Augmented reality is branching out from gaming graphics into high-return business use cases. Its power to render data and images in 3D can fast-forward product development in enterprises, said Joe Mikhail (pictured), chief revenue officer at Meta Co., which develops AR products geared mainly toward enterprises.

“It basically overlays digital data and virtual objects in the real world,” Mikhail said. Meta is not concerned simply with producing holograms for entertainment or an impressive visual show, he told John Furrier (@furrier), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio,  during Accenture Labs 30th Anniversary Celebration in Mountain View, California.

“Our forte is really in being a spatial interface company,” Mikhail said. The company is building AR interfaces that users interact with via technology based on principals of neuroscience. Users can interact with holograms by walking around them or stretching them.

AR and 3D rendering allow users to examine ideas and data in totally new ways, Mikhail stated. Mental concepts can be viewed and understood from unexpected angles once put into visual form. “Ideation” involves “taking all that data, getting a 3D model with all its complexity into a simple form that we can collaborate around,” he added.

Fail-proofing product design

Meta has collaborated with Accenture PLC to test its AR products. The two have measured a 20 percent productivity increase in some cases, according to Mikhail. 

Though many of Meta’s own developers come out of the gaming world, it’s biggest customers are enterprises. They use Meta products in “high ROI [return on investment] type of applications in product design — so rapidly iterating on concepts and ideas, getting all the way to sales and marketing,” Mikhail said.

Meta has plans to advance into education and life sciences in the near future, he added.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Accenture Labs 30th Anniversary Celebration.

Photo: SiliconANGLE