MimeCloud: Scalable .NET Digital Asset & Media Management

What is MimeCloud?

• MimeCloud is an open-source media asset library built for lightning speed and scalability
• You can use MimeCloud to:
  • Manage the images and video on your blog or website (Wordpress or Umbraco? No problem!)
  • Replace the image management module of your website's CMS with something more powerful, extensible, and easier to use
  • Manage usage rights information on your digital media archive (publishers? Hello!)
  • Attach metadata in multiple languages to the same image, video or asset
  • Quickly upload 1 or 1000 assets in a batch, with resizing and thumbnail generation on the fly
• The project was founded by Alex Norcliffe and Peter Miller

What platform does MimeCloud use?

• MimeCloud builds against Microsoft .NET 3.5SP1, and consists of the following pillars:
  • Robust datalayer built on Microsoft SQL Server and Lucene.net
  • Extensible API in both WCF and RESTful forms exposed using IIS
  • Several clients including a full-featured Silverlight image manipulation and batch upload tool, and an ASP.NET MVC administration tool for basic upload and library searching
  • Storage of assets can be via FTP, HTTP upload, Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure - whatever you prefer

What's a Media Library? Is this Digital Asset Management? I just want to upload images to my site

• No worries - just because MimeCloud can cope with millions of images and videos doesn't mean it's difficult to use, or resource intensive.
• You can have MimeCloud installed on a simple blog in minutes, and use it every now and then, and it will still have cost you nothing (unless you want to donate)

Does it only handle images?

• Not at all! We called it MimeCloud for a reason - the entire system is pluggable and supports anything describable by a MIME type. Out of the box we have support for images, videos, PDFs, Microsoft Office, and if there is a filetype you need that isn't yet supported you can write a provider to tell MimeCloud how to handle it.

Is it scalable? I have a lot of images, video, and traffic!

• We hear you. We've been doing this for years for some very busy sites. MimeCloud has a scalable database design, service-based disconnected architecture, easy batch processing & upload, and a Silverlight client for a rich media manipulation toolset on both Windows and MacOSX.
• MimeCloud covers the whole system end-to-end, from handling your image & video storage via RepositoryProviders, to easy integration with your favourite CMS, to the tool users are given to get the images onto your storage whether you need one image every now and then or are uploading thousands per week.

What if I have specific ideas on how I want my media stored?

• Is your website hosted on a "classic" hosting model? No worries - MimeCloud can handle uploads via FTP, or its own HTTP webservices.
• Is your website hosted on cloud hosting? Amazon Web Services, like EC2, S3 or CloudFront? How about Microsoft Azue? No problem - MimeCloud comes with S3 and Azure Blog Storage providers, and can upload to EC2 fine too.
  • Got a specific requirement? You can plug in your own RepositoryProvider, and better still submit it back to the core code for everyone else to use!

I don't want your old code

• That hurts! Well, luckily we thought you may say that so we planned ahead - MimeCloud is built atop the latest Microsoft .NET technologies, with all the learnings of over 10 years' combined experience managing the media infrastructure for one of the world's largest publishers
  • Not on .NET? That's fine too - it has open API support for integration with other platforms easily and efficiently

The last time I looked this stuff costs at least $200k from a sprawling, bumbling Corporation

• Well MimeCloud is cost effective, as in free, as in beer
  • Available as a cost-free open-source product with full documentation for installing and integrating with your workflows or CMS systems