The Future of Virtual Reality in the Enterprise（企業におけるバーチャルリアリティの近未来）

Virtual Reality (VR) is quickly becoming a hot topic in IT departments as the technology has made strides in recent years in becoming an affordable, versatile and cost-effective technology that enterprises can leverage for a variety of applications. At NVIDIA’s recent GTC conference in the US, a demonstration was conducted where a driver remotely connected to a Ford Focus outside of the conference hall and was able to maneuver and park the vehicle while connected to an HTC Vive VR headset. VR is also becoming engrained in popular culture, as the recent Steven Spielberg movie “Ready Player One” presented a view of the near future where most human social interaction takes place in a VR environment. Demonstrations such as these are showing the potential that VR technology offers to the enterprise, and this trend is expected to continue strongly both overseas and in Japan in the near future. 

The Need for Virtual Reality in the Enterprise

Enterprise VR offers several unique benefits, and there are several drivers in the market which are causing IT departments to investigate the use of VR within the enterprise:

Reduced Development Time – Many companies are exploring VR as a better way to prototype devices, and in fact, VR has long been used in the automotive and aerospace segments for this purpose. As VR becomes more affordable, VR for rapid prototyping is expanding to new segments such as fashion and retail. For example, retail companies are able to preview new store layouts in VR and make quick adjustments instead of having to create physical store layouts.

Easy Global Collaboration – Virtual Reality offers the potential to reduce travel and still offer a realistic human experience, with some companies already starting to conduct job interviews and hold global company meetings in a VR environment.

Cost Savings – Optimizing expenses is always a high priority for the enterprise and VR has the potential to save significantly in areas such as employee training by eliminating travel and saving time by performing these tasks in a virtual environment.

This being said, there are still many challenges in the VR space. Hardware is still relatively expensive for mass employee adoption, and VR is not very mobile at the moment due to the cable connections required. Furthermore, the size of the developer community is still limited and most companies lack the internal skills to fully deploy VR services. However, prices are falling and should become as affordable as smartphones in 2-3 years, and 5G is expected to address the mobility issue. In addition, the developer community is growing and the number of startups offering “VR-as-a-Service” is increasing. For these reasons VR is expected to expand rapidly in the enterprise in the near future.