The Metaverse promise delivered on Hybrid cloud
Metaverse was a term first introduced by author Neal Stephenson in his science fiction novel Snow Crash. This novel introduced the concept of virtual real estate and users connecting to a metaverse as digital avatars to buy and build on the virtual real estates. This novel was published in 1992.
Fast forward to 2021 and one of the social networking giants renames itself to Meta, as a harbinger to the technology revolution that is to be expected from erstwhile Facebook in the form of the metaverse platform the company is building.
Metaverse is taking shape and there are many technology and non-technology companies who are interested in the promise of metaverse.
Metaverse is touted to be the next internet or the so called internet 3.0. It is considered to be a 3D interoperable layer of the internet, which is connected and can provide immersive environments for its customers and users.
What does the analysts say?
Analysts like Forrester and Gartner consider Metaverse as a future possibility and suspect that a true metaverse platform will take years before it can be functional and can make business sense.
Gartner defines metaverse as a collective virtual shared space, created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical and digital reality.
Forrester conducted an online market research on what consumers today describe metaverse as, and the following word cloud was the result that summarized the voices from the Marketing Research Online Community (MROC).
Though Gartner does not believe that metaverse platforms will mature before 2030, yet its research has revealed the following outlook on metaverse adoption.
Gartner Predicts 25% of People Will Spend At Least One Hour Per Day in the Metaverse by 2026
Metaverse is considered as the fastest growing technology today and according to a 2021 Bloomberg Intelligence analysis, the metaverse could unlock a nearly $800 billion market opportunity.
What exactly does metaverse enable and who would be interested?
Some of the possibilities that can be enabled by metaverse and that can churn out business outcomes include (but not limited to) the following.
- Games and gamification
- Shopping
- Marketing events
- Training and education
- Advertising
- Media — visual and live events
- Sports
- Social networking
- Virtual workplaces
- Buying and selling real estate or merchandise
- Personalizing experiences
- Travel
- Food and hospitality
- Engineering
- Fitness
The following picture showing the competitive landscape of metaverse gives us a peek into the companies who are already working on some of the metaverse platforms and solutions.
Today with the disruptions in technology every business is aiming to be a technology company of it own providing niche technology solutions that solve problems for its own business and for similar businesses. Cloud, AI/ML, Analytics and data are enabling this transition. Among many other things, the following play a key role in delivering the promise of metaverse.
Cloud, AI, analytics, Blockchain, NFTs (Non Fungible Token) and Cybernetics. Cybernetics simply put is the science of combining human sensory and motor systems with computers, few examples of cybernetics are haptics, AR/VR, smartglasses, and brain-computer interfaces.
As we speak, SAP the technology provider has said that it is leveraging metaverse to increase its cloud adoption by providing its customers a virtual experience of its cloud.
“Metaverse is a representation of the current experience economy that provides an experiential platform like never-before. By leveraging it, we hope to revolutionize various elements of our customer experience and build a network of sustainable cloud companies within a truly digital universe.” — SAP Indian Subcontinent president & managing director (MD) Kulmeet Bawa
What does metaverse mean to Hybrid cloud?
The evolution of metaverse holds a lot of promise for cloud computing and its adoption across the many companies that are heavily invested in building metaverse platforms or using metaverse to further their business objectives.
The unarguable requirements for metaverse platforms would be low latency, high bandwidth, data privacy and specialized infrastructure. Companies working on metaverse solutions are going to adopt hybrid and edge cloud computing architectures as opposed to a public, hyperscale, commodity cloud computing environments. Data security is going to play a critical role in metaverse, paving the way for hosting metaverse on hybrid cloud.
Hybrid cloud can provide better performance and availability by hosting resources closer to end users. Data security in hybrid cloud architectures can be improved by allowing data to stay on private servers instead of exposing it to the public cloud. With demands on performing analytics on data closer to its source to avoid latency and ensure security, edge computing will also be key to hosting some of the metaverse components.
The following prediction by a market research shows a projected market size of $171 billion by 2025 for hybrid cloud.
The global hybrid cloud market size was valued at $36,138 million in 2017, and is projected to reach $171,926 million by 2025, growing at a CAGR of 21.7% from 2018 to 2025. — Alllied Market Research.
This projection however does not seem to have accounted for the impact of metaverse on the hybrid cloud market and its potential influence.
The global Metaverse Market size is expected to grow from USD 61.8 billion in 2022 and to reach USD 426.9 billion by 2027, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 47.2% during the forecast period. — Markets and markets.
If the metaverse market size for 2027 from the above projection is to be believed, which stands at around $400 billion then we can safely assume that the hybrid cloud market can see a substantial increase in its market size by 2025 as metaverse will feed into the hybrid cloud market as some of the metaverse components will require to be hosted on hybrid cloud.
Conclusion
As we look to the future with hope, bias, conflicts, judgements, and fear, it is befitting to sum up what it holds for us in the words of Eric Schmidt.
“Identity will be the most valuable commodity for citizens in the future, and it will exist primarily online.”
Discover the metaverse value chain and know more on how metaverse of the future can surround us, influence us and control the technology and business landscapes.
