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ENTERPRISES BETTER STRAP IN FOR
A journey to the metaverse BY GIACOMO LEE
Note from the editor I am delighted to introduce our new deputy editor, Giacomo Lee. Giacomo is an exceptionally talented writer – as you will see from the passage opposite– and joins ERP Today having worked for the BBC, IDG and Verdict. Giacomo will play a key role in shaping the editorial strategy at ERP Today and will be writing on his favourite topics including artificial intelligence, emerging technologies and enterprise enablement.
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hen social media giant Facebook changed the name of its holding company to Meta in late 2021, both the internet and enterprise world were abuzz with confusion over what it all meant. After all, here was CEO Mark Zuckerberg talking about something called the ‘metaverse’, both to us and a digital image of himself in a rather pretentious promo video. More positive commentators proclaimed it as a brand new concept in tech. But the simple truth is, the metaverse is old news: Facebook didn’t invent it, nor is it the only player in the game. Microsoft for example has its Mesh platform, a nextlevel take on Zoom where team meetings take place in virtual reality (VR). Epic Games meanwhile has been hosting real-time virtual concerts on its platform since 2019, attended by users’ avatars as they take a little downtime from gameplay. Both examples are worlds apart. So what exactly is the metaverse? And is it something enterprises should be paying attention to?
Meta-what? The basic, idealised version of the metaverse is a 3D network of virtual worlds which can be accessed using tools in virtual or augmented reality (AR). Those worlds can be offered by different companies on a single platform which users traverse using a device like a VR headset. While this suggests the metaverse is a singular, all-encompassing entity like the internet, instead it’s more likely that different metaverses will transpire once there is widespread adoption of VR and AR technologies. “We don’t believe that there will be one metaverse leading the way, but rather that there will be many metaverses,” a spokesperson for Microsoft tells ERP Today. “Here, identities and content will flow
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| Q1 2022
05/02/2022 01:49
