VAR: An Introduction
Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality are exciting developments in human/technology interface, but what should be the focus for the majority of Enterprise customers today?
To answer that question, the way in which these technologies are delivered needs to be considered. While VR is arguably more immersive than AR it typically requires the need for a head mounted display or similar wearable technology. For most businesses this simply does not scale to the wider workforce.
However, most businesses now have a digital workspace strategy, with the majority of workers carrying a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet. This allows the business the opportunity to provide the workforce with AR based applications and using the self contained cameras of their devices to add a digital layer of information on top of the camera view.
Benefits of AR
So what is the benefit and business case for providing AR based apps and consequently why should the IT organization and application developers care and what considerations should be made in supporting AR for the business?
Augmented Reality is starting to see real traction in industries where intricate, complex, sequences of operations are required, with additional and frequently changing variables required to complete the tasks.
For example in manufacturing AR can be used to superimpose or annotate work instructions to assemble line workers, providing information on torque bolt settings, process sequence efficiencies, as well as providing warnings on potential hazards.
Augmented Reality displays also bring huge benefits in those manufacturing environments where there are different product variants, or bespoke customer requirements, eliminating the need for a physical ‘job sheet’, which could get misplaced, or misread. AR guided processes therefore reduce operations errors, improving product quality, as well as improving production efficiency.
There have been recent developments of the use of AR, in particular surgery. The ability to provide additional information during procedures such as keyhole surgery, or the of positioning screws and rods during vertebrae or bone repair, can assist surgeons during complex procedures as well as supporting less experienced colleagues.
The most significant gains have been seen in training and enablement. Augmented Reality has been proven to accelerate learning of employees whilst doing ‘hands on’ training, as well as the concept of ‘just in time’ training, while at the same time reducing the number of ‘learning mistakes’ as employees expand their skill set.
Augmented Reality also helps instructors who are able to interact and inform the employees they are training through more accurate interaction.
AR in IT Organizations
So what does this all mean for the IT Organization within businesses that are embracing AR?
For development teams, it becomes important to have an awareness of more than just knowing how to code. The user interface experience for AR is imperative, therefore good ‘virtual ergonomics’ design, interface/human interaction study, as well as obtaining and acting on user feedback is essential. Communication between the development teams and the business units consequently requires a more business and ‘people’ language orientated approach than ever before as opposed to the traditional business/IT relationship. If the IT organization is dealing with external partners or application teams then effective communication is even more challenging requiring a role that can act as a liaison.
Supporting roles such as network and system operations, service desk, also need to develop different skillsets as ‘incidents’ may not be the typical service outages, but relate to the interface itself, or even the dynamic content being presented to the consumer.
Augmented Reality also presents the need for increased maturity around processes such as access management, content management and data security.
In the manufacturing use case earlier, a company’s work instructions for its assembly line workers would almost certainly considered valuable intellectual property. Consequently real time access to that IP, and its secure data storage would be critical.
With regards to access management a robust digital workspace security policy for mobile devices is essential, and could even be locked down by capabilities such as location services to ensure on demand access is delivered only in the appropriate environments.
With many manufacturing companies also investing in IoT, security of this data at edge devices should be considered and implemented as well as proactive monitoring to ensure governance around data access.
Content management for AR applications also raises in priority. Because of the ‘on demand’ nature of content, version control, reliability, and availability of content is more important that ever before. In the medical use case earlier, incorrect or out of date information could be serious or even fatal.
As a result robust processes around governance of the content management of the presented AR data should by mandatory, but also requires consideration of approval and validation through access control to those in appropriate roles (e.g. senior medical consultants or surgeons).
Many healthcare organizations are now also considering the option of ‘community clouds’ where multiple organizations can share data, applications, procedures etc, therefore the above processes become even more important.
Of course the above applies to other industry verticals, not just the aforementioned use cases but consequently, for businesses considering (or who have implemented) AR, transformation of the IT operating model is essential in order to support the business in the rate of change its employees expect as technology matures.
VMware is uniquely positioned to help customers working in this space and guide them through this digital transformation, therefore please contact your account representative if you’d like to know more.
