The metaverse, like any emerging technology, has received its fair share of hype.

But, speaking at Adobe Summit, Virender Singh, Associate Vice President at HCLTech, believes the technology is just going through its curve of acceptance. A rite of passage for any new, disruptive innovation.

“Any new technology will receive skepticism from an old school mindset. Regarding the metaverse, this view is not without reason, because the current technology and ecosystem required to make it happen is still under development,” he says.

However, Singh believes any doubter should view the metaverse as an extension of the internet. It’s something that’s going to evolve rapidly. McKinsey predicts the metaverse could generate up to $5 trillion across consumer and enterprise use cases by 2030, for example.

In addition, Galaxy Digital’s report projects the core Metaverse economy could pump $1.4 trillion into Asia’s GDP.

“The metaverse will disrupt some, but not every single one of the Web 2.0 incarnations of the old economy. It is a new trend and will continue with its growing pains, before creating scale and innovative business models,” adds Singh.

He continues: “It is prudent to not fall into the hype of here and now as this will take time, nor should one dismiss this based on theories delivered by people from the old economy. There is a clear trend here with technologies available to deliver on the new business models, but it will not happen overnight.”

While it will be a journey and there is a significant way to go, the metaverse will become a reality because the technology, tools and people are available who can make it work.

Use cases in the metaverse

A disruptive technology is judged on tangible use cases that can deliver real business success and positive social or human impact.

In the metaverse, there are a significant range of use cases.

Horizontal use cases fit across every industry and are primarily around product design and conceptualization, such as designing a vehicle in a virtual environment before manufacturing it.

Learning and development, such as enabling remote training or work in dangerous environments and immersive classroom experiences, is another.

Service and maintenance, CX and customer engagement, gaming and entertainment, digital twins in MFG, a revolutionized brand experience in retail and healthcare assistance for doctors are others.

"The metaverse can also help improve employee experience B2E, by transforming initiatives like HR onboarding,” says Singh.

HCLTech Metafinity

To realize their metaverse ambitions, organizations need innovative solutions.

HCLTech Metafinity is a framework that can help deliver the metaverse at scale.

“Metafinity brings pre-built accelerators and capabilities that enterprises can use to build their metaverse uses cases faster and cheaper. It brings in capabilities, such as 3D models, avatar customization and pre-built components that can be dragged and dropped into various scenes and business use cases,” says Singh.

He adds: “More importantly, it assists organizations with integrating these technologies, tools and processes into their enterprise ecosystems.”

Shaping the future of the metaverse

The metaverse is at an early stage. Current supporting augmented and virtual reality technologies, the hardware, are not yet ready to deliver on the potential of this virtual world.

“However, the technology is constantly evolving, more use cases are emerging and computing power and networks are becoming more powerful. All these elements will the whole shape and form the metaverse. It will drastically transform in the coming years,” continues Singh.

He adds: “In my view, the true future of the metaverse will be defined by a combination of Web 3.0 and blockchain, which will support a truly decentralized ecosystem to deliver use cases at scale.”