The Metaverse: Why it’s going to be Enterprise first
Facebook, Microsoft, and the device paradigm
Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether you’re standing at the precipice of a life-changing surge or just a passing swell. Change happens in waves, the first wave rolls in with a gentle hum of excitement around novelty and potential. The second wave is more material, a shape begins to form in the depths. The third wave begins to sharpens the edges. And so on.
It’s often impossible to know if you’re in the middle of something that will change the world or go nowhere. And the Metaverse is no different. It’s easy to either get caught up in the hype or polarise in the opposite direction, working hard to ignore it in the name of contrarianism.
Both are perfectly respectable responses, albeit ones that leave you blinded to the reality of the unfolding opportunity. Love it or hate it, the Metaverse isn’t just a buzzword, but a representation of the evolution of something that is undeniable. Here’s 5 things about the Metaverse I know to be true:
- The Metaverse is real and here to stay. (Sorry.)
- It’s going to be Enterprise first.
- Microsoft is best placed to nail it.
- Facebook had to rebrand to stand a chance.
- Goggles are the new smartphones. (The device paradigm.)
Let’s take them in turn.
#1 The Metaverse is real and here to stay
The only thing I’ll say about the orgin of the word ‘Metaverse’, is that Snow Crash, the book that coins the term, is worth reading. Yes, it’s 500 pages. Yes, it gets weird and wacky and a bit gory. But damn, the author knows how to write and it’s worth it just to experience his writing style.
I call it technopoetry.
That aside, the Metaverse isn’t going anywhere. What we’re really talking about when we use that word, at a basic level, is the evolution of our online experience. When the web first emerged, with it’s hallmarks of dial-up connectivity and passive browsing, it offered a very basic experience. You would surf the web and see stuff, from time to time encounter a website with background audio or even a video, but for the most part you remained a passive observer. A user. A consumer. It was the read-only web.
The next iteration of the web, call it web 2.0, was more interactive. Websites could adapt to you as a user, enabled you to create content and connect with others, and delivered a more personalised experience based on your preferences and history. Here, you had a few more options. You could remain an observer, a user, a consumer. Or you could be a creator. Or curator. Or connector. Or, most likely, a mix of many things. It was the read/write web.
The Metaverse is the continuation of this trajectory into a further multi-dimentional experience. Where web 1 was consumption, and web 2 was engagement, with web 3 and the Metaverse you have presence. Now, there’s other layers to it which I won’t get into here, like ownership, decentralisation and ubiquity. But for our purposes, simply put, the Metaverse is the experiential component of Web 3 and marks the next phase in the evolution of how we interact with the internet.
So no, it’s not going anywhere.
#2 It’s going to be Enterprise first
When most people say Metaverse, the first thing that so often springs to mind is entertainment. Immersive gaming experiences. Watching live sport events from a centre court vantage point. Pick your own ending films or episodic content. Social experiences with friends and family at a simulated Thanksgiving table. Engaging with worlds that don’t exist.
Personally, I look forward to all of that.
But I expect the initial breakthroughs to come from very different kinds of solutions.
Why?
For a new technology to take off, a few things have to fall into place.
- Hardware: Purchase and adoption by a critical mass of users.
- Software: Developers building applications that make the hardware useful.
- Infrastructure: Sufficient quality and penetration of connectivity to facilitate those use cases.
Put more simply, you need to make a market. And building a market that’s consumer first is notoriously difficult. Consumers are price sensitive, have high expectations for functionality, demand service and return policies, and have needs so unique it can be impossible to build for all of them. It’s far simpler to drive adoption of a new technology via Enterprise.
First, CTOs and CIOs have budgets, and a single order can switch on 100s if not 1000s of devices, putting hardware into hands at a pace the consumer space struggles to match in early stages of a technology’s adoption. That means 100s or 1000s of individuals using a product, building awareness and understanding, and passing that information on to others. This begins the process of trickling technology down to more and more people. This is the spark.
Moreover, switching on devices at pace gets the software ecosystem going. With more users, you get more developers. With more developers you get more use cases developed. With more use cases you attract more customers. And so it goes.
Infrastructure and connectivity is far simpler to manage at an enterprise level as well, as corporate connectivity solutions can be phased in one premise at a time. Far less complex than rolling out universally available connectivity across cities, towns and villages.
Think about it.
Web 1 was the domain of the PC, the personal computer. Apple struggled for decades to drive adoption for the Mac. Why? Because it was a consumer device in a market that didin’t exist. Customers had never experienced a computer, couldn’t comprehend how one would impact their lives, and weren’t willing to spend £1000+ on a curious device. The concept was too distant and customers had bigger problems to think about, like getting a new fridge. It was IBM and Microsoft via their Enterprise business that fueled adoption of the personal computer. It wasn’t until the enterprise market trickled this understanding down to consumers, that the Mac started to get traction.
