Digital Video, the developers and owners of Toonz has sold part of its business to Quantel (now S.A.M.) and will now concentrate back its resources on the Animation products (Toonz). Digital Media also recently announced that SAM has acquired Italian workflow and asset management specialist Mantrics. Mantrics which is a privately-held joint venture was established in 2008 by Digital Video and Video Progetti.
SAM has already developed a powerful position in the MAM and workflow management arena with Momentum, launched in 2014. The core technology behind Momentum was originally developed by Mantrics.
Digital Video, managing director, Claudio Mattei said, “When Digital Video decided to invest in workflow management technologies, we started from a strong background in building products for professional markets. This expertise, developed at a time when the broadcast industry was still heavily relying on tape, has given us a significant competitive advantage. The sale of Mantrics to SAM is the next logical step to push both the ongoing development and sales of Momentum. It will also increase the speed of integration across the SAM product portfolio. We are proud of the working relationship that we have developed with SAM and we look forward to deploying our skills across other joint projects and products for the broadcast industry.”
When SAM (Snell at that point) looked at existing providers as part of its research, they appeared to fall into two camps. The first comprises systems that handle complex workflows that meet the requirements of major customers. This often means a lot of bespoke work and coding/scripting. At the other end, there were, and still are products with simple drag-and-drop UIs but they tend to be focussed on specific applications like file delivery and can be constrained in what they can accomplish.
Mantrics, EVP of Marketing at SAM & MD, Neil Maycock said, “With Momentum you have the best of both worlds with users able to define and manage their own workflows via an intuitive user interface while also being able to scale to handle complex real world scenarios. Modern business aren’t static: they are evolving rapidly and are very dynamic. The ability for customers to be able to grow to support different platforms/formats and to scale Momentum accordingly, without having to come back to us every time something changes, is very important.”
Momentum is targeted at both the production and playout side of SAM’s business and this is one of its core, unifying products. With the company purchase now agreed, the development team in Italy is working closely with the SAM team in the UK to push the ongoing expansion of Momentum and its powerful toolset.