It will take many years and many technological advances to make the metaverse happen.

The challenge is that the metaverse isn’t really a thing any more than computing is a thing. It is more a concept than an architecture. A whole series of components are needed to make it work, and those components will differ depending on the use cases. For example, the kind of enterprise metaverse environment needed in a manufacturing or healthcare environment is very different from the kind needed to collaborate on a piece of software in a workgroup environment.

The metaverse will be driven in the years to come by solutions to particular problems, and not by general horizontal capability, although there will obviously be some horizontal components that cross solution boundaries.

The metaverse will require greatly expanded bandwidth, but more importantly, greatly reduced latency. That really is the key to metaverse connectivity. Anything beyond a millisecond or two will make it untenable. This is why true 5G connectivity for mobile users with its low latency is so critical. Another major challenge with the metaverse is that it requires a completely redesigned user interface. And such a user interface will not be created quickly, nor likely universally (each major vendor may have its own unique version). Look at how long it took to get to Windows 10 from CP/M and DOS, and that will give you an idea of ​​how much work the UI will take (although it obviously won’t take decades). And it won’t be just one UI: there will be multiple UIs optimized for different things (gaming, collaboration, AI-assisted VR/AR, etc.).

The metaverse will need massive amounts of computing power in CPUs, GPUs, and special AI acceleration components. There is little concern that they will be available in a relatively short time, as the progression of computing power is still strong and is actually accelerating (more processing power in shorter periods of time). But using technology in the most effective way is not easy. And new technologies must be perfected to achieve more sensual stimulation and immersion capabilities for the metaverse, such as touch, heat and cold, smell and even taste. While it won’t happen anytime soon, work is underway to make this a reality.

Since all of the above needs to be created and perfected, it’s not easy to define a time frame for the metaverse. It will take at least 4 or 5 years, maybe more, to implement a large number of the necessary solutions. There will be components that will be available sooner (such as AR/VR games, digital twins for multi-use beyond factories, and systems that allow some level of collaboration). But fully AI-powered metaverse capabilities will require a lot of breakthroughs that aren’t quite on the horizon yet, and that’s going to take time.

All the major platform vendors are pushing a metaverse vision (e.g. Meta, Google, Microsoft, Intel, Nvidia, etc), but if these big players are going to be part of the new metaverse, they will acquire new companies that have captured a niche technology they need (as well as the progression of so many other technologies that the big players have acquired over the years). I expect to see a lot of M&A activity in the metaverse over the next 3-5 years, not all of it successful. But before that, we’ll need to see a number of big tech breakthroughs from startups, many of which are still in the conceptual phase or just beginning their journey.

I expect the metaverse as a whole to take at least a decade to make, but the subsets will come sooner. As with any area of ​​new technology, most people are better at joining the hype than understanding the difficulty of creating reality. So we will continue to hear a lot of hype about the metaverse and the kind of value it can offer.

I’m hoping the metaverse will eventually add commercial value, but it will take some experimentation before we know exactly how much. We could certainly see AR/VR/AI adding to the ability to repair equipment, help set up and build products and facilities, help with surgery, train people in new skills, etc. But we are talking about a new user interface. and a new way of interacting with technology, new psychological and physiological experiences, and that’s going to take some time to get right.

Bottom line: Companies should investigate how to use metaverse solutions even if they won’t be implemented for 3-5 years or more. Getting ahead of the curve with experimentation as new options appear is always a good course of action, especially for companies that want to stay ahead of the curve. But large-scale implementations will take several years, and companies should expect that, as with any emerging technology, not all installations will be successful. It is important to remain flexible.

Jack Gold is the founder and Principal Analyst of J.Gold Associates, LLC., a Northborough, MA.-based information technology analyst firm covering various aspects of consumer and business computing and emerging technologies. . Follow him on Twitter @jckgld or LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jckgld.