My take on Microsoft’s Immersive Internet play for information workers

by Erica Driver. 

As an IT industry analyst I’ve covered Microsoft’s information worker software products for a long time –- particularly the company’s collaboration and social computing tools. As it dawned on me about a year ago that the Immersive Internet was going to have just as big an impact on the way information workers do our jobs as the Web has, I began to poke and probe at Microsoft product management and marketing executives in the information worker division to find out what they think about people using virtual worlds for work. The answer could pretty consistently be described as “not much, to be truthful.” Not a big surprise, really. Because in this early-stage market 99% of the people in the universe would answer my question the same way. But in Microsoft’s case the answer carries great significance, if you follow this logic:

1. With 500 million Office users around the world and about 100 million licenses of SharePoint Server sold Microsoft is a leading office productivity suite and enterprise collaboration platform vendor.
2. Adoption of the Immersive Internet at work will ultimately require integration of virtual worlds, immersive learning simulations, and digital workspaces with the collaboration and social computing tools people already use –- like, in Microsoft shops, the core Office apps, Office SharePoint Server, Office Communicator and Communications Server, and Live Meeting.
3. If the information worker division at Microsoft isn’t focused on an Immersive Internet future, then the company isn’t working on extensions to or integration of the Office System with Immersive Internet technologies, at least not at this time. So it will be up to Microsoft’s partners to integrate Immersive Internet technologies with the Office System.
4. In the meantime, virtual world platforms will continue to add communication and collaboration features that many enterprises have already deployed, thereby increasing redundancy in the enterprise environment — features like text chat and instant messaging, whiteboarding and application sharing, and voice over IP (VoIP).

My take: don’t expect Microsoft’s information worker division to aggressively embrace the Immersive Internet. Rather, the this division is likely to sit back for a while to see how the Immersive Internet develops, and then get in the game. If you are looking for integration of Immersive Internet technologies with your enterprise collaboration and social computing software in the short term, IBM may be a more likely place to find it than Microsoft. (To be clear, in IBM’s case we are talking about IBM integrating Immersive Internet technologies with IBM’s Lotus office productivity and enterprise collaboration software, not with Microsoft Office System products. IBM has already begun work with virtual world platform vendor Forterra Systems to integrate Forterra OLIVE with IBM Lotus Sametime. See this March 20, 2008 press release on Forterra’s Web site.) 

When Microsoft’s information worker division does embrace the Immersive Internet, Microsoft’s offerings are likely to be heavy on the realism compared to virtual worlds like Second Life® where people can build pretty much anything they can dream up. (We wrote about realism and the Immersive Internet in the ThinkBalm article “First life” versus “fake life” – When realism is important in the Immersive Internet.) Microsoft currently has two main Immersive Internet products in its portfolio, and my bet is that within the next five years Microsoft will integrate these technologies with its desktop productivity, collaboration, and social computing offerings for use by information workers.

Visual simulation platform Microsoft ESP

Microsoft ESP evolved out of the Microsoft Flight Simulator video game and contains realistic land, sea, and air environments. It has 10,000 accurately placed stars, accurate continents and coastlines, a digital elevation model, land and water classifications, real-time weather data, more than 24,000 airports, realistic 3D graphics, a software development kit with application programming interface (API) and built-in artificial intelligence (AI). For example, based on AI traffic volumes can be variable and seasons can change. Content is customizable and you can import your own content (e.g., vehicles). While this 1.0 version of Microsoft ESP is heavily focused on aviation training capabilities, I envision Microsoft eventually expanding it into a broader 3D modeling and simulation platform that could be used to build all sorts of immersive learning simulations.

Imagine taking a new job selling high-end vehicles. Rather than sitting in a conference room listening to a corporate trainer deliver a presentation on your new employer’s target markets and sales strategy, and getting a deep dive on the car’s features, you engage in a highly realistic video game-like simulation where you interact with virtual customers in various lifelike scenarios. You score points when you do well and take hits when you mess up. Imagine that other new hires are also training in the same environment and you are all connected to each other via integrated social computing and real-time collaboration tools.

Mirror world Microsoft Virtual Earth 3D

Microsoft Virtual Earth is a platform that includes geospatial data, bird’s eye views, aerial imagery, 3D photorealistic imagery, shapes and layers, and a bunch of other services like search, geocoding, directions, traffic reports, and APIs. Virtual Earth’s biggest competitor is Google Earth. The green Virtual Earth image below shows the town where ThinkBalm is located: Little Compton, Rhode Island.  The urban snapshot is a 3D image of Stamford, Connecticut. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An indicator that Microsoft may move in the direction of integrating Virtual Earth with the company’s collaboration and social computing products: Virtual Earth already integrates with Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 for business data visualization. Imagine if Microsoft went further and Virtual Earth was integrated with Outlook and Exchange Server and Office Communicator and Communications Server so you could zoom in on any address in your contacts database or buddy list, or in an email signature, and get directions and a 3D image of the location. Take it even further and picture yourself inviting a professional contact to come and meet you in the virtual park outside your virtual office in Virtual Earth, where your avatars sit on a bench together while you IM or talk via voice about, say, an upcoming business trip. Sound far out? Give it five years and this style of communication and collaboration will be commonplace. And Microsoft will likely be one of the vendors delivering it.

© 2008 ThinkBalm. All rights reserved.