Founded in 1990, in Berlin, Germany, Canto Software is one of the longest operating publishers of digital asset management

Digital asset management

Digital asset management consists of management tasks and decisions surrounding the ingestion, annotation, cataloguing, storage, retrieval and distribution of digital assets...

 (DAM) software.

In 1992, the company released Canto Cumulus

Cumulus (software)

Cumulus is a digital asset management software designed as a client/server system developed by Canto Software. The product line includes editions targeted to smaller organizations and larger enterprises. The product makes use of metadata for indexing, organizing, and searching.Cumulus servers run...

 digital asset management software, which remains the company's flagship product line today. Cumulus is a client/server system used to organize, find, share and track digital files. Canto also sells a number of option products for Cumulus, and additional enhancement products are available from third-party developers.

Canto's first product release, Canto Cirrus, was flatbed scanner software for the Apple Macintosh, released shortly after the company was founded.

Canto’s worldwide headquarters are in Berlin, Germany. The company's United States operation is managed from an office in San Francisco, California

San Francisco, California

San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...

. The company remains privately held by its original owners.

Sales are handled by internal sales personnel and by a worldwide network of sales partners.

Strategic partnerships for product development are maintained with Apple Inc., Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

, Adobe Systems

Adobe Systems

Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States...

, Quark, Inc.

Quark, Inc.

Quark, Inc. is a privately owned software company best known for QuarkXPress. It is called Quark because the company's goal is to "create software that would be the platform for publishing", just as quarks are the basis for all matter.As of August 2011, Quark's offerings include:* QuarkXPress -...

 and others.

Target markets include Brand Management, Corporate Communications

Corporate communications

Corporate communication is the message issued by a corporate organization, body, or institute to its publics. "Publics" can be both internal Corporate communication is the message issued by a corporate organization, body, or institute to its publics. "Publics" can be both internal Corporate...

, Manufacturing

Manufacturing

Manufacturing is the use of machines, tools and labor to produce goods for use or sale. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial production, in which raw materials are transformed into finished goods on a large scale...

, Advertising/Design, Government

Government

Government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized...

, Publishing

Publishing

Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature or information—the activity of making information available to the general public...

, Retail

Retail

Retail consists of the sale of physical goods or merchandise from a fixed location, such as a department store, boutique or kiosk, or by mail, in small or individual lots for direct consumption by the purchaser. Retailing may include subordinated services, such as delivery. Purchasers may be...

 and Prepress/Print.

Canto's executive offers are CEO Ulrich Knocke, CFO Hans-Dieter Schaedel and CTO Thomas Schleu.

The company reports selling more than 14,000 Cumulus

Cumulus (software)

Cumulus is a digital asset management software designed as a client/server system developed by Canto Software. The product line includes editions targeted to smaller organizations and larger enterprises. The product makes use of metadata for indexing, organizing, and searching.Cumulus servers run...

servers, and distributing more than 1,000,000 user licenses since the product's initial release.

Canto Cumulus inventor, Thomas Schleu, won the "DAMMY of the Year" award at the 2011 Createasphere DAM Conference in New York City.