Comments on: IBM Rolls Out Virtual World Software for Businesses

By: Ran Hinrichs

Ran Hinrichs — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 16:37:19 +0000

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.

By: Maria Korolov

Maria Korolov — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 17:31:04 +0000

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

By: Marcus Hester

Marcus Hester — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:12:55 +0000

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.

By: Melanie Jones

Melanie Jones — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 18:54:29 +0000

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.

By: Elizabeth Sanchez

Elizabeth Sanchez — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 18:32:16 +0000

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.

By: Bill Brookshire

Bill Brookshire — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 18:29:06 +0000

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.

By: Rob Zeus

Rob Zeus — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 18:00:20 +0000

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.