The virtual reality wave is here. Are you ready for the next digital workplace?

[Rob_Homburg]

Enterprise VR is on the rise, and its impact will rival the early days of mobility. HPE Pointnext Services can help you tap into its power for your business.

Virtual reality is a champion in the consumer space for gaming and entertainment and has been for many years. But it’s no longer limited to that space. The enterprise use cases for virtual reality (VR) seem to be potentially limitless – and they are, ranging from collaboration and training exercises to improving employee engagement. And these use cases seem to have taken on added significance, given the global pandemic and newly introduced work-from-home policies which have put a temporary pause on most face-to-face meetings.

Nowadays, companies are discovering the benefits of VR for collaboration, creativity, productivity, and even customer service at an increasing pace. Over the last couple of years, enterprise VR environments in businesses have grown at a fantastic rate, but the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021 have become a true tipping point as we witness increased spending on VR solutions from all companies in all industries. According to IDC, forecasted spending growth on enterprise VR until 2024 is well above 100% CAGR in banking, securities and investment services and federal/central government.¹

Facebook, or Meta as they are called today, the company behind the Oculus Quest devices, believes that smart glasses will eventually replace the smartphone and that virtual reality technology will one day become a central part of the way we live and work. They claimed the word “Metaverse” for it, which is something that was also referenced by Microsoft in their last year’s Ignite keynote. So already, we’re beginning to see evidence that these assumptions around the role that VR will play in the future could become true.  

When the pandemic hit, more companies began to embrace VR and AR as a way of keeping teams connected and maintaining productivity. But even before the pandemic, according to a study performed by VR Intelligence, around 93% of companies that implemented VR said that the technology made a positive or a very positive business impact.² At the same time, there seems to be a global effort by many manufacturers in the VR market to make headsets more affordable, accessible, and easier to provision for the modern hybrid team.

The question for today’s companies is: Are you prepared for VR? Making the most of enterprise VR requires a careful strategy. Companies can’t simply rush into this technology in the same way they embraced and deployed digital workplace solutions such as video conferencing during the pandemic.

That said, VR can be a powerful opportunity for businesses, similar to other disruptive technologies like AI and IoT.

Why VR is better than video conferencing

For a long time, VR technology used to lag behind video conferencing, but with the latest advances in the hardware and software technology, it can now do what it needs to do, and that is to create a seamless, immersive experience that allows you to forget where you are in real life. Instead of seeing moving faces or just a profile picture on a flat 2-dimensional screen, the user can share a limitless virtual space with his or her colleagues. They can move beyond the screen’s limitations to deliver dynamic presentations to a filled auditorium, host Q&A sessions, work through a project on a whiteboard, highlighting and discussing points by drawing and posting directly onto it. They can virtually come together in a shared 3-dimensional space, and that’s how the magic happens. With a VR headset on, the user experiences the physical and natural group dynamics that video calls simply can’t recreate. It’s reality made virtual: the second best thing. 

Today, through the advances in software developments, the VR user is able to select the most suitable virtual environment for the task at hand. And all that from the comfort of his or her own home or at the company’s campus, making work from anywhere a reality.

Another area where video conferencing solutions seem to be less optimal when compared to a VR solution is the subject of achieving complete focus. How many times have you seen a notification at the bottom of your screen which immediately distracted you from your video call? By nature, VR helps you avoid distractions upon putting on a headset, capturing your attention in a far more effective way than a voice or video call ever could.

Achieving complete focus is just one of the many reasons why participants in a study (by the Masie Center in 2017) showed retention rates of 75 percent when learning in VR – much higher than those shown in the National Training Laboratories learning pyramid for lecture-style learning (5 per cent) and reading (10 per cent).³

Another limiting aspect of video calls is that only one person can speak without things becoming a noisy mess. And on top of this limitation, it is also difficult to know who is talking to who, as the video conferencing applications will not let you know where anyone is looking. However, in VR you can have a group discussion, while all seated around a table, but at the same time you can also turn to face someone nearby. Due to the support of spatial audio in VR, you could even have a real one-to-one conversation away from the group. These virtual experiences, if implemented in a proper way, can assist in achieving more natural communication between participants and create human-like interactions similar to the ones you miss from working in-person in the office.

In VR, by definition, you do not show up as yourself, but you are represented by your avatar. However, your avatar mimics your body language; it can reflect your personality by customization of looks and accessories, and it allows you to express yourself as you would in real life.

Software developers in the VR market are turning to AI to make avatars’ behavior even more human-like by enhancing the in-app facial expressions in eyes, eyebrows and mouth gestures. In their upcoming releases of VR headsets, manufacturers seem to indicate that additional sensors will be placed in-headset that enable even more advanced capturing of facial movements.

Unlock the power of Enterprise VR with HPE Pointnext Services

In order to assist and guide our customers on the VR journey they might want to undertake, HPE Pointnext Services has created a use-case-driven approach to realizing customers’ VR experiences. These experiences could be horizontal use cases (e.g., VR used for individual productivity or team collaboration) applicable to a wide range of staff in an organisation. Or they could be vertical ones (e.g. data-driven VR newsroom, advisory customer workshops or cybersecurity training) applicable to a narrow set of employees based on their job role or function.

Deployment projects for both horizontal and vertical use case projects share the same common services framework for assessment, design, enrolment, change management and support. The vertical approach additionally caters for a customized development phase with activities that form an integral part of the project execution. With this approach it is feasible to have a consistent and risk-mitigated approach to delivering the limitless diversity of use cases to our customer base. 

We are at the start of an exciting journey with enterprise VR, comparable to the early days of mobile phone technology. We truly believe that VR will change the way we live, work and breathe in the future. Understanding its potential starts today. So come and find out how technoloy services consulting from HPE Pointnext  Services can provide guidance to you on this digital transformation by redefining the virtual reality user experience at the Edge while providing business value at the same time.

1. See this IDC press release

2. Reported here by the Augmented Reality for Enterprise Alliance

3. Reported here by VRmaster.co

Rob Homburg
Hewlett Packard Enterprise

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