The Seven Rules of the Corporate Metaverse

If the Metaverse is the next evolution of how we’ll communicate, then companies need a different set of rules to guide them.

The Metaverse is on everybody’s lips these days, fueled in part by Facebook’s (what we now know as Meta) recent announcement that they’re building the Metaverse – the successor to the mobile internet.

With this announcement, a lot of confusion has suddenly surrounded what the Metaverse is – and isn’t. Thankfully, Metaverse and virtual reality pioneer Tony Parisi shared this article defining his seven fundamental rules of the Metaverse. Here at SynergyXR, we share Tony’s vision – namely that the Metaverse is an open, interoperable, and interconnected collection of all publicly available virtual experiences accessible to all. According to Tony, “the Metaverse is the next significant development in global communications.”  

That being said, a completely “open” Metaverse is not necessarily what corporations/businesses want or need. Instead, they need a collection of virtual experiences tailored to their needs, under their control, and with only those stakeholders who’re explicitly invited.  

Companies can, will and should control their own realms within the Metaverse.

Tony Parisi I Global Head of AR/VR Ads and E-Commerce at Unity Technologies

Welcome to the Corporate Metaverse 

This is what we call the Corporate Metaverse: a radical transformation in the way companies will communicate, collaborate, and learn. 

Why do we need another concept instead of just using the broader Metaverse concept? That’s simple. Companies, by their very nature, are inherently different and thus play by a very different set of rules. That’s why we feel the need to establish some guardrails – if you will – for better understanding how companies should think about the Corporate Metaverse. While there could be many, let’s start with these Seven Rules of the Corporate Metaverse.  

Rule Number One
Organizations can have their own Corporate Metaverse 

The Metaverse promises immense potential by offering a collection of all publicly accessible virtual worlds, encompassing all types of virtual experiences, from virtual arts and crafts, games, and travel experiences to remote presence in virtual meetings with colleagues, just to name a few. Organizations, however, need a more focused subset of virtual experiences primarily aimed at helping employees in their daily professional activities.
 

Companies are eager to tap into the potential benefits of the Metaverse, but they can’t risk making everything accessible to everyone. This would be the equivalent of having an open-door policy to your physical offices. In short, organizations need to be able to control user and data access for their Corporate Metaverse. 

Rule Number Two
The Corporate Metaverse is for everyone in your organization

The Corporate Metaverse will offer virtual experiences relevant to everyone in your organization, ranging from the very first virtual job interview, virtual onboarding and training to daily virtual meetings, design reviews, technical troubleshooting, and much more. 

Rule Number Three
You control your Corporate Metaverse

As Tony Parisi writes: “Individuals and groups can, will and should be free to create private or restricted access spaces under their own control. Experiences created for private use would be expected to be afforded the proper safeguards and protections, treated much like private spaces in the physical world.”
 

The Corporate Metaverse needs to be controlled by the organization. While this may initially limit the scope of the Corporate Metaverse in comparison with the Metaverse, it also means that it’ll be much more relevant to people inside the organization.  

Rule Number Four
The Corporate Metaverse is open, if you’re invited

Just like the Metaverse, the Corporate Metaverse is built upon interoperable technologies and connected using well-defined communication protocols. But whereas the Metaverse is completely open for everyone, access to the Corporate Metaverse is by invitation only and restricted to people inside the organization.
 

The organization itself controls who has access to the Corporate Metaverse – this includes employees, customers, partners, vendors, and so on. 

Rule Number Five
The Corporate Metaverse is hardware-independent

Like the Metaverse, the Corporate Metaverse is completely hardware-independent to ensure the broadest possible accessibility.
 

Some (most?) content in the Corporate Metaverse will be spatial, which users can experience in 3D. This does not mean that hardware support is limited to e.g., VR headsets – quite the contrary. It’s crucial that members of an organization can interact with the Corporate Metaverse using the hardware device they are most accustomed to. This is key to accelerated adoption.  

Rule Number Six
The Corporate Metaverse is a network

The Corporate Metaverse is not a single computer application, but rather, multiple applications tailored for individual hardware devices or individual uses. These applications can exchange information or even allow users to meet virtually across these different applications using well-defined network protocols.
 

Whereas the Metaverse is a completely open network, connecting all publicly accessible virtual experiences, the Corporate Metaverse is a closed network allowing selected virtual experiences within an organization to be connected and accessible to all members of the organization. 

Rule Number Seven
The Corporate Metaverse is your Intranet

Whereas the Metaverse is the Internet (albeit a very advanced form of it), the Corporate Metaverse is an organization’s Intranet (yes, we realize that this might be perceived as an antiquated term given the emergence of platforms like Slack, but at the end of the day, the dichotomy is still valid).
 

Compared to the Internet, an intranet has a distinct set of functions that are primarily aligned with helping employees communicate, collaborate, and share within an organization. Although similar in concept to the internet in that it is a computer network that shares information – an intranet operates strictly within a closed network. This is beneficial given that organizations operate on exchanging internal company information in confidence. 

What’s next? 

The Metaverse is the sum of all publicly accessible virtual worlds, and the Corporate Metaverse is the sum of your organization’s privately accessible virtual worlds. So, will the Metaverse and Corporate Metaverses merge together in the future?  

Our best guess is an ambiguous “yes, and no”. Parts of the Corporate Metaverse will definitely become available to the wider public – just like a company’s web page which anyone is free to explore. But organizations will never leave everything open and interoperable to anyone passing by.  

So, we’re confident the Corporate Metaverse is here to stay. And we’ll continue bringing XR to the people by offering a world-class solution.

Wanna start building your Corporate Metaverse? 

SynergyXR is a powerful cloud platform that lets companies build their own Corporate Metaverse to train employees, deliver maintenance and offer remote support across all XR devices without having to write a single line of code. 

We built SynergyXR from the ground up with information security, privacy, and intellectual property control in mind. With SynergyXR, everything is managed and controlled by the organization, giving you the peace of mind to know that your company info is safe and sound. 

The Corporate Metaverse, akin to the Internet, will be built by the people using the best tools on the market. That’s why our focus is on providing the tools to enable fast, easy, and scalable user-generated content and user-generated experiences.