Here’s how augmented and virtual reality will look like as we kickstart 2016

As we step on 2016, IDC predicts that, by 2017, 40 percent of services managed by IT will be business services oriented to augmented experience and smart products.

“Gaming and entertainment industry would perhaps be early adopter of AR & VR. Then comes manufacturing which will undergo a lot of automation. Education can benefit largely from guidance that teachers can provide along with VR experience based tours. In healthcare training to recovery paths, diagnosing to situation simulation are some of (range) the solutions where AR & VR can immensely help. Training and development is another one,” Gaurav Sharma, research manager, enterprise computing, IDC India says.

AR and VR are technologies of the modern era and to explore the possibilities an IT leader indeed needs to think out of the box.

Jitendra Singh, CIO & head – business excellence, Nagarjuna Fertilizers and Chemicals on the other hand is a bit skeptical about these two technologies gaining ground in 2016, he feels cost of these technologies are too high and unless it drops, it will be difficult to gather momentum.

He feels that AR has lot of potential but it is yet to gather a good momentum and this is because we are yet to make this tech visible within the enterprise or CIOs have other things in propriety. 

“Unless AR becomes more cost effective I do not think people would like to use it. If you say AR implementation will shoot up like anything in 2016, I have my own doubts regarding it. In 2017 it might have a better push,” Singh says.

AR and VR are technologies of the modern era and to explore the possibilities an IT leader indeed needs to think out of the box.

Singh says that technologies like AR are not in the priority list of CIOs as there are other important things to handle like information security or extended ERP. “Also if some of us are into the engagement of keeping the lights on itself, then it may not strike us. If you want to get out of that cost center mode one has to think on lines similar to this,” he added.

In a nutshell AR and VR has a lot to offer when it comes to building brands, enhancing user experience and enabling transpiracy. But it is in a very nascent stage and hence to say that its implementation will shoot up in the coming years will be absolutely wrong.