Cisco recently announced they are closing down their Spark VR experiment. Whilst it was always an experiment it’s a shame to see a major vendor in the enterprise communications market exit for now, especially as AR/VR are predicted to be multi billion dollar industries over the next 5 years. It may well be enterprise VR delivers more than consumer VR over the next few years.
We already see VR entering the workplace. STRIVR are one of the first adopters moving their sporting examples into large organisations such as Walmart.
The barrier to entry in VR remains high. The Walmart example uses Oculus Rifts which require a laptop, many wires and likely a dedicated room. This is due to change in 2019 with the launch of Oculus Quest. The Quest provides a standalone VR headset which allows six degrees of freedom (essentially the ability to move around) whilst maintaining the performance of the Rift.
With Cisco moving out and Microsoft focusing primarily on their Mixed Reality Hololens it does leave Facebook in a strong position to attack this space.
- They have devices in Oculus Quest, Rift and Go
- They have Workplace by Facebook which is their business version of social networking
- Finally they also have years of working with Social VR – it may well be true social VR hasn’t grown as expected but the team have almost certainly learnt a great deal of lessons on what does and doesn’t work
If you combine all three elements then the Workplace team don’t just have a direct compete against the likes of Microsoft’s Yammer they have a higher value story.
Lets expand the Walmart example further:
- They can shift from the Rift device to a Quest which will allow Walmart to expand their training from dedicated academies to all Walmart stores
- The associates who train with the Quest can discuss their experiences with all other associates over Workplace
- Finally with Social VR they can meet and discuss in a virtual environment. This may not yet be available but there are companies such as High Fidelity already exploring this type of service
Consumer VR may will be ‘sleeping’ as the market works out the combination of device and services which make a compelling offer but VR in the enterprise could have a break out year in 2019.