Second Life and 3D Intranet

One of my predictions for 2008 was that we would see IBM, Sun and others launching "virtual world behind the firewall" products. I thought then, and think now, that this is inevitable - and I daresay you may feel the same way. While such worlds might do little or nothing to tickle the fancy of out-and-out Immersionists, they offer powerful tools for corporate use. So it was with more than a little interest that I learned, last week, that IBM would be partnering with Linden Lab to bring a chunk of the Second Life grid within the IBM firewalls - a 3D intranet.

Why would I want a 3D intranet?
At its most basic, the cost savings coming from the reduction in travel, made possible by 3D intranets, offer a simple, direct return on investment. The calculations are elementary, and rely on very few assumptions (all of which are easily verified). Incidentally, this is in contrast to the complexity of proving a ROI based on revenue generation in virtual environments, but that is not germane to the 3D intranet business case.

Although this can be achieved with an externally hosted service, such as Second Life, there are concerns over security and manageability. The fact that systems administration is outside one's control, and that chat logs and other commercial content are being hosted externally is not acceptable when you want a totally secure, wholly owned environment. Hence the 3D intranet.

But there are further benefits. As I learned from the IBMers a long time ago, 3D spaces provide places for informal groupings to develop - where new relationships form, extending one's own personal network. The external view of a large company is that it operates as a single unit, that it probably has all manner of clever systems to keep people in touch, and that it makes sure that it knows the skills and capabilities of its employees. In fact, this is (almost universally) far from the truth; rather than a single enterprise, most large companies comprise a number of fiefdoms, and each of these is subdivided into further, smaller fiefdoms. Knowledge is precious, and poorly maintained across this motley array of business units, skill centres, CoEs, "tiger teams" and so on. The 3D spaces don't drive knowledge or business cohesion - but they can help, by providing a social network that operates outside of the fiefdoms, allowing people from across the corporation to meet, socialise and share knowledge.

Finally, there is the formal collaborative working environment. The 3D intranet allows people from diverse locations around the country and, indeed, the world to work together in a common shared (virtual) location, reducing costs and improving team cohesion.

That's causes enough for a 3D intranet.

So what about this news?
In my view, Linden Lab have a habit of letting good news get away from them and generally fumbling their marketing. However, for once, I think this is a masterstroke - a real gem of a move that could end up, not only saving their asses, but propelling them into the heart of web 3D - which is where they want to be. Why do I say this?

Well, for one thing - IBM, while clearly the biggest corporate presence in Second Life, are known to have their fingers in many virtual pies. Indeed, Roo Reynolds (well-known luminary in the Eightbar crowd [and all-round good egg, so I'm told]) gave a neat synoposis of IBM's virtual state of play on Eightbar only last month. If IBM were to ditch Second Life - and that was by no means impossible - then the impact on Linden Lab could be catastrophic. On the other hand, to have their product at the heart of IBM's 3D intranet should allow Linden Lab to see off the opposition, such as multiverse or OpenSim.

It comes as no surprise, then, that no money is changing hands; both sides should win through this synergy. IBM get a relatively mature, content-flexible platform on which to build their 3D intranet. Linden get to develop a product that (with IBM?) they can sell to businesses and universities, while also putting some clear space between themselves and their competitors. Finally, the ability for an avatar to move between internal and external grids brings the prospect of web 3D much closer. This is, I am told, still a technically complex task - what system resources are located where? and how do they tie together? - but one that is now being tackled.

Another Giant Leap Towards web3.D

They'll be dancing in the streets of Second Life tonight. Nothing new in that perhaps - but maybe there will be a few extra revellers celebrating what many in the web3.D (3pointD) community see as a major milestone in the progress toward the 3D internet. Personally, I have been hoping and half-expecting the following announcement for over 6 months:

IBM and Linden Lab Launch Collaboration to Further Advance the 3D Internet.

