Metaverse success will be defined by the user experience. And it is up to the networking industry to define and protect that experience, making the metaverse possible.
As the metaverse matures, technologies such as augmented reality, artificial intelligence, digital twins and virtual worlds (to name just a few) will establish an entirely new way for individuals to connect, and for companies to build attachment to their goods and services. It will truly be a revolutionary moment when these technologies become fully mainstream and accessing the metaverse becomes as commonplace as checking stocks or social media from your mobile device.
But for that to happen, companies now need to change their focus. No longer can networking success be measured by traditional methods, such as uptime or guaranteed service levels. It must be the end-user experience that matters most, as that’s what will drive the metaverse from its early stages to mainstream adoption.
The experience focus has begun
In the networking industry, we’ve already seen this shift begin to take hold. Once the pandemic began in 2020, companies immediately needed to establish a way for their employees to continue working from home during lockdowns. As companies scrambled to enable remote working, it became clear that priorities were changing. Employees didn’t care about service levels or uptime guarantees; they only cared about whether they had the ability to get their jobs done.
Were they able to access their critical information and applications from anywhere, at any time? Could they work successfully despite the constraints that the public health crisis had created? If the answer was yes, then the IT team had done their jobs successfully.
It was at this point that the networking industry truly understood why the end-user experience mattered.
Why experience will continue to matter
In the entertainment industry, experiences always mattered. Who would watch a television show or a movie they didn’t enjoy? Or play a video game that was unpleasant, unenjoyable or didn’t work properly? Entertainment has always been about the experience given to the end user - and as streaming and online gaming took hold, the home became the hub of that entertainment experience.
On the business side, as mentioned earlier, the pandemic drove a similar re-thinking of the way work could be successfully accomplished. This shift permanently establishes an online option - be it remote work, hybrid work or just the ability to work from home when ill or caring for a sick relative - as a part of the new normal of the workplace. If a good experience cannot be enabled, then the stakes are higher than just employees being unhappy; work won’t get done.
With the dawn of the metaverse and related advanced technologies, the lines between work and entertainment are even more blurred than before. Creating an avatar and living in a virtual world used to be simply a way to connect with other like-minded people. As metaverse technologies mature, that same avatar - or a business function of it - could be attending business meetings or networking events. Collaborative brainstorming sessions could play out in virtual meetings instead of on a video conference call.
The blurring of these two worlds only heightens the need for those in the networking industry to focus on providing a strong experience across the board.
How to enable excellent experiences
So the natural next question is - how can the networking industry build upon the work that’s already been done? In order to create the experience-based future that will power the metaverse, what types of technologies and solutions do companies need to invest in?
#1: Prioritization
Not all traffic is the same, nor should it be. This is another lesson that was driven home to us in the networking industry during the pandemic. Sometimes the biggest priority needs to be given to a video conference call, while other traffic can be deprioritized at certain times. To be able to accomplish this, technology should be used to intelligently route important traffic over the strongest, fastest connection, instead of pushing it all through a tunnel.
Tunnels make all traffic travel the same path, without the ability to prioritize one type over another. The metaverse will depend upon the specificity of traffic understanding and management that a tunnel-free approach enables.
#2: Visibility
Visibility goes hand in hand with being able to prioritize traffic. To prioritize it, you have to see it. Acquiring data and real-time information about network traffic enables teams to direct it according to importance. Visibility is also needed to drive improved discovery of network issues that could create a service interruption. Better visibility leads to a quicker time to repair, protecting the end user experience.
As the metaverse takes hold and grows in popularity, the ability for network managers to proactively identify potential network disruptions or issues will become increasingly important. Imagine a metaverse experience built around office collaboration on a project. If there are team members with less than optimal connections, then collaboration becomes difficult, if not impossible. Visibility will make the network able to be more proactively managed, meaning that the metaverse experience is more likely to be excellent at all times.
#3: Acceptance of AI
Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology continues to advance by leaps and bounds each day; one only need look at the recent advances in writing and drawing AI for an example. It is becoming even more of a part of our everyday lives, often in ways we don’t immediately recognize.
In the networking industry, AI will be needed to make metaverse experiences a reality. As the metaverse and related technologies grow in adoption, it will become impossible for the network teams of today to understand, manage and maintain all of the necessary networks and connections - and to find and stop any issues or potential outages - by themselves. This is where AI will come in.
AI will help networking teams identify issues sooner - alerting teams to a potential problem that needs their attention. It can help to judge which alerts are most important, as well as add its expertise to the troubleshooting process. With so many connections all relying on a strong, consistent networking experience, the use of AI to be an “extra set of hands” for the networking team is a must. In fact, AI has already proven it can do more than just diagnose the cause of an issue; it can provide advice on how exactly to repair an issue, or even make certain repairs itself. AI will be key to keeping the metaverse experience a positive one.
We live in exciting times. The online world is changing the real world daily, forever affecting traditional processes and the ways of working and living we’re used to. As the metaverse continues this progression, it will be critical that we in the networking industry adapt as well to focus our efforts on ensuring users have a terrific experience during both work and play.
