Portal Frontend for the Pixelboxx DAM Platform

The Customer

The DNA of pixelboxx is Digital Media Asset Management (DAM). With the web-based digital asset management solution from Pixelboxx GmbH, customers can manage their media content — such as images, graphics, PDF documents, audio, video, Office documents, etc. — and distribute it to other systems (e.g. PIM, CMS, shops, etc.). This places pixelboxx at the center of many customers’ application landscapes. pixelboxx relies heavily on AI technologies to optimally support its customers in their daily work with assets.

Initial Situation and Challenge

Due to a significant increase in the volume of customer-specific requirements, pixelboxx was facing a capacity bottleneck. Given the central role of pixelboxx in the application landscape, one of its customers expressed the desire for a portal web frontend. The customer wanted to make assets available to their own clients in a straightforward way, without requiring those clients to have access to pixelboxx itself.

itemis Approach

To select the most suitable frontend technology for the portal web frontend to be developed, the frontend specialists at itemis first defined a prototypical approach using standalone components.

The first implementation was carried out using the JavaScript library React. A second version of the same components was built with Angular — a framework for developing fast and high-performance single-page applications in the right project context. The final decision was made in favor of Angular, particularly because the partners with whom pixelboxx integrates also rely on Angular. The out-of-the-box features and direct support for custom components were additional advantages for Angular.

Implementation & Customer Benefit

itemis responded quickly, straightforwardly, and with the flexibility that pixelboxx required. The result was a customer-specific portal developed to the full satisfaction of the pixelboxx customer. In addition, the code contributed by itemis provided an excellent foundation on which the pixelboxx team can build its own product.

In the course of this project, the itemis employees were also able to make a valuable contribution to the selection of pixelboxx’s future technology stack for the UI.

Following the very positive results of the development project, a software architect from itemis was paired with a software architect from pixelboxx to jointly design the architecture of a new UI framework for pixelboxx. The result was the foundation for an exceptionally flexible and highly scalable UI framework, which is currently being developed by the pixelboxx team.

The openness and spirit of the itemis developers temporarily made them a valued part of the pixelboxx team.