This Year in the Industrial Metaverse

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In an article in The Metaverse Insider, Kevin O’Donovan, Technology Evangelist and founder of A Bit of This & That. recapped the past year for the metaverse. 

He points out, like we’ve been saying, that the metaverse as people picture it doesn’t exist today. Companies putting out big promises about the metaverse forget to share that those final destinations are years, maybe decades, out. 

Consumers are “meh” on the metaverse, having heard the hype but not seen much come to fruition. 

But the industrial metaverse is having its cake and eating it too—virtual cake, I assume, because I didn’t get a slice. O’Donovan said, “The short-term Industrial Metaverse expectations I had 18 months ago have easily been exceeded.”

Digital twins, which are a precursor to the metaverse, are already making waves in industrial enterprises. Manufacturers are designing, prototyping, and even building new products using virtual technology. As digital twins get more advanced and continue to integrate 5G, IoT, VR/AR, AI, edge computing, and other emerging technologies, we continue to sneak closer to the metaverse. 

In the article, O’Donovan points out the big players speaking on the imperative of the industrial metaverse. We agree and have said that digital twins are no longer optional—technology is moving forward and enterprises need to keep up to stay in business. 

Thankfully, bringing digital twins and other immersive technologies into an industrial environment is getting easier and more cost effective by the day. Vendors are providing cloud-based solutions, and many of the big industrial tech providers (NVIDIA, Microsoft, Unity, etc.) are innovating and expanding access.

The integration of all these emerging technologies requires skills that don’t exist in enough of the workforce yet. Enterprises are working hard to find, upskill, and keep technical employees with skills in 3D graphics, AI, IoT, VR/AR, digital twins, big data, and more. 

O’Donovan thinks it was a big year for the industrial metaverse, and we agree. And we think there’s plenty more to come.

Read the entire article on The Metaverse Insider and connect with Kevin on LinkedIn.