Facebook selects ENGAGE to accelerate VR adoption

LONDON: VR Education, a leading virtual reality (VR) technology company focused on the education and enterprise training space, announced that the Group’s ENGAGE platform has been selected by Facebook for its Oculus Independent Software Vendors (ISV) programme.

The Oculus ISV programme works with enterprise developers and software companies to engage with Oculus in order to accelerate customer adoption of VR solutions built for Oculus enterprise products.  As a result, following the anticipated roll-out of Oculus for Business in early 2020, VR Education’s ENGAGE platform will, for the first time, be available via a special portal for Oculus enterprise clients to access and connect with.  In addition, the Group will be one of only a few select developers who will able to provide services using Facebook equipment as well as receiving additional support from them.

Facebook, which manufactures the Oculus Rift and Oculus Quest, are currently the market leaders in standalone VR device sales with the Oculus Quest on track to sell over one million units this year following its release in late May 2019.

Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, recently told shareholders at its Q2 2019 earnings call: “This quarter, we shipped Oculus Quest, our first all-in-one headset with no wires and full freedom of movement.”

“It has gotten great reviews and we’re selling them as fast as we can make them.  More importantly, we’ve delivered an experience that people keep using week after week, and buying more content,” Mark Zuckerberg said.

The ENGAGE platform is an advanced virtual reality training and education platform that makes it easy to collaborate on tasks remotely, create new content and learn in VR.  The ENGAGE team have signed up various commercial deals in the US and Korea with educational institutions and the Group is currently engaged in negotiations with various large multinationals to provide enterprise solutions to their workers and training professionals.

David Whelan, CEO of VR Education, said: “It is fantastic to be chosen by Facebook to help accelerate the wider adoption of VR globally.  Oculus has an amazing technology platform and ENGAGE is leading the way when it comes to distance learning and remote team collaboration.  I see an extremely bright future for this technology with the release of high-end mobile devices, such as the Oculus Quest and the HTC Vive Focus, as well as the release of 5G high speed mobile internet.

Business and enterprise will only adopt new technology when they see compelling advantages to doing so and ENGAGE is being developed to meet these business needs providing virtual meeting rooms and training scenarios which save customers time and money.  To date, adoption of VR/AR has been steady, however with Facebook, HTC, O2, Deutsche Telekom and many others all now working towards the growth of 5G and AR/VR, we believe that will see an acceleration of adoption over the next 18 to 24 months.”