Will HoloLens Replace PCs in Your Business Workplace?

  • Designing using Microsoft HoloLens

Designing using Microsoft HoloLens

As a business leader, coder, writer, designer — do you think you could get used to wearing Hololens every day, if it meant you could manipulate your data and your work in a more intuitive, human-like way? That’s the promise of Hololens: that it lets us manipulate data — drawings, words, ideas — almost as if it is an object in our hands.

Research firm Tractica is predicting such a future for workers — so if you’re an IT manager or a CIO, you may want to start looking into the ramifications of such an evolution. Tractica released a paper called Wearables: 10 Trends to Watch that considers the effect wearable devices may have on businesses, workers and consumers as the technology moves to the mainstream.

Microsoft says its HoloLens — an augmented-reality headset — is the next computing platform.

It’s not virtual reality

Analyzing using Microsoft HoloLensAugmented reality isn’t “virtual reality.” Virtual reality cuts the wearer off from the real world. Augmented reality technology makes holograms appear in the users natural environment.

In theory Microsoft can redesign all its software to run on Hololens, letting users physically interact with productivity apps like Microsoft Office, and third-party developers can do the same with any other program. Microsoft’s Universal Windows Platform lets developers write an application once using code that enables it to run on any device that supports Windows.

If developers create new ways to leverage these apps using the special capabilities of HoloLens, Tractica reasons Hololens and augmented reality could overtake Windows desktop and keyboard to become the primary way workers create, invent, manipulate and interact with their data and do their work.

Of course, Hololens isn’t even available yet, so the study doesn’t suggest how long it might take for workers or IT leaders to decide to shift away from traditional computing and into augmented reality. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has said the developer version of HoloLens will be released within the next year.

Who is John PaulsenA creator, family man and former small-business leader myself, I feel your pain (and joy) and hope you’ll enjoy the blog. I launched and ran a well-regarded production company in San Francisco with a team of 9 brilliant, hard working people. I learned to manage a wide array of tasks a small business must handle — business strategy, facilities design, HR, payroll, taxes, marketing, all the way down to choosing telecom equipment and spec’ing a server system to help my team collaborate in real-time on dense media projects from multiple production rooms. I’ve partnered with and learned from dozens of small business owners.

2015-10-02T00:58:22+00:00

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