Does virtual reality software deserve serious consideration as a business technology ? Founding editor of our sister publication, Software Futures, Katy Ring, now a consultant with Ovum, reports on the current state of play in the VR marketplace.
Virtual reality is a technology area that suffers from an image problem: It is not taken seriously as an interface technique for business software. This is largely because it is perceived as an interface technology for entertainment applications that requires a bizarre dress sense. Will the business professional seriously want to don a full-face helmet before entering the realm of work? There may be the odd occasion, but generally, no.
However, the time is nigh when those developing business software need to reconsider the prejudices surrounding virtual reality and ponder its potential for pulling the end user through the computer screen to see and explore new products, plans or concepts that either do not yet exist in reality or never will exist in tangible form (eg: information held in databases). If the VR business market was a season of the year, it could best be described as early spring. Although there are very promising signs of growth, the VR business market is not quite ready to bloom into the corporate mainstream. However, there are signs that VR is leaving the research labs and becoming much more widespread in use. For VR is no longer just about rocket scientists hooked to supercomputers via space helmets to design go-faster stripes, nor is it simply of appeal to teenagers hooked on shoot’em up adrenaline games. Today VR is reaching the point where it can be taken seriously as a business tool. In deed, our research has discovered that the business software market today represents a higher share than entertainment of the total market for VR products and services in terms of vendor revenue. In the defense, aerospace and automotive industries, the leading companies are already using VR. In these industries VR has gone well beyond the stage where it is a plaything for the few, becoming a standard technical problem-solving tool for the many. These are the markets which are now closest to being established users of VR. Until VR is used as a standard tool in everyday business operations and processes, it cannot be considered to have moved into the mainstream. This is now starting to happen with companies such as Volkswagen, Bechtel and Rolls-Royce who are using VR as part of standard business practices. After several years experience with VR, such companies are beginning to make a formally stated commitment to VR as a strategic technology. Once this is recognized, resource expenditure increases dramatically, by as much as 400% in some instances. A growing number of these companies are choosing to centralize the VR function in order to provide a single center of expertise which can provide support throughout the organization. To date the main VR application lies in the field of design automation, using VR in order to plan, develop, and visualize complex designs. Virtual prototyping (also known as digital mock-ups) is by far the most important area of design automation for VR. Virtual prototyping involves the creation of 3D virtual models, normally based on CAD data, which is imported and displayed using VR software. Virtual prototyping is used in companies where the cost of developing physical models is extremely high, either in terms of the cost per model (as in the aerospace and shipbuilding industries) or in terms of the total number of models which are required (as in the automotive industry).
However, although the companies mentioned above are using VR as part of their standard business practices the technology has still been introduced via a technical computing route and its use remains ghettoized in design and engineering. What evidence is there that VR will penetrate the wider commercial business world at all?
At this point it is traditional for VR companies to point to training as a burgeoning application area for the technology. Indeed, training is currently the fastest growing application of VR. It is a common entry to VR for corporate users. For example, Motorola estimates that it will save up to $1m by using on-site VR training. VR is preferred to teleconferencing or computer-based training using multimedia because it is much more interactive and life-like. All of this is true but the problem with focusing on this application area is that companies view training as an overhead not a profit-generating activity and, consequently, it cuts little ice as an application poised to take VR beyond, well, the market for training applications. There are more promising application areas (in terms of mainstream commercial acceptance) for the proponents of VR to concentrate on, and these are in sales and marketing, as well as in concept and design visualization. The majority of virtual reality sales and marketing applications are currently used for promotional purposes – to launch new products, attract more interest on exhibition stands or as a point-of-sale (POS) device in showrooms. Many of these promotional applications are defined by users as edutainment, that is they combine an educational purpose, of relaying information, while entertaining business prospects and consumers. The benefits of using virtual reality for sales and marketing purposes are that it makes complex information easier to understand, it attracts attention and it simulates a product’s look and feel for consumer testing and decision making. For example, the use of digital mock-ups for consumer testing at a relatively early stage of the design process enables a company to get early market input which avoids making mistakes and allows for any changes to be fed back into the design process. Providing VR at showrooms as a POS device also helps customers to visualize the different design options which are available, helping them to make more informed decisions. To date the main application of Virtual Reality lies in the field of design a utomation, using VR in order to plan, develop, and visualize complex designs. Clearly, virtual reality has great potential here as a customer embracing interface, pulling the customer for big ticket items into the manufacturing process. A process that in many industries is primed for such an interface because of the adoption of just in time (JIT) manufacturing methods. Sadly, to date this is an application area that the VR community is not itself promoting coherently.
The other application area that will lead to mainstream acceptance of virtual reality is its use as an interface for general business software, for applications requiring the visualization of abstract concepts. This use of VR, which is at the very early stages of market development, enables companies to visualize complex data or analyze a variety of abstract concepts. Although currently a small niche market, it offers enormous scope for future growth. For it seems likely that virtual reality interfaces will, within five years, replace the iconized GUIs resident today on many business software applications.This is because the technology offers users a real-time, experiential interface that breaks through the physical and psychological barrier of the computer monitor and that, within five years, will be capable of delivery on standard-configured PCs. Such interfaces will not require the use of supporting peripherals. The appropriateness of VR interfaces for certain applications is so obvious it seems incredible to a small but growing user base that software vendors are not making more of a public commitment to virtual reality technology. In particular those applications best suited to virtual reality include: databases, executi ve information systems (EIS), system management and network management systems and data mining software. Basically, any application that requires navigation through complex or hierarchical data can be made far easier to use by adding a VR interface accruing both productivity gains and lower training costs for companies that use the software. In the longer term, as Web browsers become more widely used to interface business applications, Virtual reality interface technology will also open up easily understood access to users beyond the internal company infrastructure ie: customers, clients, contractors and freelancers.
However, simply arguing that a new technology is better than an old technology and should therefore be adopted as soon as possible is not to engage with the real world of system implementation. The new technology must be integrated with existing systems. In virtual reality’s case how will this migration occur? Well, those companies (and many vendors are already moving or have moved in this direction) that are re-engineering their software to accommodate distributed object technology are, coincidentally, positioning themselves to exploit VR. Object technology is important for the support of virtual reality applications because object-oriented middleware, such as the Object Management Group’s Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) or Microsoft’s Distributed COM, can provide the type of messaging infrastructure to enable application objects to res pond dynamically in real-time to the behavior of an end user. Consequently, as core business systems are adapted to the new software development paradigm offered by object technology, they also open themselves to the opportunity of working with a new interface technology. Where virtual reality tool suppliers are responsive to this opportunity by offering relevant API support, they stand a good chance of seizing the interface initiative. It is worth noting that Computer Associates’ ability to embrace VR as a strategic interface direction for its business software range, beginning with the general release of Unicenter TNG later this year, comes as the company re-engineers its products using object-oriented software development techniques.
So, no doubt about it, virtual reality stands a very good chance of entering the corporate mainstream as an interface technology for the 21st century, but, relax, it will arrive without the sartorial challenge of the office headset.
Virtual Reality: Business Applications, Markets and Opportunities, Jean Leston, Katy Ring and Elisabeth Kyral, $2,220.
Tel Ovum on +44 171 255 2670 for further details.
