Five-year DAM TCO Calculator

How it works

The Five-year DAM TCO Calculator computes storage for each year first, then adds three layers: archetype licence cost, common running cost and one-off services in year one.

Storage per year

Storage starts at assets times average file size, converted to terabytes at 1,000,000 MB per TB. Storage compounds by the yearly growth rate from year two onwards. The video uplift then multiplies every year's figure, so year n storage equals today's TB times (1 + growth) to the power n minus 1, times (1 + video uplift).

Licence cost per archetype

The storage tier archetype counts started blocks. With 5 TB per tier, 3.4 TB bills one step and 5.3 TB bills two.

Common and one-off costs

Common running cost applies to all three archetypes in every year:

• Egress: TB delivered per year times the egress rate per TB.
• AI operations: operations per year divided by 1,000, times the rate per 1,000.
• Internal staff: FTE times the loaded cost per FTE.
• Integration run: integrations times the yearly run price.

One-off services land in year one: implementation, plus integrations times the build price, plus migration. Every archetype carries the same common and one-off costs, so the gap between columns comes from licence and storage alone.

Worked example

The Five-year DAM TCO Calculator loads with example inputs for a mid-sized library, and the numbers in this section come straight from the model.

Worked example inputs: 60 named users, 150 external portal users, 200,000 assets at 12 MB, 25% yearly growth and a 40% video uplift. Usage covers 6 TB of egress and 400,000 AI operations a year, 3 integrations, €60,000 implementation, €25,000 migration and 0.5 FTE of internal staff.

Worked example unit prices: €900 per named user, €60 per external user and €1,500 per TB. The storage tier starts at €30,000 with 5 TB per tier at €12,000 per step. The platform tier costs €75,000 with 10 TB included. Egress costs €90 per TB, AI €4 per 1,000 operations, integrations €15,000 to build and €4,000 a year to run, and staff €75,000 per FTE.

1. Storage: 200,000 times 12 MB gives 2.4 TB today. The video uplift bills 3.36 TB in year one, rising to 8.20 TB in year five.
2. Common cost: €540 egress, €1,600 AI, €37,500 staff and €12,000 integration run make €51,640 a year.
3. One-off cost: €60,000 plus €45,000 integration builds plus €25,000 migration makes €130,000 in year one.
4. Licence: per seat costs €64,260 in year one. Storage tier costs €50,100 with one tier, and €62,100 from year three when storage passes 5 TB. Platform tier starts at €75,000 and reaches €91,163 in year five.

The calculator rounds each row to whole euros, so the platform column adds up to €1 more than its unrounded total. Shared costs of €388,200 make up 48% to 58% of each total, with internal staff alone at €187,500.

Sensitivity in the worked example

Raise the average file size from 12 MB to 50 MB and the ranking flips. Storage starts at 14 TB in year one and reaches 34.18 TB in year five. Per seat becomes cheapest at €746,287, ahead of storage tier at €878,700 and platform tier at €899,970.

Raise AI operations from 400,000 to 4,000,000 a year and every total grows by €72,000. DAMSelection assessment: storage, egress and AI credit consumption drive five-year DAM cost more than licence fees, so test those inputs at two or three volumes.

How to use the result

The Five-year DAM TCO Calculator feeds Checkpoint 3, Justify, and returns at Checkpoint 7, Sign, with real quotes.

1. Take asset count, file size and growth from the content audit.
2. Check each shortlisted vendor's pricing archetype on its profile and in how DAM pricing works.
3. Count PIM pairs at depth level 2 or 1 in the PIM and DAM Fit Map as integration builds.
4. Replace every example unit price with the vendor quote and export the table for the business case.
5. Bring the five-year view to the negotiation, following negotiating DAM pricing.

The five-year TCO guide explains each cost line, and the other DAM selection tools supply the inputs.

Limitations

The Five-year DAM TCO Calculator simplifies contracts into three archetypes, and six simplifications matter when reading the result.

• Example unit prices come from no vendor. The DAM Pricing Index will publish observed ranges.
• User counts, egress and AI operations stay flat for five years. Only storage grows.
• The 25% storage share in per seat, the 15% user share in storage tier and the 5% platform uplift are fixed in the model.
• The model applies no inflation, discounting, currency conversion or VAT.
• Real contracts often mix archetypes, for example a platform fee with seat bands and AI credit packs.
• Exit costs, such as a later migration out, sit outside the five-year total.