Digital asset management is the process by which an organisation creates or obtains, stores, organises, manages, distributes, and eventually disposes of digital assets. A digital asset is an image, audio, or video file, or other reusable rich content fragment that an organisation uses in applications across the enterprise. A digital asset management system enables users to easily create, discover and reuse existing digital assets within the organisation.

In Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 you can use an asset library to store and share digital assets with users. The asset library is a SharePoint Server 2010 library template that is customised to use content types designed specifically for storing and cataloging rich media assets.

An effective digital asset management solution specifies:

• The metadata to provide for each kind of asset
• The amount of storage space that is needed for the assets, and the performance issues to consider for serving the assets to users
• Where to store assets at each stage of the life cycle of an asset
• How to control access to an asset at each stage of its life cycle
• How to move assets within the organisation as team members contribute to creation, review, approval, publication, and disposition of assets
• The policies to apply to assets so that asset-related actions are audited, assets are retained or disposed of correctly, and assets important to the organisation are protected
• How assets are treated as corporate records, which must be retained according to requirements and corporate guidelines