our continuously and rapidly growing file stocks, we were looking for a DAM system not only offering the highest performance today, but one that would be able to grow with our increasing demands," said Katrin Tischer, Head of Processes, Services and Implementation at Cornelsen. "In addition, it should be very easy to use. As a further requirement, the system had to be integrated seamlessly into our existing environment. In all these aspects, Elvis DAM met our expectations."
With the Elvis API, WoodWing offers a comprehensive, open programming interface - external applications using this API can interact with Elvis DAM.
Highly integrated Elvis DAM acts as a production cockpit
The planning of the system and its implementation were carried out by WoodWing´s partner 3f8h.net / electronic publishing, based in Freiburg, Germany, in close cooperation with the publisher´s internal IT department. "At Cornelsen Schulverlage, Elvis DAM acts as a kind of production cockpit and is, via an individual plug-in, integrated with the production environment PU-Buch developed by Cornelsen," said Sebastian Nafroth, founder of 3f8h.net. "With this, the additional integration of Elvis DAM with Enfocus Switch for process automation and with tools provided by us many external services have been implemented. In addition to Adobe InDesign Server, Axaio MadeToPrint and pdfToolbox by callas, other new configurations for Switch called 'ElvisDAM+' developed by3f8h.net were also utilized." According to Nafroth, this environment allows for a high degree of interaction between the applications as well as the extensive automation of standard tasks.
High availability in VMWare environment
The complete Elvis DAM implementation is provided in a highly available VMWare environment. Thus, the DAM system is available even in the event of hardware failure. In addition, the DAM system is embedded into the centralized backup strategy.
"We are pleased that Cornelsen Schulverlage, one of the most famous publishers in the education sector, selected Elvis DAM as its digital asset management system," said Roel-Jan Mouw, CEO of WoodWing Software. "At Cornelsen, Elvis DAM not only exploits its abilities to manage very large data sets and to optimize workflows, but also its high flexibility in terms of integration - the very comprehensive implementation was completed in just three months."
