Sapland

German ERP software giant, SAP, have had a low-key presence in the virtual world of Second Life for quite some time, thanks to the sterling efforts of Craig Cmehil (well I've only ever seen it written like that, so that's what it must be!). I spotted the island of Sapland a long time back, and had always assumed it was owned by SAP - being their next logical step in terms of growth in Second Life. When I last checked, many months ago, the island was not accessible to the average rambler, but at some time in the long intervening period it appears to have opened. I happened upon it by chance, when I was actually looking for somewhere else.

My initial surmise about the sim turns out to be wrong. The island actually belongs to Dutch IT consulting and systems integration company, Uphantis. However, I was not badly wrong, since Uphantis make much, if not most, of their income from SAP consultancy, development and integration work. According to their website "Uphantis provides services and products that smoothen the integration of business processes within medium-sized to large companies." The name is Greek for ‘weaver', with the implication that they "weave and integrate the various technologies that still exist next to each other within organisations, designing a completely new and innovative IT landscape that offers a new functionality and new possibilities for business success."

Evidently they are not without a sense of humour - as this YouTube vid reveals:


And so to the sim.

The sim is rather less zippy than their YouTube contribution, being a fairly run of the mill company sim. It has the inevitable lighthouse... I have to confess, even I have succumbed to this and built one on our corporate island. I don't know why... Anyway, back to Sapland. Aside from the lighthouse (oh, btw, light cones should really be phantom, you fellows), which appears as an afterthought in any case, the main feature of the island is an office building. There are plenty of links back to the company site. and along the two main walls you can find a list of their job vacancies, again with links to relevant pages on their website. I declined the freebie - I have enough company T-shirts already. At the far end of the building are 2 presentation or lecture theatres. At least one of these is set up to tell you all about SAP. Upstairs there's offices, and on the top floor, a boardroom. And that's basically it. It's a handy site if you are looking for a job, and I can see that the company could derive some benefit from holding the occasional meeting here. But although competently put together, it lacks warmth, humour or - in a nutshell - a sense of engagement. Judge for yourselves:

Accenture Scales Up

Accenture, one of the world's leading IT consultancies, is taking a well-trodden and reliable route into Second Life. Some months ago (I lose count - 6, maybe?) they established a private island called Accenture Techlabs. This was then followed by a small amount of hullaballoo when Accenture Italia showcased an office on one the Italian sims (reviewed at Kzero). Not long after, this Italian business unit acquired its own island, while the French tried their hand at recruitment in Second Life (covered here).

Now, after all these disparate dabblings, I find that a 6-sim island has appeared on the map, unsurprisingly named Accenture 1-6. At the moment these are closed to ramblers, but this is hardly surprising, as the Map View indicates that they are still in the early stages of development. Indeed, 2 of the islands still look to be in their default, delivered state.

For all I know, there are other islands - not emblazoned with the company name - where they are working with customers. I would be surprised if they weren't.

This approach reminds me very much of another IT company in Second Life. Starting with small, private, regional (or business vertical) sites to test out the feasibility, then ramping up to a significant presence once internal buy-in had been achieved - with a mix of both private and public sites. The boys at eightbar will doubtless recognise this - even if I have over-simplified things. The Accenture build may not (yet) be anything like the same scale - but it does seem to be following a similar track. And very effective it is too.

You have to start small unless you already have top level buy-in - and that would be verging on the miraculous, to put it mildly. The best way to get the necessary buy-in is using a low cost "build and promote" approach. Until your colleagues have actually got their virtual hands on Second Life, they probably will not "get it." So build something privately that gives management or, rather, the key influencers an opportunity to try out the environment. Once they have seen for themselves at first hand, then getting approval for scaling up should be relatively easy. Interest groups with their own agendas spring up, and the build can diversify to encompass a wide range of activities and objectives. However, merely constructing a "field of dreams" is not enough. Internal communication and promotion is vital, in order to spread the word, and to build and maintain the momentum.

Of course, this may not be behind Accenture's ramp-up, but it certainly seems plausible to me.