[Transform Tour 2022] Metaverse: Entertainment vs Enterprise Recap

By Katie Bartenslager

We kicked off Transform Tour 2022 with the hot new topic in collaboration – the metaverse. On March 16th, our Aragon analysts and our special guest panel held our first big event of the year, [Transform Tour 2022] ‘The Metaverse: Entertainment vs Enterprise’ (sponsored by Avaya). This blog will give you a brief recap of the event. 

If you would like to watch the full event you can do so here.

Analyst Session #1 

Topic: The Metaverse Is Coming—Is It Right for Your Enterprise?

Presented by Aragon analysts: 

• Jim Lundy, CEO and Lead Analyst
• Betsy Burton, VP of Research and Aragon Fellow

Key Takeaways:

• We are seeing Meta and Microsoft positioning themselves using metaverse for collaboration
• We are seeing open control vs closed control (meaning open you could be interacting with anyone or closed you know who you are interacting with) 
• We are now seeing a difference between a consumer target market and a commercial target for the marketplace
• Where enterprises and corporate use collaboration is in a closed control and commercial target market metaverse
• Our analysts don’t think metaverses will be used for collaboration; it is still in its very early stages
• There are 5 different types of metaverses: public, private, community, enterprise, and hybrid
• In 2026, our analysts predict that a hybrid metaverse will be used for consumers in a social setting
• In 2026, you will see public metaverses used for gaming
• Metaverses will still be in the consumer part of the market
• We do not see metaverses taking the place of a collaborative workplace, but it could be used for building and planning

Panelist Discussion

Topic: The Future of Collaboration — Innovation, Intelligence, and Imagination

Our Panelists: 

• Jen Grogono, CEO at uStudio
• Susy Liem, VP Product Management at Avaya
• Savinay Berry, Product and Growth Leader at Vonage

Key Takeaways:

 How did collaboration change during the pandemic? How did your firm evolve using Collaboration?

• “Before the pandemic, we didn’t have any way to do scalable telehealth services. Over the last 2 years the demand for telehealth and being able to communicate with your doctor just skyrocketed. So that allowed us to show our value in our API solutions. Same with event platforms and with education. The 4 or 5 industries have taken off and therefore we have seen a massive change in the adoption of video and engagement.”- Savinay Berry, Product and Growth Leader at Vonage

 

• “Because of the lockdown, a lot of our customers had to adapt to work from home within one day. The biggest part that we were successful in doing, was helping all of our customers to move all of their workers especially agents and contact center agents to work from home. It is a testimony of how good the technology is, but also that is the reality because many of these workers may not come back to work in the office. Or if they do, they might come in one or two days so we need to have the ability to work from distributed locations.” – Susy Liem, VP Product Management at Avaya

 

• “It was an interesting time for us because we launched our new application for podcasting in the middle of 2019 and we found an enormous interest in that application during the pandemic. I think what we saw was that a lot of companies started with appointment-based meetings, however, we are now seeing a lot more place-shifting and time-shifting media consumption. So people don’t want to have to show up at a certain place or at a certain time to get important information, but we are now seeing more of work and life working together. Consumer habits will always find their way to the enterprise. Companies needed to take advantage of consumers at home time. They had more time to fill. ”- Jen Grogono, CEO at uStudio

When we look at immersive collaboration, including Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, what is your take on the rise of the Metaverse for enterprises?

• “Immersive engagement is something we believe in. The change of how people talk to each other is going to be very profound but it’s going to happen in a way that we think will be a surprise in how quickly the transition happens because there is a very key set of use cases that benefits from. Why are we still doing a 2D collaboration in 2022? It doesn’t make sense to me. Here we are sitting on a browser window and Jim I can’t tell how tall you are, I don’t know how you walk, what your body language is like. I’d love to be in a room where we know exactly what that feels like. Is there a way we can do that to get to know each other better instead of these schedule structured one-on-one video calls that are so two-dimensional? Or with event platforms where we are having a conversation and hundreds of people are watching where we are literally on stage, both you and I, having the conversation while others are raising their hands or talking in breakout rooms like a conference. This is not science fiction, these are true use cases and there are use cases that could absolutely benefit from this kind of concept.”- Savinay Berry, Product and Growth Leader at Vonage

