Bringing the ideas to life faster on the Metaverse

Infosys’ Metaverse Foundry services offer businesses the on-demand ability to securely and efficiently create their own metaverse environment by letting them choose from the already existing templates of ready-to-use Metverse use cases and execution roadmaps as well as letting them work with the creator-partner in the Infosys Innovation Ecosystem

Businesses must know that there is no one-size-fits-all metaverse solution. The metaverse solution must be developed after careful consideration of the organization's unique business context, customers, partners, and even regulatory environment. Working with an experienced partner who will chart a suitable roadmap to the metaverse, based on these considerations, is also important. We spoke to Ravi Kumar S, President, Infosys to know more about the trends, and how Infosys Metaverse Foundry services help to fast-track enterprises’ exploration of the metaverse.

Excerpts:

Since Metaverse has become a buzzword these days, how are businesses across industries trying to embrace the Metaverse trend?

The metaverse market opportunity is projected to reach $800 billion by 2024 – undoubtedly making it the next generation of the internet, experiences, and physical-virtual connections. This opportunity is supported by emerging technologies such as blockchain, virtual reality (VR), and artificial intelligence (AI). Every industry is looking to join the metaverse bandwagon to create value for their customers, workplace, products, or operations. From retailing NFTs to building engaging environments and digital replicas while facilitating integration with enterprise data APIs and 360/3D asset management systems – retailers to engineering companies and manufacturers are looking to respond to this rapidly evolving space and opportunity.

In terms of use cases, gaming companies like Roblox, and Epic Games are leading the way, with their existing virtual environments and established user base. We are seeing early adopters driving commerce, transforming workplaces to create interactive, and productive work environments. We have also seen automotive companies talking about creating digital twins on the metaverse, and consumer goods companies exploring the possibility of co-creating and innovating on the metaverse. Similarly, the metaverse is also going to be increasingly leveraged by retailers, banks, and entertainment firms. We expect to find a lot of activity surrounding cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and the ability to create a financial system in the virtual world. In the healthcare industry, the metaverse can be used to enable medical imaging, amongst other use cases.

We believe that value derived from the metaverse is limited only by a company’s imagination and are confident we will begin to see all industries benefiting from the use of metaverse technologies over time.

Where are we now in terms of actual implementation? 

Over the past four years, Infosys has extensively focused on enabling the digital transformation journeys of our clients and solving their problems. In this line, around 7-8 years ago we started investing in metaverse technologies like enterprise AR/VR, followed by XR, and blockchain. The confluence of these technologies with IoT, Applied AI, digital twin engineering, and cloud, provides enterprises the ability to build for/on the metaverse. Through these investments, we have been able to successfully create value for our clients on the metaverse. For example, at the Australian Open, we created an immersive retail environment allowing fans to purchase branded merchandise that was delivered in the physical world. Similarly, for leading pharmaceuticals, we created a digital twin of their vaccine lab enabling quality engineers to access critical vaccine culture data to make predictions and decisions. More recently, we have developed complex capabilities related to gaming, CAD, and open-source frameworks for creating on the metaverse. Our 400-500 people-strong team has developed over 100 ready-to-apply use cases and templates that our clients can leverage along with the Infosys platforms to navigate the metaverse.

While we are in the early stages of implementation, we do see new opportunities as many of our clients are actively looking at exploring the metaverse to drive value for their business.

What are some of the hot skills required for Metaverse?

A wide range of skills are required to deliver on the metaverse, and the list continues to evolve. Complex skills related to AI, blockchain, gaming, engineering with CAD tools, and even open-source are useful, but perhaps even more important would be the ability to problem-find, rather than simply problem-solve. The metaverse offers us a canvas to address business problems with solutions that are not yet templatized in thousands of ways – as they are in more traditional spaces. This is our opportunity to create those templates – and that is a job for those with an aptitude for problem-finding and framing to be followed by robust solution building.  

How can Metaverse Foundry services help? What are some of the important Metaverse building blocks, tech, and solutions under it?

The Infosys Metaverse Foundry will enable enterprises to ease and fast-track their exploration of the metaverse, including virtual and augmented environments, for their customers, workplace, products, and operations. It brings together the company’s industry domain and design expertise, platforms, and digital accelerators, with strong relationships in a rich creator-partner economy. The foundry is equipped with 100 ready-to-use use cases, business cases, and execution roadmaps, helping enterprises across industries find value in the metaverse and the flexibility to ramp up and down their explorations at will.  Enterprises can utilize the already existing template to bring their ideas to life faster on the metaverse. This gives them the on-demand ability to securely and efficiently create their own metaverse environment, deliver signature experiences in an existing metaverse, and bring advanced AI-powered data analytics and simulations to realize their evolving aspirations as the internet evolves. The foundry harnesses the power of technologies like AR/VR, Blockchain, NFT, IoT, Applied AI, cybersecurity, and 5G to advance value exploration in the metaverse for our clients.

Who are the ecosystem partners? Could you please talk about some interesting use cases powered by these partners?

Infosys works in tandem with an ecosystem of creator-partners to harness technologies like hyper-scale cloud, AR/VR, Blockchain, NFT, IoT, Responsible AI, cybersecurity, and 5G to power the metaverse. Additionally, our metaverse technology investments, including platforms and accelerators enable the rapid creation of engaging environments and digital replicas, while facilitating integration with enterprise data APIs and 360/3D asset management systems. AI and engineering platforms to build digital twins of complex physical objects are also available to drive simulations.

With the Infosys metaverse foundry, enterprises can work in tandem with any creator-partner in the Infosys Innovation Ecosystem to manage the pilot-to-production ramp-up smoothly or add more choices at the prototype stage to de-risk and future-proof investments. For example, an engineering consulting company took advantage of Infosys metaverse to prototype an immersive mixed reality workbench to inspect prospective engineering construction sites rendered as rich 3D assets. The capability was evolved and scaled for global use on Azure high-performance cloud with ready support from Microsoft, a long-standing Infosys partner.

Ravi Kumar S, President, Infosys