Blogger: Craig Roth
Some of the great research work that IBM was doing around virtual worlds has now made it onto enterprise desktops through IBM's announcement of the availability of the "Virtual Collaboration for Lotus Sametime" plugin for Lotus Sametime 8.0.1 or later. An OpenSimulator instance runs on the server and connects to Sametime through a bridge. There is a web client, although most users would probably use the SecondLife client.
The plugin provides 3 enterprise virtual world environments that I'd classify as virtual collaboration: collaboration spaces, boardrooms (meeting rooms), and theatres (see details in the slideshow below or the YouTube video).
Sametime 3D - Virtual Worlds in OpenSim
It looks like neat stuff to me. And from what I can tell, there's no cost to Sametime users to add this since OpenSimulator and the SecondLife client are free. Even though this has moved from research to general availability, I still consider it an experiment. Now is when early adopters can start playing around with this, find good uses, and report their stories back to start assembling a business case. I haven't had a chance yet to read the "Business Value Study" they reference. From my research last year, the best business cases were around rehearsal and training, not virtual collaboration, but I look forward to seeing what they came up with once I get past Catalyst season.
View more presentations from Chris Sparshott.
I thought the world was moving to a light-weight, browser-based collaboration platform.......
Posted by: Saqib Ali | June 26, 2009 at 11:34 AM