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OpenAsset CloudTechnical Overview

Totally worry-free backup

Less burden on IT resources

Usage based storage costs

Global access and mobility

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Intro

Infrastructure

Uptime

Security

Data

Speed

Backup and Ownership

Integration

User Experience

Moving from OpenAsset On-Premise to Cloud

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Intro

More and more of our clients are choosing to take advantage of

the cost savings and convenience of a Cloud-based deployment of

OpenAsset.

With OpenAsset Cloud, our Professional Services team takes

care of all the IT infrastructure, redundancies, security protocols

and audits, and ongoing maintenance and product updates. This

document explains OpenAsset Cloud’s technical infrastructure.

Learn more about Cloud versus On-Premise DAM systems in our

whitepaper Cloud v. On-Premise: What’s right for you?

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Infrastructure

While OpenAsset Cloud and On-Premise are in essence the same

user experience, the technical architecture has been radically

redesigned to take advantage of the power of the cloud.

Images and videos are processed en masse in parallel, much faster

than you could possibly achieve with a single on-premise server.

Storage is infinitely scalable and only provisioned when it is needed.

OpenAsset runs on the Amazon Web Services cloud infrastructure, the world’s leading provider.

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Uptime

Browser Support

OpenAsset Cloud users access images and files via Amazon’s global

CloudFront Content Delivery Network, which is guaranteed to have greater

than 99.9% uptime. Other components of OpenAsset run on services from

Amazon with similarly impressive uptime.

OpenAsset is accessed via a web browser. OpenAsset is supported on

IE10+, and the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox and Safari.

IE10+ Google Chrome Mozilla Firefox Safari

99.9%CDN Uptime Guaranteed

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OpenAsset On-Premise

If users outside of that physical location need to access the application, the client must

establish and maintain external access to their internal network or use a VPN.

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OpenAsset Cloud

With OpenAsset Cloud, we’ve built an entire infrastructure within AWS. All a client

needs to do is navigate their web browser to their OpenAsset domain.

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Security

OpenAsset Cloud users benefit from all the best practice policies,

architecture, and operational processes built within AWS to satisfy the

requirements of our most security-sensitive customers.

• OpenAsset Cloud only allows encrypted HTTPS / SSL connections, no access to the

main web front end is available through unencrypted HTTP. The connections use a

minimum of SHA-256 encryption, rather than less secure algorithms such as SHA-1.

• Web servers and all other AWS instances directly managed by Axomic are isolated in

a VPN within AWS.

• AWS key control is tightly managed by Axomic, with only certain members of the

Axomic team granted access to selected keys on a needs basis.

• The OpenAsset metadata is stored in RDS MySQL instances, which are extremely

hardened with hot failover redundancy in different availability zones and the latest

security patches.

• Access to the web interface can be restricted by client IP address, using the Access

Filters features in OpenAsset.

• The images and videos are stored in S3, with buckets that have version control

protection to ensure guaranteed recovery is possible in the event of unwanted soft

deletion.

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Uploading also leverages the global CloudFront CDN to ensure files are transported from web browser to OpenAsset Cloud extremely quickly via a local edge location. Images and videos are then processed in parallel so the different sizes become available immediately after upload. Data stores have heavy redundancy to prevent data loss, and replication occurs behind the scenes at a constant rate.

• CloudFront is used as a CDN to serve images and videos to the client, which through

features such as caching, DNS management and global distribution provides a high

level of protection against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.

• AWS meets extremely rigorous compliance standards good enough for sensitive

data of major corporations and goverments

• AWS data centers have exceptionally high security, and the chances of unauthorised

physical access with removable media to the hardware running OpenAsset Cloud is

extremely minimal

• The web servers, database, image and video processing and storage are mostly

located in the AWS US East region in Northern Virginia, although files may be cached

for delivery globally. AWS has negotiated agreements to satisfy governments around

the world of the security of data from unauthorised access, such as the Model

Clauses for EU Data Protection

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DataContent Delivery Network Optimized for DAM

• Load search results with hundreds of thumbnails super fast

• Instantly launch image slideshows in-browser

• Quickly browse through high resolution images

• Instantly skip ahead when viewing videos...without buffering!

OpenAsset content, like images and videos, requires a highly optimized

Content Delivery Network to reduce data retrieval times. Cloud DAMs

need to be able to:

When you’re searching for images, the thumbnails and previews have to be instantly accessible, delivered to your web browser in milliseconds not seconds.

To achieve this level of performance, all files in OpenAsset are instantly accessible via hot real-time stores. To further speed up download times, the assets used most frequently are also cached around the world.

With images and videos these costs could rapidly add up. You don’t pay extra for uploading thousands of new files, creating large documents or streaming videos.

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SpeedUsing the AWS backbone network, files are moved around the globe at

super-fast speeds, far quicker than public internet.

Images and videos are delivered from over 50 edge locations around

the world, which means you won’t wait for files to download over public

internet, they’ll be delivered from your nearest edge location.

