DAM Architecture

We are undertaking an initiative for DAM and i would like to get recommendations on what a typical DAM architecture might be. We have clients/editors located in different geographical locations e.g. Florida, Montreal, NYC etc.

Based on this, we feel that some kind of a distributed content model would be ideal for us. Ideally, what i would like is to have the meta data in the master repository and the content in the distributed locations. The DAM system should interact wiht the files locally and once the information is ready to be stored in the repository, the infomation should be put into the master server.

There are lots of pre-production files that our editors deal with (B-rolls, raw image files etc.) and we would ideally not like to store those into our repository. So it shoudl be something like the DAM system acts as a rich-media file editor till the time the video/image is production ready. At this time, the object is created in documentum and stored in the central repository.

We also have multiple renditions that are created for these assets, so ideally we would not expect these renditions to be downloaded to the client side (it might consume too much n/w bandwidth).

Since the clients are working on the original content files and the process of creating them started at the client locale (nyc1 or fla or mtr), the file should not have to be downloaded again unless its changed (in a BOCS cache or as a distributed repository file).

What are the best recommendations for such a requirement which give the optimal speed and flexibility combination.

Thanks

Sahil