The physical and virtual worlds are already smoothly and ubiquitously interwoven. The metaverse will deepen this overlap and in very experiential ways that will create abundant space for business innovation. The metaverse is an unstoppable phenomenon that will take the digital user experience to new highs. There is already is a sprawling metaverse ecosystem comprising hundreds of companies, from Fortnite and Roblox to Microsoft and Meta (the renamed Facebook).
For companies, the metaverse presents attractive opportunities. For example, a leading pharmaceutical company used the Infosys XR platform to create a digital twin of their vaccine lab, enabling quality engineers to access critical vaccine culture data to help make predictions and decisions. Similarly, an engineering consulting company took advantage of Infosys’ metaverse to prototype an immersive mixed reality workbench that inspects prospective engineering construction sites rendered as rich 3D assets. The capability was evolved and scaled for global use on Azure’s high-performance cloud, with ready support from Microsoft, a long-standing Infosys partner.
But security and privacy concerns take on heightened importance in the metaverse. Currently, there is little to no regulation in this space. Governing bodies will be looking to put in stringent controls as the metaverse becomes more mainstream. For instance, one of the metaverse’s central features the use of avatars creates opportunities for fraud. It is common knowledge that for the concept of identity is crucial in the metaverse. People can retain a particular avatar and individuality and traverse across geographies or worlds.
