Tuong H. Nguyen, senior principal analyst and a member of Gartner’s emerging technologies and trends team, has identified smart spaces and homomorphic encryption as technologies 3-6 years away and generative AI as only slightly further out at 6-8 years.
One emerging technology with a much further timeline but meriting attention is metaverse– a technology that is claimed to extend computing ability by an order of magnitude beyond what is available today and fundamentally changes how individuals and organizations interact with each other and the world.
Nguyen said the metaverse is a persistent and immersive digital environment of independent, yet interconnected networks that will use yet-to-be-determined protocols for communications.
“It enables persistent, decentralized, collaborative, interoperable digital content that intersects with the physical world’s real-time, spatially-oriented and indexed content,” he continued.
The metaverse is said to be the next evolutionary stage of the internet. However, it is still in the early stage of its development.
Jon Li, CEO and founder of Vizzio Technologies, sees the metaverse as the convergence of the digital and physical world and goes beyond the animated versions adopted by gaming and social media platforms.
“Metaverse or Digital Twin, allows enterprises to create virtual versions of an office, factory and processes, and brands to create experiences and engage with their target audience. With virtual replicas, engineers can test how a jet engine will run, architects can test a building’s structural stability and brands can launch digital collectables,” he added.
According to Will Duckworth, EY Asia-Pacific digital leader, believes that the metaverse offers a more immersive space for their customers, business partners and employees.
“Covid-19 has shown that our physical world must integrate with the digital world – digital video platforms will not be sustainable long term as they don’t offer a compelling experience. The platforms we use in our social life will once more become our preferred models for business engagement, further demonstrating the power of technology@speed in our modern world,” he continued.
Benefits of metaverse
Nguyen acknowledged that while the benefits and opportunities from the metaverse are not immediately viable, emergent metaverse solutions indicate potential use cases. Although metaverse experiences will not completely replace current digital interactions (via apps, websites and so on), they are likely to displace many of them while opening new types of interactions and business models to optimize these new use cases.
What’s metaverse to the CIO?
The Internet is already almost functioning as a ‘metaverse’, but real-life applications have been limited to social media (Meta/Facebook) and in some cases, Industry 4.0, according to Li.
He added that the industry standard to build a virtual twin or new ‘universe’ requires 3D artists to stitch together different data points.
“It’s up to the CIOs to imagine how this affects their business process and how they can adapt and navigate the growing virtual world. As the world moves towards wanting to experience the digital world in a 3D interactive environment, the metaverse will drive the next wave of online interaction,” said Li.
Duckworth cautioned that a CIO ignoring metaverse platforms today is equivalent to a CIO ignoring the internet in 1999.
“Increasingly the metaverse is where people will spend their personal time and, as with internet and mobile platforms before this, they will start to prefer this mode of interacting for their engagement with every business, whether as a customer or as an employee. It is important for CIOs to be putting humans@centre in their business and into C-suite level conversations and decisions,” he added.
Key considerations for CIO
“Any serious discussion on the metaverse will require thinking several aspects including security, identity, governance, data, design, integration, and platforms,” said Duckworth.
He cautioned that trust is paramount to building trust in any platform. “How do we make sure people feel safe in using metaverse?”
There is also uncertainty as to what future experiences humans will desire. This will mean a lot of experimentation will be needed around designing the experience, integrating new technology and integrating the physical world with the digital world.
“The tech world is often good at creating technologies which humans don’t see a sustainable need for so the winners will be those organisations that iterate towards beautiful, engaging experiences whilst being secure, safe and trusted,” he explained.
For Li, costs and man-hours are two crucial factors organizations need to be cognizant of when developing a metaverse. The current industry process relies heavily on manually stitching 3D data points and employing expensive tools such as drones.
“Organizations, therefore, need to pick the right partner that can help them in creating fast, accurate, and high-resolution 3D content. That way, they’ll be able to scale quickly and meet consumers’ increasing demand for real-time, interactive experiences.
“Achieving zero lags as well as securing these 3D data flows will be key challenges for CIOs to tackle. Hence, the ability to create 3D assets - quickly and accurately - as well as a robust yet secure IT infrastructure will be critical so that efficiency and productivity are not compromised,” he opined.
Metaverse trends for 2022
A self-proclaimed tech optimist, Gartner distinguished VP analyst, Mark Raskino, believes that one-day business will commonly be conducted in a fully immersive 3D visual metaverse. He also admits that he does not see this happening even in the 2030s.
“Filling the human field of view with a realistic immersive image space, in a way that our physiology, psychology, anthropology, and sociology can all be comfortable with, is an incredibly hard problem to solve,” he opined.
Duckworth acknowledged that there will be many overstated claims about early benefits before we see sustainable value.
I predict the hype around virtual reality to continue but ultimately this will drop away as we realise humans will not spend their entire day strapped to a headset – it’s a niche,” he added.
More optimistic, Li believes that simulations of digital twins with the help of 3D solutions will help the metaverse grow into an omniverse with multiple cross-chain possibilities.
“3D and Digital Twin technologies will be democratized where anyone and everyone will be able to access tools to co-create, virtualize and interact with digital realities on demand, he concluded.
