By Michael Carroll
Vendors hit the throttle on immersive experiences
Services developed by Cisco to enable remote collaboration by members of Formula One team McLaren Racing could pave the way for advances in healthcare and retail operations, the vendor’s EVP and GM of Security and Collaboration, Jeetu Patel, explained.
The company provided holographic design technology which enables McLaren team members to work together on car design and production, or to make changes to existing vehicles during race weekends.
Patel explained the service developed for the racing team involves AR headsets and is one of many immersive experiences Cisco is already piloting with its customers.
The executive predicts substantial opportunities for immersive experiences focused on real-world business cases for commercial, business and industrial sectors. He noted these use cases will rely on delivering “an experience that’s more real” than simply enabling people to meet in the metaverse, explaining “AR and hologram technologies provide an opportunity to project [a] hyper-real, 3D representation that transcends geographic barriers”.
Patel adds current interest in VR gaming is not unfounded, but could mask the potential for immersive experiences in other fields. There “will also be meaningful use cases for mixed reality (VR and AR) that will drive a tonne of practical value in business”.
Perhaps the greater concern surrounds the underlying infrastructure needed to deliver new immersive experiences. Patel noted the success of any new technology depends on it being “deployable in the environment you have today”.
With immersive experiences likely translating to “massive growth in video traffic”, Patel expects more of it to be pushed closer to the edge to fuel further reductions in latency. He also predicts developments around FTTH, SDWAN, and improved quality-of-service and packet handling “for real-time traffic to reduce the errors and losses of important packets”.
Ultimately it will be the immersive use cases which drive adoption, Patel said, adding the entire industry has a role to play in developing these. Mobile operators, hardware and equipment makers “will build the devices the immersive experiences will work on”, with software providers providing the link between it all.