Design Interactive (Inc) is proud to announce we are officially part of Microsoft’s Mixed Reality Partner Program (MRRP). DI has been delivering heads up, augmented reality software for years to industrial customers in manufacturing and transportation. With the success of our flagship product XRMentor™, joining the MRPP will provide access to services that support both sales and development that will add value to our customers.
One area DI expects to see a great benefit for customers, is improvement in how DI can support how customers manage of software and hardware. “Many of our customers are already using Azure services and are migrating to Entune mobile device management”, says Matt Johnston, Director of Commercial Solutions at DI, “so as we deploy XRMentor™ this program will help us better provision XRMentor™ on the HoloLens 2, and help customer IT departments learn how to manage this novel hardware”.
The Mixed Reality Partner Program (MRPP) is a Microsoft-sponsored, community-driven program for partners that design, build, deploy, and operate mixed reality solutions. MRPP partners have successfully helped customers in manufacturing, healthcare, retail, education, and many other industries to accelerate their digital transformation initiatives and improve business impact
“For many firms that develop mixed reality software, this technology and in particular the HoloLens is not new”, said Johnston, “but it is for our customers. Many in training and operations departments and in particular IT departments will be seeing the technology for the first time and be expected to manage it while meeting internal security and privacy requirements. So joining this program was more than improving our sales and marketing, but truly about learning and accessing services that can help our customers”.
DI’s XRMentor™ is an instructor led and self-guided training platform enhanced by augmented reality. It is available to licensed customers on the Microsoft marketplace, Apple’s app store and Google Play. The most popular feature happens to be ClassroomXR™, an instructor led training feature where a single instructor can live stream hands on training to remote trainees from the Microsoft HoloLens 2 to a website. But even though the server and all data is hosted in the Azure cloud and customers only need one Hololens 2 to get started, customer still need to get their IT department involved and a short train the trainer session to realize an early return on their investment.
“The return on investment is clear, especially with ClassroomXR™. For many customers the cost savings from live streaming hands on training compared to live and in person training reduces the payback period to 3 months”, according to Implementation Manager Michael Griffith. “But XRMentor™ is enterprise software, so getting IT involved early is very helpful. I expect the MRPP will help me develop a faster onboard program and provide better customer service to both IT departments and end users”.
Johnston also suggests that development support will be another area joining the MRPP will add value to customers. “We have world class engineers. Our engineers have been creating mixed reality applications for customers in manufacturing, transportation, healthcare and defense since the release of the first HoloLens. They really are fantastic, but this program will provide earlier access and better support for new technology and solutions that we can test and deliver to our customers”.
