During the most acute phase of the pandemic, we all realized how much the world of work was undergoing a digital acceleration: smart working, meetings on Zoom, massive use of communication tools like Slack and more. Among the many unknowns that still surround us, however, we have one certainty: there is no turning back. The transformation that the world of work has suddenly undertaken can only continue.
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However, what the future modalities of this transformation are is an issue on which there are still different visions. On the one hand, a giant like Facebook / Meta has announced its willingness to bring work into the metaverse as well. Through systems such as Horizon Workrooms it is in fact possible to create business meetings in virtual reality, in which colleagues participate through their avatars, thus regaining a (partial) feeling of presence even remotely.
Where companies such as Meta (and even Microsoft) focus on virtual reality, others bet on radically different, almost opposite solutions. During the meeting organized in Milan to present the technology trends of 2022, a technology giant like Cisco illustrated its vision for “hybrid work”. A simultaneous presence and digital mode best synthesized by the Cisco Webex Hologram platform.
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If Facebook / Meta’s Horizon Workrooms is in virtual reality, Webex Hologram – already available to a limited number of customers – is instead in augmented reality. Using compatible viewers it is therefore possible to superimpose digital elements on the physical world. During a face-to-face meeting, for example, it is possible to project an object in three dimensions in the middle of the room with which all the participants – thanks to their viewers – can interact at the same time. Not only that: even colleagues present remotely can be viewed, through the viewers, in the form of photorealistic holograms. Part of this technology was shown during the event in Milan, in which the CEO of Cisco Italy took part by projecting his hologram in the center of the room.
“Our approach is not to create parallel worlds, but to enhance the concrete experiences of everyday life and of those who work”, explained to Italian Tech Michele Dalmazzoni, Collaboration Manager of Cisco for Southern Europe. “Webex Hologram is a platform at the center of which there are real people and not avatars in which I transform myself into virtual reality. These are technologies that increase the possibility of being productive remotely, for example by sharing and working on three-dimensional digital objects between design or manufacturing professionals. It is a technology that can be used for the moment both in one-to-one and one-to-many modes, which can be especially useful in terms of training ”. Neither totally in presence, nor totally digital: augmented reality is by definition a hybrid system that meets Cisco’s predictions for the future of work. For example, if in the past offices and meeting rooms were designed only for the face-to-face experience, in the future it will be necessary to optimize each environment to host events that will be both physical and remotely at the same time. This hybrid solution is indispensable: in the future it is expected that 98% of business meetings will see at least one participant remotely.
The hybrid future of work is probably the technological trend with the most visible repercussions for all of us. At the base of this professional revolution, however, there are the other trends for 2022 identified by Cisco, including the transformation of the internet into a network – as explained by Paolo Campoli, Head of Global Service Provider – “capable of predicting failures and understanding, without the users noticing it, what they are doing online and consequently optimize the traffic, diverting it to the less congested areas of the network “. The cloud will also become even more central and above all cybersecurity, which will be essential in any technological innovation project. From this point of view, Cisco predicts that in 2022 we will see a further evolution of authentication systems, which will gradually abandon traditional passwords and instead carry out checks using our biometric data, as already happens in the case of facial recognition (obviously paying a lot of attention to privacy). The future evolutions of the elements underlying the digital environment are precisely what will make it possible to develop this hybrid, augmented world towards which we are heading at great speed.
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