Metaverse for metacasts, metaservices, and metaproducts
While the metaverse is still very much a nascent concept, it seems increasingly clear that telecom service providers and vendors ranging from device OEMs to cloud computing firms stand to generate significant revenues from delivering on what the concept becomes. Although many early conversations focus on immersive, virtual gaming environments–a consumer-facing service that’s comparatively easy to understand–there’s likely an enterprise play. As such telecoms equipment giant Ericsson has already started thinking about the metaverse for enterprise, the metaprise.
To set a baseline, what is the metaverse? Well, it depends on who you ask so maybe a better place to start is consideration of what technologies will make up or otherwise enable the metaverse. First, you’ll need connectivity, cellular, Wi-Fi, wired, or a combination. You’ll also need compute power for things like graphics rendering; depending on the desired latency profile that compute will reside both in centralized data centers and in distributed edge computing nodes. You’re also going to need a user interface and, in this case, all signs point toward Extended Reality glasses or headsets capable of delivering both augmented and virtual reality. From there, layer in software, applications and fully-bundled solutions, maybe digital currency to buy virtual assets (think crypto and NFTs) and you have an idea of what goes into the metaverse.
Shane McClelland, Ericsson vice president of strategy and business development and head of emergin RAN solutions, explored the metaprise concept in a recent blog post. In dissecting the concept, McClelland wondered, “How might I fit in…how I might apply some metaconcepts to my daily work. Questions came to me like: How might my avatar deliver a metacast? Would my customers be interested in buying a metaservice? How would they use a metaproduct? What value might this add to my customers’ business?”
He continued: “As I thought about these questions and started to ideate some ways to apply metatools in a business environment, the term ‘metaprise’ formed in my head. This created even more questions. What might a metaprise look like? What services and/or products might a metaprise use or offer to their metacustomers?”
Metaverse ‘metacases’ in the industrial metaverse
With a working idea of what the metaverse is, let’s think of an example that’s relatively grounded in reality. Product designers work with their manufacturing partners to optimize an item’s functionality for the buyer and optimize the way it’s made to realize manufacturing efficiencies. This is traditionally an iterative trial and error process that takes up time and money to arrive at the final product and process. What if all of that could be done virtually, side stepping the costly physicality while still achieving the same end goal? Think of this as an extension of a digital twin–a data-based model of something tangible that can be manipulated. Now add in that new user interface to connect the worker to the virtual thing and it’d be fair to construe this as a metaverse-enabled product design process.
McClelland rightly tied the metaverse to Industry 4.0. “Businesses in many different industries are leveraging AI/ML, analytics, big data, automation, and robotics to re-engineer processes—replacing labor-intensive manual work with more accurate and cost-effective systems. It’s also creating new business models based on consumption.”
In terms of specific metacases, he called out: “try before buy with digital twin avatars; customer engagement and employee training with gamification; new payment options with NFTs; [and] increased security and safety with advanced location-based services.”
Metaverse investment and monetization
McKinsey & Company, in a report titled “Value Creation in the Metaverse,” notes that corporations, venture capital and private equity firms invested $120 billion into the metaverse in the first half of 2022, passing the $120 billion invested in 2021. “Large technology companies are the biggest investors—and to a much greater extent than they were for artificial intelligence (AI) at a similar stage in its evolution, for example. Industries currently leading metaverse adoption also plan to dedicate a significant share of their digital investment budgets to it.”
What’s driving the investment? According to McKinsey & Company it’s infrastructure advancements, “demographic tailwinds,” consumer engagement, and “marketplace readiness as users explore today’s early version of the metaverse largely driven by gaming…with applications emerging that span socializing, fitness, commerce, virtual learning, and others.”
