Planning to deploy augmented reality in 2016? Don’t worry about skill sets

If CIOs are of the opinion that skillset will be a road block when implementing Augmented Reality (AR), they might be wrong. Yes, Virtual Reality(VR) might need specific skills but not so much for AR.

“Does AR demand different skill sets? Well, I will say yes and no both. A different kind of skill set is required when you are doing things in actual augmented reality code. But from a user perspective, you do not really need to know the technology. The provider needs to have an in depth knowledge of what needs to be done so as to help users understand how to go about using the technology,” Jitendra Singh, CIO & head – business excellence, Nagarjuna Fertilizers and Chemicals, says.

If we consider AR and VR as a part of digitization, then Gaurav Sharma, research manager, enterprise computing, IDC India, feels that it is important to develop certain specific skills to deal with disruptive technologies. “As we move forward towards digitally enabled transformation and customer experiences, a whole new set of skill sets is now required to employ this change from within and outside of the business ecosystem,” Sharma says.

Gaurav adds that organizations need to develop strong capabilities in terms of developing skills not only in their set of products and services but also from the ecosystem as AR and VR are collaborative technologies and would essentially require focus on governance, architectures, metrics and SLAs as well.

A major reason why Singh claims that AR, from an enterprise perspective, does not need different skillset is that on implementing the solution, one does not need to think about bringing in huge changes in IT architecture.

“Implementing AR solution does not need huge amounts of change in the existing IT architecture. The only thing is that may be hosting may require some extra amounts of bandwidth and some extra resource. In terms of reach, branding, ease of use and visibility it is definitely a disruptive technology but in terms of changes in the basic way of working and changes in existing infrastructure, it is not,” Singh says.

Singh also feels that the an enterprise need not know much about the technology and that, all that an enterprise needs to know is what is desired from the AR solution and which content needs to be passed on to the end customer. He says that basic input material has to be provided by the enterprise, rest solution providers will take care. So, going ahead, it might not be a mandate to have specific skill, at least with AR if not with VR.