From the metaverse to meta everywhere: Three Aussie businesses join NEXT to create the new digital world

NCS announced last Tuesday that its digital tech services arm, NEXT, has grown to scale in key markets — including in Australia — and is now looking to create “meta everywhere” thanks to the help of three Aussie businesses. 

Only two years since embarking on its growth strategy to regionalise outside of Singapore — where parent company Singtel Group is based — and NEXT has increased its headcount five-fold, in a narrative much different to what we are currently seeing in the tech sector. 

Of the now 2000-strong team of digital specialists, nearly half are based in Australia, including ARQ Group chief executive Tristan Sternson, a tech services firm that has serviced more than half of Australia’s top 20 ASX-listed companies. 

Sternson presented at the NEXT launch event at The Lume in Melbourne last week, which SmartCompany attended, where attendees were invited to preview the metaverse and learn about the six technology and digital services businesses being integrated into NEXT, including Sternson’s own ARQ Group. 

Sternson is taking on the role of senior partner and global co-lead of NEXT at NCS, and leaders from the other businesses will also be taking on roles at NEXT now as well — those businesses being 2359 Media, Riley, ClayOPS, Velocity and Eighty20 Solutions.

Of the six businesses, three are Australian-made: ARQ, Eighty20 Solutions and Riley, showing our nation’s ability to be on the forefront of technological changes.

In his presentation at the launch event, Sternson said that NEXT has “combined some of the best digital businesses in Australia and Asia Pacific to work closely with our clients and partners to unlock the full potential of digital technologies”.

“NEXT will enable cross-pollination of tech innovation to ignite possibilities and make the extraordinary happen with partners and clients, which will create positive impacts on businesses and the communities they operate in,” Sternson continued. 

Alongside Sternson — albeit not literally, as it was also presented in a livestream from Singapore in a simultaneous event as well as in the metaverse — were presentations from the different digital businesses joining NEXT; presentations from NCS and Singtel leaders; and a videoed recording of a robot, Iris.

Sternson explained to SmartCompany following his address that Iris was created using artificial technology by merging three of NEXT staff members’ faces together, however the benefit of using an AI presentation on screen, made to look like a real person, remains to be seen. 

Alongside the news of NEXT’s launch, the company also went on to describe how our future won’t just be the metaverse: it will be “meta everywhere”.

We’ll be living our lives completely in the digital realm, the presentations explained, with our co-workers, our relationships, our banking and our home-owning taking place inside the metaverse.

While the metaverse may not be something we can wrap our heads around yet, NEXT is sure that the next generation will be living their entire lives there.

Despite this ambition, it still remains to be seen exactly how this “meta everywhere” will work; how our human forms will be present at the same time, too; how our physical needs will be fulfilled; or the value of having a recording of a robot present when humans are there and available to do so in real-time, too. 

After all, at the event, a guest sitting next to SmartCompany wasn’t able to listen to the presentation — he was too busy controlling his avatar inside the event’s metaverse instead.