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February 17, 2023

ISV Success program helps Akouo bring to market a simultaneous interpretation solution for Microsoft Teams

Founded in 2021 and based in the United Kingdom, Akouo’s solution provides universal and simultaneous multilingual interpretation for meetings directly within Microsoft Teams. Users simply add Akouo to their Teams meeting and participants select their preferred language. By tapping into the resources of the ISV Success program, Akouo has moved from development in October of 2021 to a transaction-ready solution that will soon be published on the commercial marketplace.

Akouo

“From working on supporting documents and marketing guidance, to deep technical assistance with cross-disciplinary teams, the ongoing accessibility and support from the ISV program has been a game changer for us.”

James Anderson, Chief Executive Officer, Akouo Technologies

As a small ISV start-up, Akouo Technologies is taking advantage of the ISV Success program to receive high-touch support as it builds its solution across the Microsoft cloud stack and readies to publish a transactable solution on the commercial marketplace. Accounting for the time and resources to build, market, publish, and sell a new solution across a growing and crowded channel, Akouo is proving that with the ISV Success program, newcomers can publish transactable solutions on the commercial marketplace in a short amount of time.

Poised for success—in any language

When Akouo CEO James Anderson and his team were in the initial stages of developing the interpretation solution, they considered all the usual cloud services and platforms. Their target customer profile is multinational corporations across pharma, insurance, banking, and legal verticals, all of which require the highest levels of security.

“We came to the conclusion that it would be madness to not be a 100 percent Microsoft product,” said Anderson. “Microsoft’s technology stack has everything we want—it’s all integrated and we get the reach and quality of 200 million active users on Teams. We now have an official policy: if it isn’t Microsoft, we don’t use it.”

Once that decision was made, the team engaged with the ISV Success program in early 2021. The program is designed to help ISVs of all sizes with tools, curated 1:1 consultations, and training resources so they can more quickly and easily build, publish, and sell across the commercial marketplace. Additional program resources include funds in Azure sponsorship and FastTrack for Azure, which is a separate enablement program providing tailored guidance from Azure engineers.

The Akouo team engaged with all of those program resources to accelerate development. “For us as a new company, the ISV Success program was a no-brainer and saved us a lot of time and from a potentially painful learning curve,” said Anderson. “From working on supporting documents and marketing guidance, to deep technical assistance with cross-disciplinary teams, the ongoing accessibility and support from the ISV program has been a game changer for us.”

Building across the entire Microsoft Cloud

The Akouo solution itself is built across the entire Microsoft cloud stack. Along with being designed to work with the power of Teams with Teams apps, tabs, connectors, and bots, it is 100 percent platformed on Azure. The solution is leveraging those communications services and Azure app services, interoperating with Power Platform, and also the security of Defender and Azure Firewall. “In terms of time and cost, working with Microsoft is to our advantage. It’s a cleaner code and platform build,” said Anderson. “For our customers, who are mostly large international organizations, when they see the system is 100 percent within the Microsoft ecosystem, they are completely reassured.”

Already, Akouo has seen close to 1,000 trial downloads from the marketplace. Customers are drawn to the solution because of its immediate scalability. For example, one large pharma customer routinely conducts Teams meetings with members from its European Works Councils, which include union members who are usually joining from a shop floor via their mobile device. Those individuals can join thanks to universal access, choose their language, and participate in the meeting within a minute. “We are the only ones who can do this and it’s specifically because of working solely within the Microsoft technology ecosystem,” noted Anderson.

“Akouo is very exciting because they’re taking full advantage of not only the Microsoft cloud platform and the full depth and breadth of the Microsoft technology stack, but they’re also fully committed to marketplace as their go-to commerce platform. We are excited to work alongside them and witness their business grow,” said Senior Director Yvonne Muench, ISV & Marketplace Journey, Microsoft.

Akouo is in the final stages of developing transactability and will have it available on the marketplace in 2023. It will continue to leverage the ISV Success program resources as it focuses on selling directly to customers, while commercial marketplace handles transaction complexities, including invoices, currencies, taxes, and more.

For more information about Akouo, visit:  https://www.akouo.io/

For more information about the ISV Success program, visit: microsoft.com/isv

“For us as a new company, the ISV Success program was a no-brainer and saved us a lot of time and from a potentially painful learning curve.”

James Anderson, Chief Executive Officer, Akouo Technologies

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