In the Winter 2022/23 issue of the Microsoft Technology Record, Rebecca Gibson interviewed Aveva’s global head of research, Simon Bennet. For Microsoft, the industrial metaverse (IMV) has the potential to ‘solve design, operational, supply chain management and other real-world challenges’. Bennet was more circumspect, ‘The much-hyped IMV represents older-than-a-decade technology that is being presented in new hardware’. The IMV is all about the digital twin, the data, ‘AI-infused and first principles enhanced’, and the experience (desktops, mobile devices and wearables). The IMV is a ‘natural layer that organizations can deploy on top of their existing digital infrastructure’.
But will the IMV be a ‘single behemoth’ or is it likely to be fragmented? Bennet sidestepped the issue saying that ‘over time, the metaverse will feel and be perceived as one entity in the same way we regard the internet as one thing’. Private enterprises will continue to protect their intellectual property and sources of commercial advantage inside their own IMV. Access to each metaverse will be controlled with role-based privileges and security protection in the same way that businesses protect their financial systems. Will it all be VR and headsets? The IMV will extend beyond AR/VR headsets and on to phones, tablets and desktops. But is Aveva making a play to own and run the industrial metaverse? Again, Bennet sidesteps, ‘Our focus is to spark industrial innovation by connecting people with trusted information to support responsible use of the world’s resources’.
For more read our report from the 2022 AVEVA World event elsewhere in this issue.
Petteri Vainikka, blogging on the Cognite website thinks that the last thing industry needs is another buzzword! In his sights is, you guessed, the Industrial Metaverse, a buzzword that has ‘died before taking off’. ‘The last thing needed is one more nonsense buzzword to fill conference stages and drive keyword bidding in vendor search engine marketing programs’. Cognite is ‘delighted to see the IMV fade out before taking off, reducing the noise level, and allowing us to collectively focus on making digital twins work’. Other buzzwords that are going the same way include the ‘data lake’ and ‘data warehouse’. Despite billions invested in cloud data warehouses and data lakes, ‘most data ends there, unused by anyone for anything’. ‘Dumb inaccessible data storage in the cloud is of no more business value than its predecessor: dumb inaccessible data storage on premise’.
Notwithstanding such questioning, the Linux Foundation
has just announced the ‘Open Metaverse Foundation’, a ‘global,
vendor-neutral, and scalable metaverse built on open source software
and specifications’. LF’s OMF is backed by what are described as
‘thought-leading’ organizations and communities. However, many of these
appear to emanate from the blockchain/crypto universe. LF cites the
work of the Open 3D Engine as an exemplar of the future OMF. More from the OMF.
More on the evolving metaverses in Neil McNaughton’s 2022 editorial.
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