 

• “The rate of adoption is very different for each enterprise. There are some that are wanting to try it and some that will not want to try until everyone else tried already. But, not exactly metaverse necessarily, but a 3D desktop when you just use gestures, I really think something like that could be easily adopted. Or even in customer service. Instead of calling in you could walk through customer service in 3D where it looks like I’m entering a store. There are a lot of ways we can enhance the experience. There will be some adoption for very specific use cases that we can measure. ” -Susy Liem, VP Product Management at Avaya

 

• “The hype always leads the way for experiments. I think we will continue to see companies experiment where they will try things and the early adopters don’t always end up the leaders in the space. But I think, both on the tech side, whether it’s Microsoft or new upstarts, as well as the business side we will see a lot of experimentation. I think where you might see use cases start to settle out into business when consumer behavior starts to become entrenched. I think around training and gaming for companies with hourly workers. It could spark new interest in a job they couldn’t get before and increase productivity. The training part is something to watch for sure.”- Jen Grogono, CEO at uStudio

Where do you see the future of collaboration going?

 

• “I do believe that collaboration is headed towards being more immersive because at the end of the day, collaboration and communications is probably one of the oldest things that we as human beings have learned. That’s one of the first things we ever did. So we are going to keep evolving with a goal to be able to connect with each other in a more meaningful way. I think the concept of collaboration whether it’s doing the work on a daily basis, employee onboarding, employee learning, event platforms, or commerce will have to be a lot more immersive and for that to happen the tulling under the surface becomes much simpler than is when we’ll see it be more scalable. ”- Savinay Berry, Product and Growth Leader at Vonage

 

• “We think it will be a lot more on AI. When we do collaboration, it would be really nice if we could see tasks such as profiles of people, or taking notes, or summarizing a meeting become easier as we use assistance collaboration. That is also an area that I really believe is going to go really big. In the same set up as the contact center. A lot of workers have moved home–they lost the sense of groups so that is a way for us to bring people together and still feel like a group. A lot of this could do with a desktop experience but also a lot from the AI can do to support them. So I believe a lot of customer engagement, communication, and collaboration will be AI-assisted one way or another ” -Susy Liem, VP Product Management at Avaya

 

• “I agree that collaboration is going to move and there is going to be innovation in an area we haven’t seen innovation in for decades. The last big coms invention was probably email. We still call our internal communications the ‘intranet’ which doesn’t sound all that modern. I think listen and watch channels, video and audio, are creating an environment of pervasive streaming. I think what’s particularly interesting about that is, the pervasive data that comes from that. With a stream, I know exactly how far you got into a message, how many times you streamed it, which is a lot of data to analyze and understand for the first time ever. I think these private media networks and immersive media networks, will be putting off so much more data than the enterprise has ever seen. So I think we are going to enter into a feedback loop that we have never had before which should make the enterprise create better and the right content to keep employees engaged and happy.”- Jen Grogono, CEO at uStudio

Analyst Session #2

Topic: The Future of Collaboration: Immersive Experiences and Intelligence Is Just the Beginning

Presented by Aragon analyst:

• Jim Lundy, CEO and Lead Analyst
• Ken Dulaney, VP of Research and Aragon Fellow

Key Takeaways:

• Collaboration intelligence is here
• Video meetings will be preferred vs the metaverse, but after 2025 that could change 
• Team collaboration is going to overtake email 
• Work hubs is one of the newest areas that can enable real productivity

What’s Next?

There are a couple of next steps that we encourage you to take:

1. Our next event, a charity golf tournament, will be held in person on April 21st at Cinnabar Hills golf club. You can learn more here.
2. Stay tuned for our next Transform Tour stop in September. Once the details are confirmed, you will be able to view them  here.
3. Schedule a complimentary analyst inquiry to have a more in depth, one on one conversation with our analysts about your most pertinent technology, business, and strategy questions.