Office Productivity
IBM Rolls Out Virtual World Software for Businesses
Published June 26th, 2009 by Jennifer LeClaire
IBM just rolled out the coolest virtual collaboration tool I’ve seen in a while. The service is called Virtual Collaboration for Lotus Sametime. It lets you set up and use virtual meeting spaces securely behind the firewall with avatars. Don’t you love avatars?
IBM has dubbed it Sametime 3D for short and if you take test drive you’ll see why. This is a cross between Second Life and The Sims with a business twist, of course. It’s a real-time software tool that maximizes your meeting productivity. Using Sametime 3D, you can select colleagues from you Lotus Sametime contact list, and then invite them to participate in a virtual meeting. Participants can meet in a boardroom, an auditorium or a collaboration space.
“Virtual Collaboration for Lotus Sametime is part of IBM’s ongoing work to redefine the nature of online meetings,” says John Allessio, vice president of IBM Software Services for Lotus. “Whether through improvements to Web conferencing capabilities or with tools such as VCS, IBM is offering new ways to engage and collaborate, making meetings more effective and productive. The timing is perfect for this new offering as it facilitates effective meetings and brainstorming without the time and expense of travel.”
The Survey Says…
According to a recent survey by IT analyst firm ThinkBalm, there is a growing business need for immersive technologies such as virtual environments. The survey reports that more than half of business respondents expect to obtain a positive total economic benefit from immersive technologies this year.
More than half of respondents also said that immersive technology was less expensive than alternative options like Web conferences and meetings that involve airplane and hotel costs. Ninety-five percent of survey respondents said enabling people in disparate locations to spend time together is an important benefit of their recent projects.
Enter IBM’s Virtual World
Here’s how Sametime 3D works: Once you enter the virtual meeting, avatars can use text or voice chat, or both, to communicate. You can then share presentations or other materials, and take notes using virtual flip charts. In the collaboration space, you can share ideas and other information on a brainstorm wall. Participants can then store, update, prioritize and vote on this information. Content can be imported and acted upon both in and out of the virtual meeting space.
That’s pretty cool. But IBM isn’t stopping there. IBM is working with a company called Vivox to provide integrated voice capabilities using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). The voice would be spatial in nature, meaning that as participants in a meeting move closer or further away from each other, the voice gets louder or softer, just like in real life. That’s pretty amazing!
The High-Tech Serviced Office Advantage
Could this be part of the office of the future? I think so. And I also think these types of solutions will become more affordable for small businesses and entrepreneurs. Right now, this probably isn’t affordable for your average small business.
But a major serviced office provider like Regus could license the software for use across its network as an amenity. After all Regus spent on video conferencing, this software investment would be rather small by comparison. If technology is a competitive differentiator in the executive office suites world as the analysts and experts say, this technology would certainly put providers on the cutting edge.
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Rob Zeus June 26th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
This is really cool stuff. I do think this is part of the office of the future. Video conferencing can be a vital alternative to meeting face to face, but with Gen Y and even younger businessmen coming into the market in the years ahead, smart companies recognize the need to adopt technologies that suit them. I think serviced office companies like Regus would do well to look into this option.
Bill Brookshire June 26th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
I agree that this will be part of the office of the future. I expect there are collaboration technologies that haven’t even been invented yet. This seems to have a real social aspect, and with the rise of social media it’s a good fit. I saw some images of this and it’s not as robust as a Second Life type program, but it’s more than adequate for business users trying to collaborate interactively.
Elizabeth Sanchez June 26th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
It’s interesting that IBM is partnering with Vivox. Vivox offers integrated voice chat for virtual worlds and online games and communities. It looks like IBM is getting ready to take virtual collaboration to the next level. I don’t know how this fits into the serviced office model, if at all, because of the cost. But like all technology the cost will come down over time.
Melanie Jones June 26th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
This stood out to me: Ninety-five percent of survey respondents said enabling people in disparate locations to spend time together is an important benefit of their recent projects. There is always going to be mobile professionals traveling from day office to day office. But I think we’ll see more and more of long-distance collaboration and tools like Sametime 3D enable that. I bet there’s a really inexpensive competitor out there that does some of the same things.
Marcus Hester June 26th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Virtual collaboration has been talked about for years. Only now are we seeing powerful tools to enable it via the Internet. Web-based applications like GoToMeeting and WebEx are great, but this Sametime 3D offering takes virtual collaboration to a whole new level. And, yes, I love avatars! This is definitely part of the office of the future.
Maria Korolov June 27th, 2009 at 11:31 am
To me, what’s interesting here is that this is based on the OpenSim virtual world platform (as we covered at Hypergrid Business). This is the first use of the OpenSim platform in an embedded, brand-name environment. OpenSim is free, open-source server software used to create virtual worlds — but it is still officially in “alpha” release. Many enterprises are already using it however — for education, for meetings, to show products to prospective clients (especially useful for architects showing buildings), as a base for building social worlds like Second Life, for online role playing games.
The big advantage of OpenSim as a platform - though it’s unclear yet whether the IBM offering takes advantage of this — is that the virtual worlds can be linked to others through hypergrid teleport, the same way that web sites are linked together through hyperlinks. For example, I can travel from my company’s virtual offices on the Trombly Ltd grid to the OSGrid, ReactionGrid, FrancoGrid, Cyberlandia, and any other OpenSim-based world that’s hypergrid enabled. And I can bring my avatar and my appearance and belongings with me. So if I have a virtual office, and my client has a virtual office, we can meet at my place, at her place, or in a French cafe on a virtual Paris street.
OpenSim is currently the only platform that allows this. SecondLife has recently started beta testing its enterprise server platform, but teleports between worlds are currently not possible. Every other platform out there is a closed world - you have to get a new account, and usually download new software or plugins to get in.
As a result, OpenSim — while not necessarily the most advanced platform technically — is seeing the biggest adoption. And this IBM announcement confirms that OpenSim — or some descendant — is likely to be the base of the next 3D Internet.
- Maria Korolov, editor, Hypergrid Business
Ran Hinrichs September 11th, 2009 at 10:37 am
Whew! Virtual Worlds are now inevitable. The promise of first adoption meetings and collaboration with talking, voting, and showing avatars PPTs is a great achievement. The integration with SameTime means Microsoft and Cisco won’t be far behind with their integration solution. Bring it on! The price wars will begin and everyman will be able to use this technology one day.
In the meantime, pay very close attention to the small, nimble virtual world headquarters of innovators building business, entertainment and education without walls, with a very minimized carbon footprint, whose objective it is to compete outside of the office and inside 3D objects.
Keep focus here on the potential of virtual worlds to envision 3D, involving everyone in the creation of interactive worlds in context in both micro and macro worlds, with access to the human body, with programming to the physics of motion, to fluid dynamics, to problem solving through world construction. And keep in mind the drumbeat of the last twenty years around the integration of gaming with point systems and reputation building captivating and motivating in ways that only a WoW guild member truly understands.
This vision underscores the stunning potential of virtual worlds. But yes, baby steps. And yes, let’s celebrate IBM’s entree. And evermore, let’s celebrate virtual world ascendancy.
Laud even more the era of creative 3D content generation by everyman, the liberation from the document, the super interactivity of community, and the momentum of enhanced information experiences and purposeful visualization.
Integrated platforms good. Avatar based collaboration good. Immersion into thoroughbred 3D content very good.
Randy Hinrichs, Affiliate Faculty, iSchool, University of Washington and Managing Partner of 2b3d.