IBM Sucks Too… or gets sucked… IDK
Financial, Linden Labs, RL Companies, Stupidity
Since Linden Lab can’t get the first Second Life right, IBM has been selected to be the lab rats for the Second Second Life. In what is being described as an “enterprise-class virtual world”, Linden Lab wants to try to convince companies that Second Life doesn’t actually suck. The fact is, just because they have to develop this “Second Second Life” to satisfy their “big” customers should tell them that the first Second Life will still suck.
Why are they trying to cater to these “big companies” when the majority of their customers are you and I?
The following quote was found here:
“According to the Financial Times, IBM and Linden Lab, the creator of Second Life, are to develop an enterprise-class virtual world to convince companies of the value of communicating through avatars and 3D environments. The joint project between Linden Lab and IBM will put parts of Second Life’s “Grid” platform behind IBM’s company firewall for greater security and host it on IBM Bladecenter servers for increased operational scale and stability. “We are responding to what our customers have been asking for: they see the value in Second Life but are very concerned about security and want [internal] conversations to stay behind the firewall,” said Neil Katz, chief technology officer of IBM’s Digital Convergence business.”
Malignant Narcissist @ April 3, 2008
This will be very interesting to follow and hopefully more details will emerge. The news release seems to suggest that users from the IBM grid will be to travel the main grid when they desire or the need arises.
How this will be achived without some reliance on LL’s famously unreliable asset servers remains unclear. Certainly most business clients would not consider ‘ruthing’ and missing textures on avatars an acceptable condition.
It’s my undestanding that IBM has also developed their own private synthetic world product, based in part on Active Worlds. Perhaps they are exploring more than one solution.
Sounds interesting. I am not sure if I get it. Is second life suppose to end up being a way for businesses to network?
Wouldnt a site like this be benefical to all businesses regardless of size?
Why would a business want to communicate from behind a avatar. Isnt that like hiding out?
I dont see how a big business would even be interested in this virtual world. I guess I just dont get it.
This is never going to happen. Seriously, does anyone really see SL being anything more than a virtual dance club and haven for sexual deviants? I doubt that any business exec will be creating an avatar to have e-meetings with other companies. How is that advantageous?? Didn’t anyone ever hear of a video conference??