Cool Vendors in Enterprise Wearable and

Immersive Technologies, 2017

Published: 7 June 2017 ID: G00325871

Analyst(s): Chris Silva, Annette Jump, Angela McIntyre, Brian Blau, Marty Resnick

Many I&O leaders struggle to build a complete platform to support wearable

devices in the enterprise. This research highlights innovative tools that go
beyond hardware and address issues key to a successful enterprise
wearable device strategy: content, device management, integration and
security.

Key Findings
■ Gartner sees interest among global companies to deploy wearable and immersive technologies
across training, production and service delivery taking shape in 2017.
■ Keen interest is exhibited in the head-mounted display (HMD)-based technologies of
augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), with the former representing a majority of
Gartner's inbound client interest in 2017 to date.
■ A volatile market due to its relative immaturity, the AR/VR space offers great opportunities for
both technology providers and enterprises, but market forces can shift swiftly, negating any
gains.

Recommendations
Infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders focused on mobile and endpoint strategies should:

■ Account for the complete solution set of enterprise wearable technology by including
management and content tools alongside hardware when creating a strategy.
■ Protect your business from market exits or vendor pivots as established IT vendors move into
this space by focusing on product compatibility and offerings with broad support.
■ Avoid incompatible policies and clumsily displayed content on these new endpoints by
recreating policies and refactoring content instead of directly migrating it from its configuration
for use with traditional devices.
 Analysis
This research does not constitute an exhaustive list of vendors in any given technology area, but
rather is designed to highlight interesting, new and innovative vendors, products and services.
Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any
warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

What You Need to Know

Gartner is witnessing enterprise strategy take on new frontiers as organizations look to formally
adopt wearable devices and immersive technology across logistics, training and production
environments. Global organizations are actively using AR technology to enhance service delivery in
the field and streamline warehouse operations. Emerging use cases deliver delighted customers and
well-informed workforces through immerse customer experiences using VR, and train employees in
complex operations and tasks with the same technology. Whether using the technologies less
familiar to the traditional mobile and endpoint strategy or offering the more familiar wearable in the
form of a smartwatch to provide workers with easily accessible information, understanding this
market and its up-and-coming players is a key step toward modernizing endpoint strategy.

Those organizations supplying technology to the HMD market writ large — including AR and VR
devices — or seeking to provide value atop these technologies, such as content, management and
customization, can gain insight from the vendors selected here. Studying these firms' strategies and
challenges can help to identify partners and validate or repudiate market approaches in an emerging
and volatile space.

Augmate
New York, New York (www.augmate.com)

Analysis by Chris Silva

Why Cool: Augmate has emerged as an early player focused exclusively on the provisioning,
deployment and management of wearable devices for enterprise device fleets. Similar to enterprise
mobility management (EMM) tools — some of which have built this functionality also — Augmate
has partnered with various hardware vendors in the wearable devices space to ensure support for
custom implementations of OSs such as Android and proprietary offerings to automate application
of software updates, configuration (such as WLAN settings and credentials) and device location,
across a fleet of devices from a single console. This hands-off management of devices and ability to
push out a command once to ensure that all devices are updated, or that they all have a critical app,
cuts down on operating expenses.

Challenges: Augmate faces the following challenges in addressing the growing market for
enterprise wearables management:

■ Competing with incumbent and well-known endpoint management offerings such as EMM tools
from larger vendors like VMware looking to expand their offerings to address wearables
management

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 ■ Navigating a currently volatile market for software solution providers and specialized device
manufacturers, both likely channels for Augmate into the enterprise
■ Selling the value proposition of a fleet-style management tool when, in many instances that
Gartner has researched, HMD and AR use cases in large enterprises can measure fewer than 50
devices today.

Who Should Care: I&O leaders within companies that are building or growing fleets of wearable
devices to augment workers' interactions, workflows or training. Managing devices at scale can be
costly if device configurations, software updates, and the push of content and apps to devices is
done manually or as a one-off. As mobile device management (MDM) and EMM tools enable IT
operations leaders to scale diverse smartphone and tablet environments, the ability to automate the
application of policies and configuration to multiple devices, often from varied manufacturers and
on different platforms from a single console, is critical to scaling wearables implementations.
Product leaders offering specialized hardware or service-based offerings leveraging wearables can
monitor the health and performance of devices in the field and quickly reconfigure hardware
between deployments or use cases.

