Evolving from Oculus for Business to Quest for Business

Since we launched Oculus for Business at Connect two years ago, we’ve seen amazing examples of how VR can transform work by allowing people to do key aspects of their jobs from anywhere without sacrificing economic opportunity, productivity, or connection.

As we shared with everyone at Connect today, we believe the metaverse will be a game-changer. In the realm of work, VR’s infinite displays and ability to create a real sense of human presence can help people be more collaborative and productive than ever before. Our goal is to unlock more of the superpowers of VR so we can enable the future of work—a future in which people can work more seamlessly with colleagues who are in different places and get more done in less time.

Over the last few years, as we've listened to feedback from our community on the future of work, individuals and businesses alike have told us they want multipurpose VR devices that can be used for work, for gaming, for web browsing, for personal projects, and more—much like how people use smartphones and laptops today.

So in order to provide the best experience and maximum benefit for our customers, we’re evolving our platform and building work capabilities into every headset we ship.

Today, we announced Quest for Business—a new suite of features designed to make Quest even more flexible. Our goal with Quest for Business is to ensure that every person, team, and business can benefit from using VR technology for collaboration, training, working remotely, and so much more—all on the same consumer Quest headset people know and love today.

Once feature complete, Quest for Business will deliver features and capabilities like Work Accounts and Mobile Device Management (MDM). Work Accounts will provide a new way to log in to Quest 2 with a work profile instead of your personal Facebook account. This will make it possible for your team or business to access immersive collaboration and productivity experiences on the Oculus Store like Horizon Workrooms, Spatial, Gravity Sketch, and Arthur. Plus, Quest for Business will enable your IT team to easily access the dedicated platform functions they need, like account management, IDP and SSO integration, and third-party MDM.

We’ll also offer a Device Manager that helps your business scale VR deployments by providing direct control of the experience and settings across a fleet of Quest devices. And because Device Manager integrates with third-party MDM hooks, you can benefit from expanded capabilities like unified device management, network security, and data protection from our MDM partners Microsoft Intune, VMware Workspace ONE, and Ivanti UEM (formerly MobileIron).

This major shift will allow any Quest 2 to become a headset that can be used for work.

Our first closed, experimental beta of Quest for Business will begin later this year. We expect smaller teams and companies to be the first customers, and that we’ll get their feedback as we consider how we could bring this to larger enterprises over time. We plan to offer open beta releases in 2022, where we’ll gather feedback and fine-tune Quest for Business before launching the solution for general availability in 2023.

As we pivot to building multipurpose devices, we’re making changes to our current offerings. The last day to purchase the existing Oculus for Business SKU will be December 31, 2021. Here’s what that means for current customers as well as those who purchase before the end of the year:

Once feature complete, we believe Quest for Business will provide more flexibility and richer experiences for our current Oculus for Business customers. Read our FAQ for more details.

We’re investing in a variety of VR features for work, in both the short and long term. Our current focus is on making VR more flexible and multifunctional. People should be able to hop into VR and find all the tools they need to tackle any project. In the future, we envision that anyone will be able to put on a consumer Quest headset and toggle between personal and work accounts. Their VR experience will take advantage of device and system software, Quest Platform experiences and features, and third-party business solutions created by our ISV community.

Here’s a look at what’s in store with Quest for Business:

By creating multipurpose VR devices, we’ll expand opportunities for the ISVs in our network that create applications for work. They’ll now have access to a broader base of customers who enjoy Quest 2 for gaming, media, fitness, and a variety of other experiences. ISVs will also have a streamlined customer distribution channel in App Lab. And they’ll have access to more development features, like our consumer APIs.

In addition, we’re launching a new developer framework for PWAs that’s based on industry standards. By enabling ISVs to bring new kinds of applications to the Quest Platform, we'll build a much more diverse ecosystem of multifunctional apps that help people accomplish more in VR.

Whether you’re a current customer or ISV—or you’re just starting to look into the potential of VR for business—we hope you’re exploring the amazing things you can do in VR right now. Gather with your colleagues from around the world in a Workrooms meeting, map out ideas on a virtual shared whiteboard, and so much more.

Check back on our blog for updates as we roll out new features, build out the metaverse, and get closer to our vision for the future of work.