The future is near – collaborating immersive analytics and cloud for rich business interactions. Like the online meeting transformation of Webex and Go To Meeting, immersive analytics, serverless computing, cloud desktops, virtual digital assistants, and machine learning will soon follow.

Example I

Imagine you are part of a global sales management meeting of a global packaging company with $10 billion in revenue, 12 territory sales managers, and 3 area VPs, all reporting to the SVP. Seven people flew down to attend the meeting while others connected online. As the meeting begins, those attending the meeting physically put on AR glasses, and the remote participants wear VR goggles.

The meeting aims to track revenue growth in a product category launched 12 months ago. A summary graph reveals revenue by different regions that explains the challenges. Here, the Territory Sales Manager from Western Europe requests control, and other viewers share her screen while she clicks on the bar representing quarterly sales. Her results show a graph of customer adoption.

Then, she activates a machine learning algorithm that adds customers and products by region in clusters. All the while, correlating local government regulations with sales results helps reveal a region’s primary challenge. Next, the action to be taken is discussed, and the group agrees that their government affairs team needs to draft a plan to address the issue. Finally, a virtual assistant at the corner of every participant’s screen lights up to confirm that the item is distributed to all the participants.

Example II

The data analysts for online retailers are meeting with a consulting group, assisting them in expediting logistics. A chart of all shipments is displayed, and the group collectively views the data sorted by date and geography.

Then, the group is immersed in a pool of data and is divided on the basis of various dimensions so that anomalies are seen as outliers. Poor outlier performance is revealed as floating spheres outside the clusters. Each outlier is selected; then, the machine learning assistant re-sorts the data by carrier – displaying the root cause for all to view.

The latency must be minimal, compute must be powerful, and data must be accessible for the meeting to be effective and for immersive analytics to provide a fluid experience. If participants use Microsoft’s Windows Virtual Desktop, then configuration with the help of Ubikite provides each participant with virtual desktops with powerful GPUs.

No latency would be observed as the participant’s local laptop displays pixels pushed to it from the virtual machine. The group’s data is stored on the cloud, like Azure or Amazon’s S3. The VR and AR headsets providing immersive analytics are Oculus Quest, Microsoft Hololens 2, or Ulysses VR.

Conclusion

The goal is to provide ease of human interaction while enhancing engagement, collaboration and creativity. This tremendously benefits the participants, allowing them to enjoy data-driven storytelling to arrive at solutions. At the Gartner Data & Analytics Summit, March ‘19 event, Gartner forecasted that by 2022, 25% of the organization would adopt immersive analytics for data visualization.

Just imagine how this transforms the human experience in the workplace!

Tom Malone is an entrepreneur building mission-driven startups that identify and capture unique and sustainable opportunities. Presently, he is an entrepreneur-in-residence for People Tech Group.

References: Windows Virtual Desktop, Ubikite, Azure, S3, Ulysses

For more information, contact Tom at tom.malone@peopletech.com or connect with him on LinkedIn.