Small or fledgling technology and service providers seeking an entrée into the enterprise market,
either with devices or software, are wise to partner with Augmate. In addition to potentially
broadening their sales pipeline, Augmate's ability to offer a consistent management capability of
their devices will help handle traditional enterprise buying center concerns with small hardware
vendors.

ETT Solutions
Genoa, Italy (www.ettsolutions.com)

Analysis by Annette Jump

Why Cool: ETT Solutions creates immersive (AR and VR) content designed for navigation and digital
storytelling across museums, history, art, science, public and retail clients. The vendor offers
solutions that include exhibit design, creating 3D content and installation of the immersive
experiences. It uses the latest products from HMD providers like Oculus' Rift, HTC's Vive and
Samsung's Gear VR to enable VR experiences. AR experiences are delivered via smartphone apps.
In 2016, the company received €2 million in institutional financing and has joined the Elite
Programme (for structured engagement developing and supporting private companies through their
next stage of growth), developed by Borsa Italiana and London Stock Exchange Group.

ETT Solutions provides a platform for I&O leaders tasked with creating new interactions with
customers. Some examples of immersive projects are various museums and archeological sites in
Milan, Venice and Rome; the Magna Carta exhibition in the U.K.; the Lamborghini Museum (with an
increase in visitors by 100%); AR and VR experiences at the Aquarium of Genoa (in the Abyss
Room), Al Ain Oasis in the United Arab Emirates; as well as smart government portals for several
Italian metropolitan areas. Gartner sees potential in the technology being used in business-to-
employee use cases such as interacting with data and objects in an R&D setting as an area for ETT
Solutions to pursue for expansion.

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 Challenges: ETT Solutions faces a variety of challenges:

■ The AR/VR market is new, with many companies starting with pilots and proof-of-concept
projects. Therefore, it is necessary to do a lot of education work and explain how those
technologies can transform interactions and experiences.
■ Costs may vary greatly from one immersive project to another, so providing cost analysis could
be very difficult. The publicly available cost analysis may not be representative of the market or
even a specific use case.
■ Marketing and increasing brand awareness of the company is a challenge, as this is an
emerging market.
■ The market around AR/VR solutions is very fragmented by verticals and geography, so
expanding and scaling the business outside of the core market (museums) and beyond Italy
could be a challenge and will require additional investments.
■ The vendor must compete with proprietary offerings to adapt content to wearable hardware
consumption cases from established design and presentation software vendors and digital
agencies.

Who Should Care: I&O leaders within companies looking to enhance or transform their interactions
with users/consumers in non-mission-critical scenarios. Examples of possible verticals include
history, art, museum and entertainment (cinema/theater, sightseeing, etc.), as well as retail space
and fashion. With ETT Solutions, I&O leaders can make interactions with users more immersive and
interactive to expand the visibility and attractiveness of their offerings, for product marketing
purposes to extend interaction with the brand, to enable product design/product configuration (for
example, selecting options for a new car or interior design of a new house), and to shorten the
buying cycle.

To IT vendors and service providers, ETT Solutions represents an interesting partner for HMD
(smartglasses and VR helmets) and 3D camera device providers looking to expand their devices in
the business space in verticals like art, museums, entertainment, retail, etc. Also, digital marketing
providers could partner with ETT Solutions to create more personalized or engaging branding
experiences or marketing campaigns for their clients.

Fieldbit
Hod HaSharon, Israel (www.fieldbit.net)

Analysis by Marty Resnick

Why Cool: Fieldbit provides a software platform enabling organizations to equip their field service
technicians with remote support, knowledge access and knowledge capture through the use of AR.
While in the field, service technicians could be at a machine that needs adjustment, fixing or
maintenance, and be connected live to a remote support agent. The agent could send specific
instructions and information in real time, presented as digital overlays on the physical machine, via
smartglasses, smartphones and tablets. Once the service ticket is completed, information including
video with AR content is then uploaded back to the knowledge base library that could be accessed

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 by other technicians for future work orders. Content creation is often a key barrier and cost to
implementing effective AR systems, and Fieldbit overcomes this by capturing and creating content
organically through collaboration.

Fieldbit's primary market is capital equipment manufacturers in the electromechanical, medical

equipment and printing system space. However, that market is expanding to all areas of
manufacturing and field service. As a software platform, Fieldbit currently supports Epson Moverio
BT-300 and ODG R7 smartglasses, with support for additional smartglasses coming soon.

