Businesses such as BT and Unilever have begun exploring
the use of virtual world technology like that used bySecond Lifeto see if it has worth
inside the enterprise.
Kat Dawe, IT project manager at Unilever, said the company is
evaluating the use of virtual worlds for conferencing global teams
who work across different time zones.
"We are experimenting. Virtual worlds are not a proven way of
working for us. We do not have a great deal of capability in
virtual world technology internally. What we first want to
determine is if virtual world technology can deliver better ways of
working for our global teams."
Dawe said Unilever already uses high definition video
conferencing but said virtual worlds could help with conferencing
much larger groups of employees and make sharing information during
meetings easier.
BT said it was also experimenting with virtual worlds, but had
gone a stage further by launching an actual application. Ivan
Croxford, Head of Market Development at BT Retail, said the company
had built a "Dragon's Den" style virtual island, where BT employees
could pitch new business ideas to senior management.
"Pitching was traditionally done as a regular meeting face to
face. What we found using a virtual world was discussions with
senior managers were more relaxed and put candidates at ease."
Croxford said it was best to start virtual world IT projects on
a small scale, for example, two users meeting in a virtual world,
before moving on to larger projects where IT managers could
encounter resistence.
Forrester analyst Erica Driver said in a report that resistence
to using virtual worlds in business mirrors the hesitancy some
companies had towards taking web site development seriously. She
said that virtual worlds or "3D styled websites" which provide a
much richer experience will take off as internet speeds
increase.
"It is easy to poke fun at Second Life and pooh-pooh the whole
idea. But by contrast in 1990, the web that we take for granted
today seemed unbelievable and unachievable."