Facebook today announced that its Oculus for Business program is finally openly available. The program, which was announced more than a year ago, was slow to roll out as Facebook dealt only with a small number of select partners. Now any business can purchase the $1,000 business-ready version of Quest.

The consumer version of Quest (128GB) starts at $500 and is largely designed for gaming and entertainment. For businesses wanting to tap into Quest’s portability and ease of use for things like training, data visualization, and remote collaboration, Facebook’s ‘Oculus for Business‘ program charges $1,000 for the same Quest (128GB) headset, but includes specialized software, licenses, and support for enterprises.

Facebook had touted the program for some time, but it remained available only to select partners. Today the company announced that it’s opening the program up to any business.

In addition to a different interface inside the headset—which does away with many of Quest’s consumer-oriented features—the bigger deal is the backend management software which will allow a company’s IT department to manage a fleet of Quest headsets. From the management software, IT can configure headsets, deploy and update apps, manage settings, and check the status of all headsets in the group.

Image courtesy Facebook

Facebook says that the Oculus for Business version of Quest works with major mobile device management programs like MobileIron and VMware Workspace ONE, making it easy to manage headsets through existing enterprise systems.

The $1,000 price-tag of the enterprise version of Quest covers the first year of access to Oculus for Business software and support, but after that it’ll cost enterprises $180 per year, per headset for ongoing access. The enterprise version of Quest also gets a longer, 24-month warranty.

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Oculus for Business also operates an ISV program which Facebook says has more than 400 VR solution providers which can offer existing applications to enterprises or work directly to build custom software and workflows for businesses that don’t plan to do in-house VR development.

Image courtesy Facebook

The Oculus for Business program is almost entirely focused on Quest; the Oculus Business management software isn’t compatible with the company’s other headsets (Rift and Go) and those headsets don’t get a specialized interface for enterprise usage. Although Facebook offers volume purchasing of Rift and Go through the Oculus for Business program, for all intents and purposes the company is selling the consumer versions of those headsets for business use, including the consumer warranty and consumer support.

“As we’ve been developing and testing the platform based on key use cases for enterprise customers, it’s become clear that Oculus Quest, with its high-end graphics and fully immersive capabilities, is the best solution for most business VR needs,” reads the Oculus for Business FAQ.

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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."

  • Thank you so much for telling us about good Virtual Reality (VR) App & Game Development, this article is very useful for us.

  • https://developer.oculus.com/documentation/ofb/ofb-developer-reference/
    Per Oculus for Business dev reference, Rift S will get enhanced warranty and support when purchased through Oculus for Business. But not the enterprise software…

  • Sven Viking

    I wonder if they’ll let businesses who already bought consumer quests “upgrade” them for a fee to use the business software? If not I guess with the current shortages this would admittedly be a good time to sell them off used and replace them.

    • No. It’s in the faq, and I’ve reported it in my blog The Ghost Howls. I guess the reason is that the two Quest headsets run different ROMs, and all the headset vendors want to personally flash the ROMs, so they can’t send you the file to do that, or do that over the web (I speak by experience for a Vive Focus)

  • I’m very curious to see how Oculus will perform in the enterprise space against companies that have more experience in the field like HTC and Pico. Their headset is more expensive, but the Quest has a very good reputation… it will be a nice match

    • Jan Ciger

      I think that what will put many companies off is the cost. Not so much the $1000 purchase price, but $180 per device per year? Imagine a training center with 100 Quests and we are talking $18k a year only for this!

      That’s a bit expensive for a custom UI, 2 years warranty and allowing the device to be managed by corporate fleet management software (which is much less of an issue with something like a Quest which will stay on premises 90% of the time than e.g. a company phone or tablet).

      I don’t see many takers from smaller businesses for this unless Oculus explicitly prohibits commercial use of their consumer Quest – and then they will promptly lose those clients for good. Quest is good but it is not that good.

      • Actually, that’s not that expensive for a training center (disclosure, am VR Developer for an industrial training center in the US). If we had 100 Quests, I guarantee you we’d be making so much money that $18k would be a drop of water in a swimming pool. We’ve been developing for Rift and Go (because they did have enterprise versions) but we are switching over to Quests now. For what we do, each Quest will pay for itself (and its yearly fee) in less than a week of use.

  • Happy to see that the largest VR Player in the world finally also has something to offer specifically for businesses. Hopefully this will give a boost to adoption of VR by businesses.
    In case you are still working with Oculus Go’s for your VR projects, you could take a look at my solution for the management, distribution and playback of VR content: EZ360 VR Player. Since last week we also support the distribution of custom VR applications (apk files).

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