This post has been republished via RSS; it originally appeared at: New blog articles in Microsoft Community Hub.
In this edition of our Partner Spotlight series, we continue highlighting partners at the forefront of app innovation on the commercial marketplace. Throughout the series, we will be telling the unique stories of partners who are leading the way with AI in app development, who are building using multiple Microsoft products, and who are publishing transactable applications on the marketplace. In this article, I sat down with Akouo CEO James Anderson to learn more about their story and partner journey.
Upcoming webinar announcement: James will be sharing more about Akouo's story and their journey in building across the Microsoft Cloud in our community event next Thursday, February 15th! Register today and join us for Building and publishing apps across the Microsoft Cloud.
About James: James Anderson is a professional conference interpreter and has worked on the conception and design of leading digital solutions for interpretation and live language support for more than 10 years.
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[JR]: Tell us about Akouo and its mission. What inspired the founding?
[JA]: I have been a conference interpreter and managed interpretation for meetings and events for nearly 30 years, I started working on developing digital solutions for live voice interpretation delivery in 2013. COVID led to an exponential increase in the need for remote simultaneous interpretation for online meetings almost overnight. A very large proportion of my customers were Microsoft Teams users, and there was no solution to provide integrated, secure, language support for meetings; this is what drove me to build a solution built specifically for MS Teams, a solution that would leverage the strengths of Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Cloud, while providing a simple to use, secure and affordable experience for MS Teams users around the world requiring multilingual meetings.
[JR]: Why did you decide to publish an app on Microsoft’s commercial marketplace?
[JA]: This was for Akouo, simply put, a no-brainer! Akouo is built ground-up using exclusively Microsoft technologies, products, and platforms, and is built specifically for Microsoft users. The commercial marketplace provides several benefits to both ISVs such as Akouo and – just as importantly – to our customers. The commercial marketplace offer means we showcase our products and services directly to qualified Microsoft users, within the controlled and secure Microsoft ecosystem. From our customers’ perspective this is an assurance of the quality and compliancy of Akouo products, as all apps published to the marketplace undergo comprehensive validation with Microsoft prior to publishing. Secondly, there is the significant advantage of simplifying procurement, license management and payments for customers. Finally, the shift to cloud marketplaces from being simply transaction vehicles to fully-fledged revenue channels means a Cloud GTM strategy is vital to our development and growth.
[JR]: Can you tell us a bit about the application(s) you have available on the marketplace? How does it work?
[JA]: Akouo has two complementary apps on Microsoft Commercial Marketplace:
- Akouo Interpretation, which provides an end-to-end solution for adding simultaneous interpretation to MS Teams meetings, webinars and Town Halls. Akouo Interpretation combines Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Power Pages and Azure Communications services to allow Microsoft Teams users to add interpretation to their MS Teams meeting. Interpretation managers and 3rd party language service providers connect to Akouo through their secure and private Power Pages environment to manage interpretation requests and assign interpreters, who in turn access their private and secure Power Pages account, from where they are able to connect to the Akouo Remote Simultaneous Interpretation (RSI) interface in which they can interpret for the Teams users.
- Akouo Multilingual Captions provides Realtime, bidirectional AI-translated captions to and from 29 languages in Microsoft Teams meetings, allowing MS Teams users to simply add Akouo captions to any meeting and provide instant language support for seamless multilingual meetings, at the click of a button.
[JR]: How has Microsoft supported you along your journey on the marketplace?
[JA]: Akouo has been lucky enough to benefit not only from the ISV support team regarding app publishing and marketing, but also from valuable support and insights from the product teams at Teams, Azure Communications Services and Power Pages. We have been very pleasantly surprised as a small independent ISV, at the level of access and attention that Microsoft has afforded us. We are now engaging with a cross-product group on providing feedback to Microsoft on how customer experience with transactability can be enhanced. Microsoft support has been instrumental in the successful development of our products in the Microsoft environment.
[JR]: What Microsoft cloud products did you use in your app development, and how did you decide to use those products?
[JA]: Akouo uses Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Power Pages (Microsoft PowerApps), Azure Communications Services, and Azure Cognitive Services. Because Akouo was conceived specifically for Microsoft Teams users, it was logical for us to build our services with the Microsoft Cloud environment using Microsoft components. We benefit from using a suite of tools that play well together and are all designed for the Microsoft Cloud environment, and our customers benefit from the transparency and alignment with their own systems. The nature of our products and the numerous services provided meant that cross-cloud development was really the only way to achieve our goals.
[JR]: What challenges did you have when building cross-cloud, and how did you overcome them?
[JA]: Setting up environments and ensuring they are optimized for your use cases entails a steep learning curve. Because Akouo has adopted a position of Microsoft-only, this also means that for some scenarios we are limited to the MS offering as we will not use other components that are non-MS.
[JR]: What value did you get out of building your app cross-cloud?
[JA]: Building cross-cloud entirely within the Microsoft ecosystem has provided numerous advantages to Akouo, most notably in terms of compatibility, rationalization of resources, access to knowledge and support, as well as customer buy-in with a product that is reassuringly 100% Microsoft.
[JR]: How is Akouo leveraging or planning to leverage AI in app development?
[JA]: Our solution uses Azure Cognitive Services Speech. Akouo Multilingual Captions leverages AI to provide real-time translated captions to and from multiple languages in Microsoft Teams meetings.
[JR]: How do you use user feedback to improve your app and user experience?
[JA]: We are in constant communication with our users and are highly attentive to the feedback we get, as well as the behavior we observe. At Akouo, we aim to make products that are simple to use yet powerful. Feedback and observation, aligned with this clear objective allow us to constantly improve and enhance upon our products.
[JR]: Are there any best practices or lessons learned that you would like to share with aspiring ISVs?
[JA]: Take the time and invest in your relationship with the ISV team. It is a lot to take on for a small ISV and requires a concentrated investment in time and attention, but it’s a worthwhile investment. When you don’t know or have a doubt, reach out, the ISV team and their colleagues are accessible and very helpful.
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Resources:
- Join ISV Success
- Join the marketplace community
- Register for our upcoming webinar with James! Building and publishing apps across the Microsoft Cloud, February 15th at 8:00 am PST.