Microsoft has jumped on the metaverse bandwagon

Microsoft has jumped on the metaverse bandwagon, with two new announcements at its Ignite 2021 event on Tuesday, pertaining to “the evolution into the metaverse.”

“As the digital and physical worlds come together, we are creating an entirely new platform layer, which is the metaverse. We’re bringing people, places and things together with the digital world in both the consumer space, as well as in the enterprise,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said at the event

Microsoft’s announcements come soon after Facebook rebranded the parent company to ‘Meta,’ to emphasise its plans for the metaverse.

Microsoft has announced that it will be launching a new solution, Mesh for Teams in 2022. Positioned as the “gateway to the metaverse,” the solution will enable users to be present in a meeting using personalised avatars and immersive spaces that can be accessed from any device, with no special equipment needed.

It has also announced the launch of Dynamics 365 Connected Spaces. Currently in preview, “this product provides a new perspective on the way people move and interact with nearly any space, from the retail store to the factory floor, and how they manage health and safety in a hybrid work environment,” the company said in a statement.

“When we talk about the metaverse, we’re describing both a new platform and a new application type, similar to how we talked about the web and websites in the early ’90s.

Across the Microsoft Cloud, from Azure IoT to Azure Digital Twins to Connected Spaces and Microsoft Mesh, we’re building the metaverse platform for you to expand upon.

In a sense, the metaverse enables us to embed computing into the real world and to embed the real world into computing, bringing real presence to any digital space,” Nadella said.