How we socialize, interact, do business, share knowledge and experiences – essentially our entire current form of communication – is transforming. It’s going “meta.” But what exactly does that mean and who cares? The what, why and how can best be explained by understanding more about the buzziest of meta references, the emerging Metaverse. Tagged by some as a future world in which our everyday lives can transcend a single reality, the Metaverse promises to bring a more immersive internet experience, where users can interact with digital versions of other people, places, things, and experiences.
Given the historical trends towards virtualizing many of life’s simplest daily tasks, we can bank that the Metaverse will be adopted by millions of people and businesses and billions of devices worldwide, all seeking the ultimate in digital and virtual reality experiences.
In the Metaverse, users can be defined as participants and interact in personal, professional, and recreational activities within a modified, extended form of augmented and virtual reality. Virtual business meetings, travel, gaming, social gatherings, commercial activities, creative projects and communal entertainment like concerts, cinema, escape rooms, and more, all within an ecosystem one step removed from the physical world we all inhabit.
Accomplishing this, while remaining focused on a superior user experience, will take some serious IT infrastructure support. It’ll take infrastructure that is designed to rapidly scale and meet some fairly universal and demanding requirements. The Metaverse will rely heavily on ultra-low latency connectivity, and that infrastructure can’t be limited to a small number of locations.
As Phillip Marangella noted in a recent article, ‘the vision cannot become reality without an infrastructure that extends from core to edge and sustainably scales to deliver this new kind of universe wherever humans choose to go.’ EdgeConneX looks forward to helping our customers be a part of this transformation and being involved in the collaborative process leading to problem-solving at the speed of a fiber connection.
In a recent post, Matthew Ball, co-founder of Ball Metaverse Research Partners, and Jason Navok, CEO at Genvid Technologies, note that, while it’s true that cloud and network processing are accelerating, end user device processors are accelerating at a faster pace, suggesting that a large portion of metaverse processing will take place locally on the device. However, even if we stipulate that they have it exactly right, that still leaves massive amounts of data, metadata, and processing power that will be needed off-device but still relatively close to end users.
You can learn more about where the Metaverse is headed in an article by Phillip Marangella, EdgeConneX CMO that was featured in Data Center Frontier.