Episode 20: Inside the Metaverse: ARM Deal, Microsoft, Activision and IDC’s Edge Predictions

Inside LIving on the Edge episode 20, Jason and Dan discuss ARM/NVIDIA deal, IDC’s new edge marketplace predictions, net cloud native migration challenges, and the blockbuster metaverse acquisition of Activision by Microsoft in an $68.7B all cash deal.

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• The Arm deal is dead, but Nvidia is not expected to slow down
• Edge computing set for growth – that is, when we can agree what it is — "As edge technology continues to expand in usage in a variety of workplace environments, we are seeing growing interest in expected concurrent workload growth in areas such as business intelligence and analytics, AI/ML-related workloads, and content workloads," IDC senior research analyst Max Pepper said in a statement announcing the report. However, he added that the rapid deployment of edge computing is significantly shaping workload evolution. Maybe the real lesson of edge computing is that an edge deployment will be intended to deliver a specific solution, and that this may demand specific hardware, software, and connectivity to meet those requirements, rather than just an off-the-shelf product. In this case, the real opportunities for edge computing could lie with the systems integrators, which have the relevant skills to pull together a solution from various component parts and provide services to support customers in operating it.
• New report highlights cloud-native migration challenges — In almost all cases, respondents ranked the challenges in that same order: first network, then OSS, BSS, and enterprise. The only challenges that were considered more severe in an area other than the network were "in-house development and integration skills" and "development and integration tooling," where the OSS space was recognized as a greater challenge than the network. This is not surprising given that most Tier 1 carriers have dozens of OSS solutions in operation. They do much of any integration work between systems internally and some OSS systems are stand-alone – dedicated to siloed services. Those who have already deployed cloud native also consider all of the challenges in the enterprise area to be greater than the survey base as a whole and all of the challenges in the BSS area to be less of a challenge. Their firsthand experience with implementing cloud native in the network area has opened their eyes to the challenges that await them in the enterprise space. However, they are more confident that they have the support needed, near term, for BSS tasks which include billing, revenue, and customer management.
• Microsoft to acquire Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion — Deal was all cash. Microsoft is acquiring Activision, the troubled publisher of Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and Diablo. The deal will value Activision at $68.7 billion, far in excess of the $26 billion Microsoft paid to acquire LinkedIn in 2016. It’s Microsoft’s biggest push into gaming, and the company says it will be the “third-largest gaming company by revenue, behind Tencent and Sony” once the deal closes. Microsoft plans to add many of Activision’s games to Xbox Game Pass once the deal closes. With the acquisition of Activision, Microsoft will soon publish franchises like Warcraft, Diablo, Overwatch, Call of Duty, and Candy Crush. “Upon close, we will offer as many Activision Blizzard games as we can within Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass, both new titles and games from Activision Blizzard’s incredible catalog,” says Microsoft’s CEO of gaming Phil Spencer. Xbox Game Pass now has 25 million subscribers, as Microsoft continues to acquire studios to boost the subscription service.
• A metaverse-loving Microsoft brings a dystopia for telcos — BT, the UK's telecom incumbent, has been documenting growth while grumbling about the implications. At first, it downplayed concern. Before lockdowns arrived in March 2020, normal daytime usage on the network ran at about 5 Tbit/s, revealed Howard Watson, its chief technology officer, in a blog at the time. The great retreat indoors sent that figure up to about 7.5 Tbit/s. No problem, said BT. Its network was built to withstand as much as 17.5 Tbit/s. But the executive tone had changed dramatically by December 2021. Spikes in Internet traffic had reignited the debate about net neutrality, the principle that stops operators from charging Internet companies for usage. A traffic tsunami of 25.5 Tbit/s was recorded on December 1, threatening to overwhelm BT systems, as a mere six soccer fixtures were streamed online by Amazon. "Of course, we invest to ensure our networks can cope with this but as demand grows further this decade we can see potential problems coming down the line," wrote Marc Allera, the CEO of BT's consumer division, in the latest BT blog. Even in the US market, where regulation is still light touch and competition is limited, major telecom stocks have declined during the pandemic. AT&T's share price has fallen 27% since the start of 2020, and Verizon's is down a tenth. Currently worth almost $2.3 trillion, Microsoft has enjoyed a 78% gain over the same period. Without something as hard to imagine as a telco-dominated metaverse, those fortunes will probably continue to diverge.
• Los Angeles Rams, Immersiv.io Team Up on Lens for Snap’s Next-Generation Spectacles — Immersiv.io’s Julien Deis said in a statement, “As a sports AR company, we are thrilled to create a sports fan experience of the future, and what’s better for a fan than being able to play catch with your favorite player? Through Spectacles, our focus was to design a lifelike experience that brings fan immersion to the end zone. So, we used the hand tracking technology available in Lens Studio to let fans wear a glove and catch the ball from Matt Stafford. We’re excited to experiment with the L.A. Rams to bring an innovative fan experience to life through the power of augmented reality.”