At the Accenture Technology Vision event this week in San Francisco, an annual report on the current state of technology was the topic of conversation. One of the key trends examined in the report was extended reality, which is seeing increased adoption from enterprises with more pilot programs and major deployments rolling out. Companies are even releasing requests for products designed for specific applications, indicating that the technology is starting to move past the test-and-learn phase.

“We’ve seen a shift now where it’s the business starting to push the agenda. So maybe it’s the VP of operations, maybe it’s the chief learning officer, and I think that trend is a big difference because it starts to mean the business is seeing this as it could provide value,” said Jason Welsh (pictured), managing director of extended reality at Accenture PLC.  

Welsh spoke with Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, at the Accenture Technology Vision event to discuss the uptick in extended reality applications for businesses.

New use cases for extended reality

Companies are looking to extended reality for a variety of situational training — from Black Friday to harassment and inclusion conduct training. Early academic research shows improvements over traditional cognitive behavioral therapy training, but concrete evidence of immersive training effectiveness would further aid adoption, according to Welsh.

“We need more data around the effectiveness of it. So the academic research says it’s gonna be better, because of that spatial awareness, the fact that I’ve recreated a real situation in my head. But we just need more metrics and more data that shows the really the powerful effect of that over time,” Welsh said.

On the consumer side, the immersive experience provides an entirely new medium for markets to advertise in. Beyond the advertising revenues, though, companies are looking at extended reality to create entirely new classes of products and features to drive profits.

“So you know augmented reality in the car … we already have heads-up displays. We have driverless cars. You’re going to start to put VR inside the driverless cars as an entertainment platform. So it’s a whole different sort of segment beyond just how do I enable the value chain, how do I actually start to create new products and services and new monetization streams,” Welsh concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Accenture Technology Vision event.

Photo: SiliconANGLE