Web 2 was the domain of the mobile phone, and again, we saw a similar story play out with the Blackberry. The smartphone category was built with a view to get email into the pockets of professionals, dominated by the Blackberry for years. Once everyone understood the concept of the internet in their pocket, the Apple iPhone was able to build on that by bringing music, apps and a camera into the mix and redefining the space for a consumer audience.
The hardware of Web 3 is the headset, or VR goggle. We’re already seeing productivity applications emerge, not just for improving meetings but also virtual workstations that simplify multi-screen set ups, improve training and onboarding, and change how sales and marketing solutions are brought to market. Once again it will be CTOs and CIOs that drive the initial volume to fuel the flywheel of use cases, software and customers. Only once we get critical mass in the enterprise space to drive the economies of scale needed in hardware, will the consumer market start to take shape.
#3 Microsoft is best placed to nail it.
The biggest tech player in Enterprise is Microsoft, hands down.
Most of us are well accustomed to using Microsoft software, productivity tools, cloud storage, and Teams. Even before the pandemic, Microsoft was becoming less and less predicated on invidiual products and increasingly predicated on being the destination for productivity.
Whether we’re in the office or at home, we log into Microsoft to work.
To extend that foothold into a VR environment isn’t that much of a leap. Microsoft already has 145 million daily Teams users and a captive audience as the preferred supplier of hardware for enterprise customers globally.
Teams is already widely adopted. Sitting next to outlook and on every machine, it’s a single click gateway into the evolution of AR/VR. Microsoft already announced rolling out a holographic Teams expereince called Microsoft Mesh which allows users to join via smartphone, laptop or headset in a virtual setting. Intended to start rolling out in 2023, Mesh aims to make working together virtually more interactive and reduce meeting fatigue. The aim is to create virtual spaces for people to come together via Teams, be it to socialise, connect informally, network or use collaboration tools for projects. The experience is being built with a focus on replicating the real world, with visual and audio features mimicking what you would expect from a true real life interaction.
“We are able to interpret your vocal cues to animate that avatar, so it does feel present and it does feel like it’s there with you.” Katie Kelly, principal product manager for Microsoft Mesh
Microsoft has been investing in the space for years, including the purchase of ZeniMax for $7.5B and AltspaceVR back in 2017.
#4 Facebook had to rebrand to stand a chance.
Which brings us to Facebook, the company we love to hate. As the sole founder-led major tech company that remains, Facebook’s greatest asset is it’s vitality. The brand change to Meta is nothing short of baller move, but while common comparisons draw parallels to Google’s approach with Alphabet, there’s another dimension to consider.
If the Metaverse is here to stay, and it’s going to be Enterprise first, and Microsoft is positioned to win, Facebook’s greatest threat is its brand incompability with anything business and corproate. Scandal after scandal, privacy issue after privacy issue, the name Facebook is not one that breeds trust with CTOs and CIOs. Facebook’s brand evolution has more to do with creating a new brand identify to resonate with both consumers and enterprise, then with corporate structure as it did with Google.
#5 Goggles are the new smartphones (The Device Paradigm)
And finally, we get to the goggles. While it’s easy to look at VR Goggles and scoff that no one will ever use them because they make you look like an absolute moron, I’m going to urge you to reconsider. While today we think goggles are strictly for gamers and VR die hards, let me remind you it wasn’t so long ago we held similar assumptions about devices we now use on a daily basis. We used to think carrying a mobile phone around was strictly for stock traders and drug dealers, and that personal computers were the domain of developers with no practical use cases at home. These technologies, both universal with consumers today, were shunned and attacked. Let’s face it, as a human race we sometimes lack imagination.
There’s also the point of accompanying technologies. Today we have destination hardware, such as the PC and TV, and accompanying hardware, like the smartphone or smartwatch. In the Metaverse we’ll have similar types of hardware. Goggles are fully immersive and will provide brilliant experiences as a destination. That said, I expect a full complement of AR accompanying hardware that will allow us into the Metaverse on a ‘lite’ basis, filling in the space in our days much like social media does today.
In the Metaverse of the future, we’ll pull on a pair of goggles to dial into work in much the same way we currently power up a laptop or iPhone. No doubt there will be a time we’ll look back at the Goggle hating of 2010s as just another example of human scepticism in the face of technological revolution.
I’m Jo, I’ve spent 15 years working in entertainment, and write about tech and media. Follow me for more on Web 3, decentralised networks, and tech.