Challenges: Fieldbit faces a variety of challenges:

■ AR is still a new technology for most manufacturers, and addressing concerns about hardware
quality and end-user experience will make for lengthy sales cycles.
■ AR is very content-driven, and the parallel processes of adapting diverse content and handling
custom integrations into support infrastructure are time-consuming and expensive.
■ Limiting platform support to only a few smartglasses vendors in a crowded marketplace
artificially limits the solution's market and opportunities.
■ Larger remote support and knowledge-based systems vendors (e.g., Bloomfire and Kaleo) are
likely to expand into the AR capabilities space, and the competitive landscape will
fundamentally change as these large and well-resourced vendors enter.

Who Should Care: I&O leaders focused on improving training, knowledge transfer and work-order
completion timeliness through the use of wearable devices should consider the advantages an AR-
based field service and knowledge-based system could offer. Specific verticals that should look into
this capability include telecommunications, utilities, medical equipment, capital equipment and
printing systems, although any organization that utilizes and/or services manufacturing equipment
should evaluate this tool as well.

T&S providers and manufacturers providing HMD hardware capable of AR and mixed reality would
make interesting partners, as HMD support for Fieldbit is currently limited. Enterprises see real
immediate value in field service AR use cases and are looking for turnkey solution providers
(hardware and software) that could help them begin pilot programs.

Sensics
Columbia, Maryland (http://sensics.com)

Analysis by Brian Blau

Why Cool: Sensics is a small AR and VR system provider selected as a Cool Vendor given its role in
providing a critical middleware API that serves as a data and function translator, allowing a
disparate group of immersive devices and technologies to work with AR and VR devices. Since the
1990s, Sensics has focused on enabling the interconnection between immersive devices and the
systems with which they want to integrate. Without Sensics, each individual AR or VR peripheral
would require purpose-coded integration to each different AR/VR system — not an approach that

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 scales across the hundreds of vendors currently creating immersive technology. Sensics' API allows
for those vendors, or any business that wants to use these immersive ecosystems, to establish a
technical tie-in. Once integrated with Sensics, these third-party providers can be assured
interoperability with many immersive technology ecosystems. Sensics claims more than 400
partners supporting Open Source VR (OSVR), including Nvidia, Acer and Leap Motion.

Sensics' VR software platform is an OSVR API that extends the functionality of market-share-
leading AR/VR device vendors (such as Oculus, HTC, Microsoft and Google; see "Competitive
Landscape: HMDs for Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality"). Each device vendor offers APIs that
app developers can use, but instead of supporting each vendor's API individually, developers can
instead use the Sensics APIs, which support all of the HMD systems. That way, the developer
integrates only with the Sensics APIs but has access to all of the HMD systems. Other devices,
such as joysticks/controllers, displays or cloud apps, can use Sensics APIs to integrate across
many systems at once without the need to port to each individual system.

Sensics also produces its own line of devices and related technology, which is available via
licensing. The company can partner with OEMs to help produce their devices, which mainly have
been HMDs. Sensics' long history means the company is a veteran of the VR industry compared
with the many startups currently offering solutions. The company is privately held and its revenue is
not disclosed. It has fewer than 30 employees and has taken approximately $5 million in total
funding through seven rounds from investors since 2005. The number of paying customers is not
disclosed, but Sensics claims hundreds of integrations with OSVR and the customer list.

Challenges:

■ Sensics' foremost challenge is remaining abreast of developments in the fast-changing

landscape of VR technology providers. There are now thousands of startups all competing
within the VR ecosystem, and maintaining value for Sensics means scaling to address the
integration challenges of each new market entrant.
■ Sensics faces an uphill battle as other vendors seek to provide immersive technology OSs, API
stacks, devices and custom integrations.
■ Sensics' market opportunity will face challenges if the need for device-specific integrations
fades in favor of solution providers seeking direct access into specific ecosystems. While this is
likely as the market matures, examples of mature spaces such as smartphones illustrate a large
number of service providers offering APIs and integration services.
■ As change remains a constant in this market, with new entrants from established vendors
(examples include Microsoft Windows Mixed Reality, and likely a developer system from Magic
Leap), Sensics may need to pursue a deeper relationship with the platform providers, making
the company an acquisition target for those that wish to exert more control over how data is
exchanged between different VR devices and systems.

Who Should Care: VR platform providers that are monitoring or participating in standards efforts
will come in contact with Sensics. Many will view it as an easy onboarding technology, while others
could see it as competition or a way to democratize access to VR. Still others will see it as a threat
to closed and proprietary systems. The industry standards being developed by The Khronos Group

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 — with Sensics' participation — are just getting started, and while we expect them to agree on
standards for many aspects of AR and VR eventually, it could be several years before we see the
first standards adopted.

