Acano Goes GA

27 Aug 2013

Acano is a new conferencing and collaboration solution built around what it calls "coSpaces." It natively supports Codecs for H.264 AVC, SVC, WebM/VP8, Microsoft RTVideo, H.265, and more. This gives users ranging from a Lync client on RTV, a Polycom system on SVC and a Cisco system on H.264 the ability to join the same meeting. The WebM/VP8 is key to enabling WebRTC-enabled browsers to participate.

The company came out of stealth last June at InfoComm and this week announced the general availability of the Acano Solution.

Rather than attempt to win the world over with a single technology or solution, Acano intends to leverage the installed bases of other platforms. People can join coSpaces using a phone, tablet, computer, room system, or enterprise UC solution such as Lync. The coSpaces are intended to be a natural, seamless integration for virtually every major enterprise conferencing technology.

Acano reports success from 25 trials this year, including a F100 firm with 90,000 Lync clients. It also announced a selective group of resellers and service provider partners including IVCi, NexTech Solutions, Office Management, SKC, Talk & Vision, Technology Specialist Inc, Video Guidance, VideoNor, VisionPoint and Yorktel. "The future of collaboration is true ubiquity across the entire enterprise...Acano's coSpaces have changed the game and we are excited to be bringing their offering to market," said Bob Swing, CEO, IVCi.

Acano is thinking big. The initial deployments can support up to 50,000 users. These "coSpaces" are intended to replace a variety of audio, video and web conferencing products and services including vendor specific MCUs. CEO OJ Winge stated that "Acano puts more emphasis on users than the technology, we allow our customers to use whatever technology they prefer. Our coSpaces simply make the hassles of interoperability disappear as we believe the days of walled gardens are gone."

The Acano coSpaces are persistent. They can be created for projects, and the notes and agendas from prior sessions remain accessible. coSpaces are web accessible via email invites or dial-in. Acano also allows a user to access the coSpace with multiple devices at the same time. For example, you can use a phone for private audio and an iPad (or other mobile device) for video. You can also split the video streams into different devices such as the desktop for participant video and the iPad for shared content.

Universal interop is a UC segment that is getting a lot of attention. VidTel and Blue Jeans are building public cloud services, and NextPlane is working on UC federation. Based on history, these younger firms will likely deliver far stronger solutions for interoperability than the major vendors will.

Dave Michels is a Contributing Editor and Analyst at TalkingPointz.

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