This week investment company, Square Peg Capital partner Paul Basset (founder of Seek) outlined why Australia needs to invest more in home grown technology companies rather than boosting overseas technology giants.
In the article Basset referred to the need for Australia to produce “our fair share of global winners”.
He highlighted example Australian home grown tech successes such as Airwallex (a Square Peg Capital portfolio company) and education startup A Cloud Guru.
We’d like to highlight another Australian tech success story not mentioned.
Snobal.
Here’s why.
Facebook’s enterprise platform for VR deployment (Oculus for Business )
Facebook is one of the most prominent global players in virtual reality.
To date Facebook has invested over $US2 + billion so far on virtual reality. It started off with the company acquiring Occulus in 2012 for US$2.3 billion.
Initially the focus for the company was consumer focussed VR. It’s logical as consumers were and still are Facebook’s key target market / product. But adoption of consumer VR has been slower taking off than expected. Facebook turned to enterprise with the launch of Oculus for Business.
Oculus for Business was described as:
an enterprise solution designed to streamline and expand virtual reality in the workplace. Launching this fall, the expanded Oculus for Business will add Oculus Quest to the hardware lineup and provide a suite of tools designed to help companies reshape the way they do business through the power of VR.
Snobal’s enterprise platform for VR deployment (Snobal Cloud)
Meanwhile, back in Australia Snobal has focussed on business and what the future of work looks like using VR and AR since founding in 2014.
Our focus from day one has always been on making it easy for business to use VR and AR.
Today our enterprise platform for VR deployment is used by global companies and government organisations in Europe, North America and Asia.
We knew from over 5 yrs of working with business on their VR requirements, that organisations want four key things out of an enterprise platform for VR deployment:
- Control over data.
- Control over users.
- Control over privacy.
- Control over the headset and hardware used.
The result?
Snobal Cloud.
Snobal Cloud is the world’s first proprietary enterprise grade platform to enable the ease of delivery, analysis and managment of virtual reality and augmented reality (XR) experiences.
A comparison…
Let’s compare Snobal Cloud and Facebook’s Oculus for Business enterprise platform based on some key features and functionality currently available:
Note on:
—Worldwide geographical availability and support: Oculus for Business is for the following locations only at time of writing: The US, Canada, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Republic of Ireland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Taiwan and the UK. If you are not in one of the countries listed above (eg Singapore), Oculus for Business is currently not able to support business at the present time.
— Available for external content providers: Oculus for Business content providers must join the Oculus Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) Program. The goal of the ISV program is “to accelerate customer adoption of VR solutions built for Oculus enterprise products”. Read more.
— Data sovereignty: The infrastructure for Snobal Cloud Australian clients is hosted in Amazon AWS in Sydney.
Oculus for Business is built on Facebook Workplace. Business will need to assess privacy and risk requirements around having their data stored on Facebook servers.
For a detailed comparison table visit here.
Building our future
But back to all things Australian ‘new companies’ and building our future.
At the launch of the report from Deloitte Access Economics, commissioned by Victoria’s startup agency LaunchVic, Basset echoed the reports findings that startups have the potential to play a major role in Victoria’s (and Australia’s) post-COVID-19 economic return.
In order for Australia to maintain the prosperity we have had for generations we need to produce our fair share of global winners…it is important for Australia to make investments and start businesses that are looking towards the future so that when things like this happen the growth is coming here and not going to overseas global businesses.
His comments reflect those of Dr Pradeep Philip Partner, Head of Deloitte Access Economics mentioned in the report that COVID-19 has seen a rapid transition of our physical world to a virtual world and is a key part of Australia’s future economy.
Snobal is a technology company that has created a world leading enterprise solution for VR deployment.
We’re a technology company that is Australian but we work with global companies and government organisations across the world.
We know we are punching well above our weight in the VR and AR development and landscape.
Like the report outlines and Ed Husic MP, Federal Member for Chifley outlined this morning on social, “If there was ever a sector that could help restart the economy it’s Australia’s tech sector.