Here is a link to today's press release - though Linden need to get their act together, since it doesn't seem to appear on their website as yet. To quote from the press release:

IBM and Linden Lab plan to collaborate on:

• "Universal" Avatars: Exploring technology and standards for users of the 3D Internet to seamlessly travel between different virtual worlds. Users could maintain the same “avatar” name, appearance and other important attributes (digital assets, identity certificates, and more) for multiple worlds. The adoption of a universal “avatar” and associated services are a possible first step toward the creation of a truly interoperable 3D Internet.
• Security-rich Transactions: Collaborating on the requirements for standards-based software designed to enable the security-rich exchange of assets in and across virtual worlds. This could allow users to perform purchases or sales with other people in virtual worlds for digital assets including 3D models, music, and media, in an environment with robust security and reliability features.
• Platform stability: Making interfaces easier to use in order to accelerate user adoption, deliver faster response times for real-world interactions and provide for high-volume business use.
• Integration with existing Web and business processes: Allowing current business applications and data repositories – regardless of their source – to function in virtual worlds is anticipated to help enable widespread adoption and rapid dissemination of business capabilities for the 3D Internet.
• Open standards for interoperability with the current Web: Open source development of interoperable formats and protocols. Open standards in this area are expected to allow virtual worlds to connect together so that users can cross from one world to another, just like they can go from one web page to another on the Internet today.
  

These are viewed as the key levers needed to deliver the next generation of the internet. Also, as reported at Virtual Worlds News, "last night IBM hosted a meeting of companies and researchers in San Jose (site of the Virtual Worlds '07 Conference) to discuss open standards for transporting avatars across virtual worlds. With representatives from Cisco, Google, Linden Lab, Sony, Intel, Multiverse, Microsoft, Motorola, and Philips, among others, they discussed plans to establish an organization to promote a truly interoperable 3D Internet."

Don't lose sleep over this in your excitement, boys and girls. It will take a little while to arrive. The point is that this is now out in the open, following months of speculation - and the parties involved go beyond just IBM and Linden Lab. I understand that at least 20 companies were represented at last night's meeting. Furthermore, I, for one, am curious to know how this fits with the statements about interoperability and standards between virtual worlds that have been coming out of China recently, particularly with respect to HiPiHi.

...

Or maybe it's all just a game, played by lonely saddoes - and I've just dreamt all of this.

Zero Linden's Plans For Second Life

Basically, for those interested in the scaling of Second Life, you really ought to read this - a chat log with Zero Linden captured by the blog: Dizzy Banjo - Soundtracking Virtual Worlds. This builds out upon the planned opening up of the server code, with the whole kit and caboodle going open source.

Quick headlines:

• Linden are not just talking about the sim limits we have now - they are talking truly epic scale: "to evolve the SL architecture into something that is internet wide."
• Transition to "SL2.0" (gah!) is being designed to be as seamless as possible.
• Now for the numbers: 60Million regions; 2Billion avatar accounts; maybe 50M to 100M on-line... though admittedly hypothetical
  
• And "on-line might mean something more lightweight in the future"

There is also some discussion of the richness or "thickness" of the functionality and capability on offer. If I read it right, provided your server follows and implements all the protocols correclyt, you could boost it to super-performance (demanding equally suped-up PCs), but Linden don't plan to follow this route themselves.

This is the first time I've seen the numbers they are toying with. I knew they were ambitious, but this is quite breath-taking!

Sadly, the discussion does not deal with issues of identity management and storage. But I daresay that is to come.

Eolus - A Big Leap Toward 3D Internet

Before I went off on my recent city break to Tokyo, I was chatting with my good friend (and, coincidentally, my SL landlady), Ludo Merit. During the course of the conversation, she asked me whether I had heard of a think tank called EOLUS(I hadn't) and would I like to get in touch to find out more (I would). She put me in contact with Eolus McMillan, who invited me over to the EOLUS ONE island for a chat. I came away from the chat with my head buzzing with all manner of stuff that would take a while for me to inwardly digest. As a sizeable chunk of the discussion was about the convergence of Second Life (and Virtual Worlds generally) with making "a Better Planet", and recognising that I would not have time to blog it, I got in touch with Tara5 Oh (Tish Shute of the excellent Ugotrade blog) to see if she would pick up the cudgels on this one. I was certain this would be of huge interest to her, and so it proved - check out her giga-post here.

