Lawo launched its 50th anniversary celebrations in January with a Michelin-star studded party for its 300-plus employees in the company’s hometown in Rastatt, close to the Rhine River and the Black Forest region of Germany. The milestone anniversary follows the company’s most successful business year to date, achieving a record revenue result that represented growth of 40 per cent. This exceptional performance was generated by an extraordinary uptake of Lawo’s IP media solutions based around core products of video, audio, workflow and monitoring technologies.
Founded by Peter Lawo in 1970, Lawo started out as an engineering office providing bespoke technical solutions before focusing on broadcast and media production technology. The creative drive of its founder and his son Philipp, who took over as CEO in 1999, ensured continual innovation helped evolve and grow the company into a truly global player.
The company’s early vision of IP becoming a single, unified infrastructure for all types of signal transport in broadcast and media production triggered a clear corporate strategy that has resulted in the IP native focus of the company today. This included the development and definition of RAVENNA as an open media-over-IP standard over ten years ago. Lawo’s belief in open industry standards and its active contribution of experience and knowledge to industry organizations have also helped pave the way for AES67, Ember+ and ST2110.
Constantly seeking to provide competitive advantages for customers through solutions no one else has imagined, Lawo pioneered the remote production concept when open-standard IP had barely learned to walk and when ST2110 was not yet on the horizon.
Today, Lawo enjoys the reputation of a premier supplier of future-proof media infrastructure solutions that enable world class content production. Lawo is today involved in more projects than ever before, the scale and scope of each of these projects is skyrocketing, as customers recognize the potential of open-standard IP solutions and seek to leverage the freedom it affords to completely rethink their workflows.
“Lawo has witnessed exceptional growth based on our growing expertise and product portfolio” says Jamie Dunn, Chief Commercial Officer. “We are very proud of the evolution of the company over the past 50 years and understand the importance that our talented staff, loyal customers and innovative mindset will play in securing another successful 50.”
Lawo’s current IP line-up covers the media production chain from acquisition to playout. It ranges from high-quality audio- and video-to-IP conversion edge devices, the V__matrix software-defined IP-routing, processing and multi-viewing platform, the VSM IP control and workflow design solution and the SMART monitoring and real-time telemetry tools to the mc²-series audio production consoles, as well as its IP-based counterparts for radio on-air production. All carry the message that Lawo’s future has only just begun…
Lawo will continue to mark its 50th anniversary with a number of high-profile events and online presentations throughout 2020.