Sensics is a key technology partner for HMD providers or others making VR peripherals or devices
considering how to integrate their functionality with multiple VR ecosystem players. As IT
organizations become more sophisticated in their use of immersive technologies, they will need to
understand graphics technology, including how various devices, platforms and systems
interoperate. In addition, some businesses will need Sensics to provide custom design and
technology development, as more vertically integrated solutions may be needed when general-
purpose systems can't be used.

VMI
San Diego, California (www.visualmobilityinc.com)

Analysis by Angela McIntyre

Why Cool: VMI offers an enterprise-focused SaaS suite, Seenix, to enable the secure transfer,
analysis and storage of video streamed from the camera in workers' smartglasses during remote
collaborative work sessions. VMI accommodates secure storage of audio and video on-premises or
in a private cloud, which is often a requirement for government-related customers, instead of
external hosting (for example, through Amazon Web Services). The Seenix Remote Assisted Reality
(RAR) Enterprise Software Applications have full master and transactional data management
functions integrated with the live or recorded audio and video content, and can be deployed stand-
alone. Alternatively, VMI can deploy its solution on legacy back-end enterprise apps, including
online transactional processing (OLTP) databases and online analytical processing platforms (OLAP)
using APIs and hands-on system integration work. With VMI, IT organizations can provide remote
expert guidance to their end users without having to do most of the integration work themselves or
hire a third-party system integrator, because VMI has the skills to do it for them.

VMI's RAR enables a worker to use the camera on smartglasses to share audio and video of what
he or she is doing with experts in other locations. The experts see what the worker sees and provide
guidance to resolve issues. Workers can have their hands free to do tasks or for safety purposes
while using the smartglasses.

VMI's Seenix solution incorporates streamed high-definition (HD) video from several types of
endpoint devices in addition to smartglasses (for example, from drones and 720-degree mounted
surveillance cameras). The audio and video are transmitted through the internet via 4G LTE wireless
broadband through a network connectivity device provided by VMI. The Seenix apps can be
accessed via smartphones, tablets or PCs, and provide web access to video and to dashboard data
about the job (for example, the service log).

Challenges: VMI does not support visual instructions or AR images through smartglasses, which
would put the vendor at a disadvantage with potential enterprise customers wishing to test and
implement those features and other providers that offer such capability. Companies that offer

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 software services for smartglasses to enterprises often include visual instructions and AR
capabilities, in addition to using the camera for remote expert guidance. Examples of VMI's
competitors that focus on services for streaming video through smartglasses include Hewlett
Packard Enterprise, Upskill (as a result of its acquisition of Pristine) and XMReality. Another
challenge for VMI is the lack of an option to use cloud hosting services, such as Amazon Web
Services, which could have the potential to reduce video management costs for enterprises with
less stringent data security requirements.

Who Should Care: I&O leaders of enterprise organizations that install, maintain or repair capital
equipment should consider VMI's RAR for the following reasons:

■ Reduce time to diagnosis and time to resolution (TTR) of problems and repairs, respectively.
■ Lower error rates in the above processes and reduce the overhead of these processes (for
example, travel expenses).
■ Improve communications and service delivery; better illustrating problems that need attention,
work that was completed and how it was done.
■ Improve training efficiency by more effectively and broadly utilizing the skills of a regional and/or
aging workforce.

In particular, I&O leaders navigating an adoption of wearable content who require that video and
other information not be stored by external party web hosting services should evaluate VMI
solutions.

Product leaders among wearables vendors targeting regulated industries or use cases with sensitive
and compliance-subject information (such as dealing with confidential product information or
patient information in a healthcare setting) should investigate a go-to-market partnership with VMI
to bolster the security stance of their offering.

Gartner Recommended Reading

Some documents may not be available as part of your current Gartner subscription.

"The First Three Steps in Evaluating the Role of Head-Mounted Displays for Field Service"

"Cool Vendors in Wearable Electronics for Enterprise, 2016"

"Competitive Landscape: HMDs for Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality"

"Market Guide for Augmented Reality"

"Enterprise Wearable Technology Must Be Adopted Using a Risk-Based Approach"

More on This Topic

This is part of an in-depth collection of research. See the collection:

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 ■ IoT Technology Disruptions: A Gartner Trend Insight Report

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