Normally, I'd give you a rundown on the island, its features and its raison d'etre. However, I think Tish has already covered that more than adequately - as has VeeJay Burns at Mindblizzard. My main reason for this post is to talk about what I derived from the EOLUS session(s) - plural, because I also spent an hour or two there today. Before that though, here is the EOLUS conceptual architecture - not quite Zachman, but it works!



EOLUS as Think Tank
Perhaps the key philosophical driver for Eolus is to act as a think tank where creative minds can get together and explore how to apply Second Life as a vehicle for achieving a Better Planet. Some of this comes from the pioneering work being done by Implenia (one of the RL companies in the "EOLUS consortium") in the use of technology to improve building efficiency. But already ideas have been streaming in for using SL as a visualisation tool - for example: to illustrate solar water disinfection.

EOLUS as RL-SL Integration Solution
The think tank is a great idea, but is not unique within Second Life, which teems with forums and think tanks. However, where it wins out is in taking the visionary ideas from the think tank into practical implementation. There are already a number of integration points between SL and non-SL applications. However, the majority of these exist as "proofs of concept" and are aimed at improving personal communications between SL and internet-based applications. EOLUS takes the idea much further - into integration with large-scale business applications like SAP, the world-leading Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software. In this model, Second Life acts as a sophisticated 3D user interface (UI) that is able to display data from the back-end systems (eg: SAP) in ways that cannot be done with other UIs, employing the 3D environment to its full effect. By extension, Second Life can also accept commands or instructions that can be fed through to the back-end systems.

Let's consider an example: order processing. With EOLUS you can view and select items for purchase within Second Life. When you come to actaully request the items, an order is sent from Second Life to the SAP application, which returns an order reference. Thereafter, you can track your order's status from within Second Life, which gets the information in real time from the back-end SAP system. In effect, this is like using Second Life as a particularly powerful form of web browser.

Another example is in housing energy management. EOLUS can show you a house that has been modelled in Second Life. Data from various sensors in the corresponding Real Life house can be displayed in a readily understandable visual format in the Second Life model. Controls can be set on the model which are passed back to feedback devices in the Real Life house. Such controls could include thermostat settings, air-con settings and so forth. It is then a simple matter to replicate the model as many times as required to handle the energy management of an entire estate.

EOLUS as Virtual Operations Centre (VOC)
The housing energy management is a simple example of a virtual operations centre. However, far more complex operations centres can be constructed. In fact, pretty much any application or system (or set of applications or systems) that provides control information could be managed through a virtual operations centre. The visualisation of this information will depend on context - but Second Life provides a rich palette of options. One could model something akin to a RL operations centre (basically, walls of graphs, and alert lamps), but virtually any form of 2D or 3D visualisation that simplifies the system management could be constructed.

But why is this such a big deal? Two answers: first, this approach can be delivered at a fraction of the cost of a RL operations centre; second, as it is in a virtual world, accessible from across the globe, it can be manned around the clock at a fraction of the cost of a manned RL operations centre.

One point to bear in mind - this is not (yet) appropriate for mission-critical operations, as Second Life cannot yet provide the levels of availability needed for such operations. However, there are many scenaros in which a VOC could deliver improved management over other (more costly) solutions - indeed, scenarious in which a RL centre would not be feasible due to cost.

EOLUS as Enabling Technology
Concepts like the VOC rely on the ability to pass information between SL and non-SL applications. To this end, EOLUS have devised the Virtual Worlds Communication Interface (VWCI) - a combination of hardware and software that sits between SL and non-SL, and provides a common interface between them. There is actually a lot more to this than meets the eye, and I am awaiting more information from EOLUS about this. However, suffice it to say, this is an essential component for getting information in and out of Second Life.

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And that's about it (for now). I am sure I have over-simplified some things, over-complicated others, and simply forgotten a whole lot more. However, to state my position on this - in its use of Second Life as a 3D User Interface, together with the VWCI, I think EOLUS have taken a massive leap toward 3D Internet.

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Sorry about the paucity of pictures.... I promise I will get back on track with rich visuals very soon. But in the meantime, here's one showing the key companies participating in EOLUS:

Thanks to Eolus McMillan for his time and patience in trying to explain all this to me!