Over the past few years, we have witnessed the rapid digitization that a fully virtual world has been built that has evolved out of this collective ambition to incorporate more advanced technologies. With the advent of metaverses, we have seen countless opportunities.
The spread of Metaverse is expected to change the financial, media and e-commerce landscape, in addition to continuing to develop the way we work and socially communicate. Government agencies across the Middle East have already started supporting investment in Metaverse. Recently, the Dubai Future Foundation hosted the Dubai Metaverse Forum, which showcased the potential of metaverses in vital economic sectors1. And the giant NEOM project in Saudi Arabia announced an investment of $1 billion in Metaverse and other AI applications in 2022 alone2. With this shift to the virtual world, the demand for data storage solutions will increase exponentially, which must continue to store sensitive data that is collected securely.
The experiences that we would normally describe as "real" are drawn into the realm of metaphysics. Metaverse was initially described by critics as the 3D alternative to the 2D Internet. Live events and entertainment have already established themselves in this hybrid world of physical and digital experiences.
Extended reality (XR) has also seen an increase in demand in recent years, when consumers can no longer shop in-store, extended reality has bridged the gap between the "real world" and the "virtual world". Research conducted by YouGov in 2021 indicated that a large number of UAE residents are likely to shop for clothing (53%) and technology or home appliances (46%) using VR gadgets3. But these data-intensive platforms will prompt companies to rethink their data warehousing strategies.
"Secondary" or "Live" Data Storage Solutions
Metaverse is still in the initial stage, but it is expanding day by day, so companies must prepare for the “big launch” or the expected explosive growth. It is only natural that with continued expansion, storage requirements will increase. Metaverse is a new and evolving market that has begun to gradually gain customer confidence, which makes it imperative for storage units manufacturers to continue providing powerful and high-performance storage solutions with large capacities that can support this new digital world.
The metaverse itself has to be stored somewhere, whether it's a server, a central location, or a decentralized one. The data required to create and alter multiple virtual worlds within the vast, intricately detailed environments that users can interact with will be enormous. Datasets collected by individual companies will also need to be taken into account, especially with non-fungible tokens (NFTs), avatars, and user-generated content. Whether this data collected is about user experience, individual shopping preferences or impressions, it is important that it is stored safely and efficiently.
This is where the need arises for emerging technologies such as 'live' and 'secondary' data warehousing solutions.
Live data warehousing solutions are critical to keeping real-time live production data that needs immediate access. As the Metaverse evolves, world building, character creation, and real-time information exchange will generate a huge need for direct and fast data storage solutions. These worlds and characters within the Metaverse are constantly evolving and this data should be immediately available to developers, especially due to the associated augmented and virtual reality elements.
Secondary data storage solutions are often dormant or archived for future use such as artificial intelligence and machine learning. This data is kept on hard disk drives (HDDs) rather than solid state drives (SSDs). The biggest consideration in this case is how readily available this data is. Data stored in secondary solutions from service providers can take hours to access, which is not useful for ever-evolving virtual worlds like Metaverse.
There will come a period when Metaverse will benefit from the use of secondary data warehousing solutions. For example, storing and sharing recordings of individual gaming sessions for later viewing or sharing with others. But live data warehousing solutions take precedence over the evolutionary stages that Metaverse is going through.
When it comes to user experiences and business cases, the amount of data collected can get very large. This secondary data must be stored privately away from the data used to provide metaverse services or the elements that characterize and pervade this virtual world. Storage of collected data will be the next biggest challenge for brands, developers and storage solutions providers.
The steps required to achieve the desired goals
It will take the virtual world to foster innovation for Metaverse to provide what companies are looking for in the future.
As metaverses proliferate, companies' expectations rise, and investments increase across the Middle East, data warehousing solutions providers will need to consider the multiple facets of the data they are attempting to store. For example, a strategy of storing data by categories and levels helps distinguish datasets between “live” and “secondary” data according to information that should be readily available or that should be stored securely.
These platforms need to handle huge volumes of data amounting to large numbers of petabytes, which makes storage an issue of utmost importance for these solution providers. For government and companies, this means ensuring that data is collected and stored securely, with the ability to store more of it as they continue to expand in the metaverse world. All of these storage considerations must be taken into account without affecting the daily connection to Metaverse and building consumer trust within this space. And if you think this data virtualization is a bold move in the region, I invite you to think again, as the Middle East is home to some of the first metaverse platforms in the world. Dubai and Abu Dhabi were finally chosen by Metaverse Holdings as the first two cities in the world to be launched within the virtual world to replicate real-life experiences and places in Metaverse 4. The metaverse with such exciting initiatives may seem limitless, but we must not forget that it is the providers of data storage solutions who are laying the foundations for how far this virtual world can go.
Written by Tariq Al-Husseini, Senior Director of Sales at Western Digital
