CrossComm, Inc.

Background and Achievements

Since its founding in 1998, CrossComm has had a prescient track record of investing in the right emerging innovations at the right time – and delivering the benefits of those technologies to its partners and clients. CrossComm has been developing commercial web apps since Netscape 1. We were one of a handful of app developers who were on the iTunes App Store since Day 1, and we were early adopters of Android, as well.

In 2015, we started CrossComm Labs, an internal initiative to invest in and explore practical applications of Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence. Since then, CrossComm has deployed several mobile AR app solutions and is currently developing app solutions for HoloLens and other headworn AR/MR devices.

Our business-minded approach to using innovative technologies has led to award-winning results: the CrossComm-developed “Under 30” mobile app received the “Best Media App” award from the Web Marketing Association. In addition, CrossComm was nationally recognized in 2015 as the Minority Technology Firm of the Year by the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA).

CrossComm is headquartered in Durham, North Carolina, with a satellite office in Austin, Texas.

Challenges to Be Addressed

While there is a growing awareness around the benefits of using Augmented Reality in the enterprise, actual deployment of AR can be rife with pitfalls due to the rapidly changing and fragmented landscape of hardware and middleware solutions. Companies must seek every advantage yielded from innovations like AR to stay competitive, while mitigating the risks of adopting too early or investing in a dead-end platform.

With a storied legacy in web and mobile development – along with expertise in developing for the next generation of AR headsets and smart glasses –CrossComm is uniquely positioned to assist companies with an Augmented Reality roadmap that is rooted in both the practical present and the aspirational future. So we are looking for companies seeking cost-affordable ways to deploy Augmented Reality today to improve productivity, training, and marketing while maintaining scalability across the landscape of ever-changing hardware from phones and tablets to upcoming headsets and smart glasses.

Why is AR Important

Our society’s interaction with computing devices is primarily through 2D screens, yet we live and work in a 3D world, interacting with spatial and volumetric information on a daily basis. AR holds the promise of computing the same way we already process the world around us – in a context-aware, spatial manner that is intuitive and consistent with how we’ve already learned to interact with our surroundings.  And unlike Virtual Reality, AR aims to enhance our understanding of the world around us without removing us from it or disrupting our agency within it. Every activity we engage in has the potential to be contextually enhanced, which is why we view Augmented Reality not so much as a feature but as a new paradigm – the next revolution in how humanity can reap the benefits of computing to live richer, more productive lives.