Barco has acquired Montreal-based X2O Media as part its strategy to move beyond display and projection technology.
X2O Media will be integrated in the Barco organisation as a business venture, allowing it to continue the development of its platform technology, while leveraging its business growth from Barco’s worldwide sales and service presence. In addition, the X2O specific capabilities and technology will be integrated gradually in solutions for all of Barco’s markets.
With the enterprise communications specialist onside, Barco says it will expand its portfolio with a complete solution to deliver enhanced and cross-divisional content distribution and workflow, based on advanced networking and connectivity capabilities. This will be done using X2O’s innovative software platform, which enables the connection, management and delivery of real-time data through dynamic and interactive channels, from any source to any screen, anywhere.
“X2O Media perfectly complements our offering and skills portfolio, and is an important step in our strategy to expand our portfolio beyond video and imaging,” commented Eric Van Zele, CEO of Barco (pictured).
“Customers’ expectations regarding workflow and content management shift to end-to-end and easy-to-use visualisation systems and cloud-based solutions,” he continued. “X2O Media’s platform will play a crucial role in allowing Barco to tap into these new opportunities, while differentiating itself further from competition. The X2O software platform versatility, and its capability to address any display – be it fixed or mobile – will prove to be an important asset and allows Barco to link any content from any media to any device.”
X2O’s platform establishes real-time visual communications using hardware agnostic standards, building on HTML-5 technology, and can address any display and all mobile devices. It is currently being used in demanding applications across a wide range of industries including enterprise communications, corporate and education, retail and advertising, control rooms, broadcast and healthcare.
The X2O software platform includes plug-ins, “objects” for almost any type of data-source, from local database-systems, over collaboration sites (SharePoint, Exchange, …) up to dynamic data feeds from social media or news sites (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, …).
The solution can be deployed on premise or in the cloud and comes with an intuitive user interface allowing for the creation of channels and connections in the most efficient way.
“We are pleased to be welcomed at a major company like Barco, which will hugely expand our market reach,” commented David Wilkins, President and CEO of X2O Media. “Barco is a technology company with a focus on visualisation infrastructure and image quality. Adding X2O Media’s application software and workflow focused capabilities, will allow both companies to go to the market with a more comprehensive offering. At the moment, our market is limited to North America, but benefiting from Barco’s global network we will be able to grow our activities worldwide.”
