The data reveals a significant push toward more immersive platforms on a global scale, but there are regional differences.
On a global level, 87% of business professionals confirmed they would feel comfortable conducting HR meetings in a virtual space.
At a country level, this was as high as 97% in India and 94% in the Philippines and as low as 57% in Japan.
“Clearly, the business world is ready to move to the metaverse and start using enhanced reality tools for collaboration and innovation,” said Steve Alexander, senior vice president and chief technology officer at Ciena.
“Network reliability may be seen as a barrier to making this possible today, but service providers know the demand is there and are already investing and testing to make networks faster, smarter and bring them closer to the user.”
While appetite grows for a new digital world, unreliable network performance (38%) was noted as the top concern holding organisations back.
The survey participants said that network reliability is a higher concern than the belief that immersive applications/tools are not yet widely available.
But globally, 71% said they can see the metaverse becoming part of existing work practices, while 40% think their business will move away from traditional/static collaboration environments to more immersive virtual reality based environments in the next two years.
Alexander added: “We will continue to hear talk around what the metaverse is or could be in the coming months and years, but none of the exciting use cases can be achieved without a robust underlying network, laced with the latest and greatest technologies that support the ultra-low latency and high bandwidth that enhanced reality demands.”