We often get asked what kinds of speeds we can expect from OpenAsset

Cloud. There are several factors that can impact SaaS performance at

your organization, including the speed of your internet connection and

traffic from colleagues.

This speed checker can give you a better idea of the speed you can expect. The service relevant for OpenAsset Cloud is Amazon S3 (us east-1)

To give you an example, in our London office we have a 100Mb/s internet

connection and 90Mb/s in our New York office. Our tests show that

we are able to download from CloudFront at these speeds, but due to

sharing the internet connection with colleagues the average speeds we

see during the day are typically 40 to 80 Mb/s.

The limiting factors in our download speeds

are not CloudFront’s capabilities, but rather

the speed of our office’s connection to the

internet and the traffic from colleagues.

You will almost certainly be in the same

position.

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BackupOpenAsset is powered by custom-provisioned Amazon EC2 Instances

running Debian Linux. Databases are run on RDS Instances with a hot

standby in a secondary location. OpenAsset Cloud also automatically

backs up its database every day to multiple physical locations.

For disaster recovery, we perform regular database backups which are

stored in multiple physical locations for redundancy. The recovery from

data backups is fully managed by us, with no effort required from users.

Files such as images and videos are stored with physical redundancy, and

file delete actions by a user in the front end are soft deletes for a period

of time to allow for recovery.

This means that you avoid managing tape drives, hard drive redundancy,

RAID configuration, distributed storage solutions or the countless other

headaches of managing your own storage infrastructure.

OwnershipThe client always owns the images, files, and metadata stored in

OpenAsset. Data can be exported in mass with assistance from the

OpenAsset support team.

There is an export tool built into OpenAsset that enables you to

download images, videos and associated meta data such as keywords.

It is very flexible and capable of exporting in numerous formats

including spreadsheets, JSON or XML.

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Integration

Deltek Vision

REST API

Authentication

OpenAsset Cloud integrates with Deltek Vision’s Project Info Center.

This integration allows project data to be pushed from Deltek Vision into

OpenAsset. OpenAsset Cloud integrates with both the on-premise and

cloud versions of Deltek Vision.

For Single Sign On (SSO), OpenAsset Cloud integrates with Azure AD

and your on-premise Active Directory servers via ADFS and the OAuth2

protocol. Read more about setting up Azure AD.

In addition, there are a number of tools to help you bulk import user

accounts and manage the user sign up process.

Developers can use our REST APIs to integrate OpenAsset Cloud with

other platforms. Read more on our help site.

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User Experience:InDesign PluginUsers can drag files directly from OpenAsset Cloud into InDesign

Creative Cloud using our InDesign plugin. The plugin is a small file that

needs to be installed on InDesign users’ computers. We recommend IT

deploying the plugin using a GPO if possible.

Link OpenAsset Images

While working on your document, the OpenAsset plugin temporarily

downloads images from OpenAsset Cloud and dynamically links them

within your documents. The images are stored in a local cache on your

machine when needed and do not reference a UNC or other network

path.

The local image cache for this plugin is cleared and filled

dynamically according to which documents you have

recently worked on. You can adjust the size of this cache

in the settings menu.

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Work quickly with your OpenAsset images

Initially, images are downloaded at a low-resolution, working size. The

plugin will automatically download higher resolution versions of the

image in the background as you work. You can change an image to its full

resolution at any time. You’ll also be prompted to change all images in

the file before packaging up your InDesign document.

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Share your documents

The plugin makes it easy for colleagues to work on the same InDesign file

without fear of broken image links. If you have the plugin installed, you

will be able to see any images in the document that have been dragged

from OpenAsset, regardless of who dragged them. Once reopened, the

plugin will look for the missing images and re-sync them with OpenAsset

Cloud.

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Document CreationBuild custom templates and/or drag & drop into PowerPoint/Word 2013+.

Developers can use our REST APIs to integrate OpenAsset Cloud with other platforms. Read more on our help site.

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Moving from OpenAsset On-Premise to Cloud

Customers cite reasons such as corporate mandates to move to the

cloud, reduction in IT support / infrastructure, and reduction in capital

expenditures among the many reasons for making the switch from on

premise to the cloud.

We’re moving clients to the cloud more and more every day. Our

Professional Services team will work with you to make this transition as

seamless as possible.

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About OpenAssetOpenAsset is the number one digital asset

management (DAM) solution for architecture,

engineering, construction, and property services

companies. It is delivered and supported by

Axomic, which has a global presence with staff

based in London and New York and clients ranging

in size from 5 to 50,000 employees.

OpenAsset is specifically tailored to solve the

image management needs of companies working

in the built environment. Its development roadmap

is guided by our client base of over 600 of the

world’s leading AEC companies.

REQUEST A QUOTEOPENASSET.COM

Visit us in London

Axomic Ltd.

Stapleton House

110 Clifton Street, London

EC2A 4HT, UK

+44 (0) 870 850 0435

Visit us in New York

Axomic Inc.

137 Varick Street

Suite 407, New York

NY 10013, USA

+1 917 267 0416