Mission Metaverse, Paris Hilton & The Big Fat Indian Wedding

By Soumitra Dey ‘Sonny’

A recent article on Bloomberg was all over the story of how Paris Hilton is back and moving the party to the Metaverse as the reality TV star is collaborating on NFTs with toy company. Celebrities like Paris Hiltons are finding ways to drive fans, brands to digital realm.

Long a staple of pop culture, Hiltons are refreshing their image, trying to pivot from “party-loving” to “timeless icon” that brands can see as a family-friendly, innovative leader.

Suddenly, they everywhere again: on streaming television, in fashion ads and even on Roblox. Even so the Indian weddings are not so big fat anymore, the wedding industry has had to reinvent itself to go, leaner, cleaner and virtual. 

In other news, India’s first Metaverse wedding reception happened earlier this month. Invites were sent to guest in the form of NFTs, and the virtual ceremony was held at Hogwarts or more accurately a digital recreation of the school of magic. (Check it out on India Today)

Tech Giants now investing more into Quantum Computing 

A recent article in The Economist mentioned how the five big tech giants Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta and Microsoft (MAAMA) shifted their investments from the Metaverse to Quantum computing. According to new data from Bloomberg Intelligence, IDC and PWC – the Metaverse market may reach $800 Billions by 2024 vs $500 Billion in 2020.

Over $400 billion in revenue is expected from the online gaming industry, including software and services as well as in-game advertising revenue. Billions are expected to be generated from live events, an area where IT majors have already started investment under ‘digital offerings’.

The Metaverse ecosystem will be worth over $1.1 trillion by 2030. It will impact sectors like gaming, healthcare, ed-tech and ‘Industry 4.0’.

As Malaysian companies gear up to tap into Metaverse opportunities, security nets for collaboration and communication for an enriched immersive experience. 

The Metaverse was once a fringe concept defined as ‘a network of 3D virtual worlds focused on enhancing social connections through conventional personal computing, virtual and augmented reality. Now brands in Malaysia have started dreaming about the potential of a completely digital universe where you can live and experience some of the great things in the world from the comfort of your home.

While the Metaverse is still years from being ready for everyday use, many of its components are already being used by MAAMA. With the super speed chips that power todays gaming consoles, there is no question that there will be a massive amount of software needed to design and host the Metaverse, as well as a number of business use cases that will ultimately look to exploit it.

What can the Metaverse do for businesses?

As we continue to watch the rise of Metaverse and brands starts integrating it to their CX engagement, supply chain security should take the center stage and organizations need to rally to democratize security testing and scanning implementing Software Bill of Material (SBOM) requirements and increasingly leveraging DevSecOps solutions to create full chain of custody to keep the Metaverse running smoothly and securely. 

According to Facebook, the Metaverse feels like a hybrid of today’s online collaboration experiences sometimes expanded into three dimensional, or projected into the physical world. Eventually, the goal is to evolve it into a virtual universe where we can share immersive experiences with each other.

It remains to be seen how the Metaverse will ultimately help with business collaboration and communicate more effectively but three things are worth noting – the Metaverse is coming as a digital transformation accelerated and social engagement leapfrogs to immersive experience, it will be based on software, and lastly, it will require comprehensive tools to help developers release updates faster, more securely and continuously.

While we have had online collaboration tools for ages, the pandemic has hastened the usage and crippling reliance on them to connect, communicate, teach, learn, and bring products and services to the market.

The promise of the Metaverse desires to bring remote collaboration platforms up to speed for an age where more complex work patterns demand more sophisticated communication systems.

While this could usher in a new level of collaboration for developers it will also create a whole lot of more of work for them, as developers create innovation we see today, it will be big in terms of code needed to support its advanced virtual worlds, generating more software update than any mainstream business application. More code means more DevOps complexity leading greater need for DevSecOps.

Security is still the prime concern

It strikes one’s mind about how the Metaverse will be secured not only in a general sense but at the deeper level of its underlying programming. Some light was shed on this once again, most recently by the Apache Log4j vulnerability that compromised the entire enterprise system around the globe or for that matter the SolarWinds attack in which hackers injected a malicious code into a simple routine software update that was rolled out to tens of thousands of customers. This malicious code created a backdoor to user data, which hackers then used to create even more malware that helped them spy on companies and government organizations. 

Log4j and SolarWinds and other high-profile software supply chain attack underscores the point of next attack taking DevOps point of view security. The Metaverse depends on integrating with some of the key areas of technology like automated scanning which are not widely practiced, or DevSecOps making security first class citizen when it comes top software development.

Till then, enjoy with Paris Hilton and attend a virtual wedding.

The writer is the Partner: Data & AI Consultancy Alpha at Ampersand Advisory

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