The truth goes through three stages. First, it's
ridiculed, next violently opposed, then finally accepted as
self-evident.
No one took the web seriously in the beginning, according to
Philip Rosedale, creator and founder of
Second Life and former chief
technology officer at internet media company RealNetworks.
"Looking back on the early development of websites for business
use, many brick-and-mortar companies dismissed even owing a
website, or if they did own one, ended up developing
'brochureware', which failed to engage customers," Rosedale
said.
He believes the opportunity for companies using the web today
lie in predicting what future technologies will deliver business
value.
And the web could already be on the cusp of its next major
evolution, Web3D, with Second Life one of the pioneers of the
phenomenon.
What is Web3D?
Forrester Research describes Web3D as a system of linked,
interactive 3D and 2D environments that include everything from
use-specific private applications such as immersive learning
simulations to virtual worlds.
"Within five to seven years, Web3D will deliver an interactive,
immersive experience much richer than the static, text-oriented or
even interactive graphical interfaces of today's web," said
Forrester analyst Erica Driver in a
report.
Driver believes that resistance to using Web3D technology such
as virtual worlds in business mirrors the hesitancy some companies
originally felt towards taking website development seriously.
But businesses such as
BT and Unilever have already begun exploring virtual world
technology, to see if it could be useful in conferencing global
teams that work across different time zones and in the rapid
prototyping of ideas.
Event spaces
The chief difference between Web3D applications and traditional
2D websites lies in the former's use as event spaces: areas where
customers can gather to perform a group function, such as providing
feedback on a virtual hotel to help in the design and construction
of a real hotel.
"Companies need to find what parts of their business map well to
event- or space-driven applications," saud Dele Atanda, a
consultant with Ark Agent.
Publishers have held
virtual book launches in Second Life and musicians have held
virtual concerts to help sell their CDs, for example. It's
about thinking how you can use virtual spaces to help your
customers and employees collaborate.
The fact that businesses are expressing an interest in virtual
worlds also means that suppliers are getting involved.
Graham Spittle, IBM's director at the
Hursley
laboratory, said that corporate customers had expressed an
interest in virtual world technology for collaboration and
teleconferencing. But concerns about
security and the flow of information between public and private
sections meant some were waiting for the technology to mature.
Private regions
IBM has taken these concerns on board and is looking to make
Second Life applications more enterprise-ready by hosting private
regions of the virtual world on its own servers.
Under the plans, IBM employees will be able to move their
avatars between the public sections of Second Life and the private
areas hosted behind IBM's corporate firewall.
IBM employees will then be able to talk about work projects
privately, and have sensitive discussions without the data passing
through the servers of Linden Lab, which runs Second Life.
"We're in the process of updating our firewall technology to
enable much wider use within enterprise," said Rosedale.
But Gartner advised firms to think twice before creating a
corporate presence in virtual environment.
"Second Life is acceptable for pilots and prototypes," said
Gartner analyst James Lundy. "However, current technical issues
would have a significant impact on any organisation that wanted to
use it in a production environment, and we are advising companies
to evaluate alternatives."
Power issue
One of the problems with Second Life is that it requires
powerful desktop PCs, according to Gartner. Second Life supports
Nvidia graphics cards and certain ATI cards, but not all.
Not all business users will have access to a gaming-class PC.
Gartner said that graphics cards could differ even in the same PC
model from the same manufacturer, and that organisations would need
to take this into account as user experiences become more
graphics-intensive.
The creator of Second Life acknowledged that insufficiently
powerful graphic cards could inhibit some deployments today, but
that as processing power and the quality of graphics card
increased, so more businesses would begin experimenting with the
technology.
Driver said that virtual worlds or "3D-styled websites", which
provide a much richer experience, would take off as internet speeds
increased.
"It is easy to poke fun at Second Life and pooh-pooh the whole
idea," she said. "But in 1990, the web that we take for granted
today seemed unbelievable and unachievable."
Second Life will be leading collaboration platform >>
Virtual worlds: where are the rules? >>
Web3D Consortium website
>>
Web 2.0: expert view >>