Dante is supposed to be able to get to sub ms latencies. What did your friend actually get?
I thought that the only card available at this time IS the Focusrite one, though it might be a re-badged Audinate one.
I suggested to Audinate that they make a companion Dante client software that wraps the ASIO drivers for existing cards. The CTO said they were passing that on to their development team as they wanted to get Dante out there.
Up until now, the only ones taking AoIP (Dante and Ravenna) on are Focusrite and some others, and a bunch of digital desk manufacturers. Even so, those audio card manufacturers are only looking at large I/O sets per module, which makes for a very expensive entry cost.
A software wrapper for existing ASIO cards would allow the rest of us to use our current cards initially, but just add more I/O as our needs increase. I could imagine adding little i3 BRIX modules with USB audio interfaces as and where we need them.