Nth Floor

The Nth Floor is an enterprise metaverse solution created by teams across Microsoft, AltspaceVR and Accenture that enables employees to meet, interact & collaborate in virtual offices leveraging virtual reality and the Metaverse.

The term “Nth Floor” relates to the infinite number of virtual floors a company can use, in comparison to the physical limitations of real-world offices.
In October 2021, it was revealed by CEO Julie Sweet that the firm acquired 60,000 Meta Quest 2 headsets to enable employees for the Nth Floor and Enterprise Metaverses This was also revealed in their Q1 2022 Earnings Report together with the virtual One Accenture Park that has become the standard way for onboarding new employees as their total workforce has grown to 674,000 employees
History
The concept was originally developed and tested in 2019 by a team led by Ben Holfeld, Katie Kelly (Microsoft) & Jason Warnke (Accenture CIO). It came to particular prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic as more employees began to work remotely, being featured in the Wall Street Journal in 2020 and presented at the 2021 Microsoft Ignite Keynote.
The Nth Floor concept was presented at Microsoft Ignite 2019 but the need to work remotely during the 2020 pandemic accelerated the demand for new ways of virtual interaction. Thanks to new hardware as Oculus Quest and developer tools by Unity Technologies, Oculus and Microsoft, the concept became reality and has been announced at multiple events and conferences.
In 2021, during the announcement of Microsoft Mesh, the Nth Floor was highlighted and the concept of virtual offices and collaboration were shared across news media. The concept and several solutions have been used for immersive virtual town halls, summits, avoiding high costs and carbon-emissions through significant travel which is usually necessary for these types of global events.
In October 2021, after Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook's focus on the Metaverse by rebranding the company as Meta, Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, also shared his vision on the future of work and the role of Metaverses in Harvard Business Review and included Accenture's Nth Floor as an example of the Enterprise Metaverse.

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