The v-Business Grid: A vision of the future Immersive Internet

by Erica Driver.

IBM has soft-launched a new community called the v-Business Community. This community’s objectives are three-fold: 1) promote the use of immersive technologies – particularly those that are OpenSim-based — for business, 2) provide an environment for businesses to showcase immersive products and services, and 3) provide a “sandbox” environment for early adopters to experiment with immersive technologies. The community currently has about 10 named member companies, all of which offer hardware, software, or  services related to government, education, and business use of immersive technologies.

This week I visited the community’s OpenSim grid, called v-Business Grid, to meet with Peter Finn. Finn is an IT architect who has been responsible for v-business (virtual business) strategy at IBM in the past and is leading the v-Business Community charge from the IBM side. I walked away from this meeting realizing I’d seen a compelling vision of the future Immersive Internet: a universe of virtual worlds and campuses, immersive learning simulations, and 3D business applications and tools that are connected together to greater or lesser degree. The v-Business Grid, which is currently in alpha:

• Is a sandbox for Immersive Internet advocates, implementers, and explorers. The initial work on the sandbox is being done by members of IBM’s Virtual Universe Community. The initial use cases Peter Finn is focused on are retail, marketing, and events. Initially, the tech provider members of the community will use the grid as a meeting place and demonstration ground for their products and services. Finn’s hope is that within a year, when the OpenSim platform goes “gold” (becomes generally available) large retailers will begin to use the technology to create immersive 3D product showrooms of their own.
• Runs on OpenSim, in grid mode. IBM is a huge proponent of open source technology overall and is a big believer in the OpenSim open source enterprise immersive platform. The v-Business Grid runs OpenSim in grid mode. This allows individual OpenSim servers to be connected together into a bigger virtual world. In grid mode, avatars can walk, fly, or teleport from one connected region to another in a relatively seamless fashion.
• Utilizes hypergrid technology. The v-Business Grid uses an OpenSim extension called hypergrid, which allows multiple OpenSim-based virtual worlds to be connected together. With this extension, avatars can now travel not just among regions but across virtual worlds. The snapshot above shows my avatar and Peter Finn’s standing in a hypergrid teleportation area. I used my mouse to click on the red arrow on a heads-up display and scroll through our options. As I clicked, the display around us showed fuzzy images of the various virtual worlds available to us. When Peter said, “This is a good one – let’s visit here” we flew right through the display into another virtual world. It was like passing through a portal in the sci-fi show Stargate (see the image with the blue background on this MGM Web page).
• Will be increasingly integrated with the 2D Web. The v-Business Community is already leveraging the Web. I created my v-Business Grid account on the Web. And during my tour, one of the ways we switched from one grid to another was via the Gridhop Web site (see snapshot below). Peter Finn’s vision is that the 2D Web and the 3D Internet will become tightly integrated over time. For example, in the retail scenario, shoppers will go to a retailer’s Web site and then seamlessly click on a link to go to the 3D showroom.

IBM’s v-Business Community presents a great opportunity for Immersive Internet advocates, implementers, and explorers to learn about available technology options and experiment in the v-Business Grid sandbox. One of the questions that remains unanswered by this early V-Business Community effort is how IBM’s vision of an interconnected 3D Internet will play out in a world of heterogeneous, non-standards based technology. While IBM and Linden Lab have demonstrated that it’s possible for an avatar to travel back and forth between OpenSim and Second Life, these are just two among dozens of enterprise immersive platforms. For IBM’s vision of an interconnected Immersive Internet to play out, one of two things must happen: open standards emerge that multiple vendors adhere to, or one platform rises up as the de facto standard, forcing others to integrate with it. The jury’s still out on this one. 

© ThinkBalm 2009. All rights reserved.

ThinkBalm announces kickoff of new research study: tech selection guide

by Erica Driver and Sam Driver.

Coming this fall, ThinkBalm will conduct research on how Immersive Internet advocates and implementers involved in the technology selection process successfully picked the right solutions for their organizations.  The result will be a tool to assist organizations in the evaluation process. We are currently seeking sponsorships for this research. Several potential sponsors have already expressed interest. They worry that the complexity of the buyer decision-making process is a roadblock to adoption of immersive technologies in the workplace and they believe ThinkBalm is the right analyst firm to produce this report. Would you like to join our sponsor list?

About the project

• Timeframe. We are currently working with our business agent Valley View Ventures to secure sponsorships for this research study. We plan to kick off the research in early October and publish the report in late November.
• Objective. The primary question we will set out to answer for business decision makers is, “How do I choose the right enterprise immersive technology for my organization’s needs?” We will research and analyze good practices in making the right enterprise immersive technology selection.
• Scope. This report will not compare particular software or service offerings against each other or recommend one vendor over another. Rather, it will be a use case-based guide designed to help business decision makers ask and begin to answer the right set of questions for their particular situation. We’ll focus on use cases like learning and training, meetings and conferences, business activity rehearsal, collaborative design and prototyping, collaborative 3D data visualization, remote system and facility management, and human resources management.
• Report. The final report, which will be targeted at business decision makers, will be approximately 25 pages long including graphics. For an indication of style and format see the ThinkBalm Immersive Internet Business Value Study, Q2 2009. The report will be freely available.
• Methodology. The early-stage nature of the market and the broad applicability of the technology favor an experience-based analysis. We will develop this decision-making framework based on:
  • Analysts’ knowledge gained through client engagements and interactions with members of the ThinkBalm Innovation Community, which currently number more than 330
  • A minimum of 15 focused interviews with Immersive Internet advocates and implementers who were involved in the technology selection process in their organizations
  • Briefings with enterprise immersive technology vendors
  • ThinkBalm analysts’ first-hand experiences using a wide variety of immersive technologies on a daily basis.

We have assembled a high-value set of deliverables for our project sponsors. Please contact ThinkBalm’s business agent Valley View Ventures to learn more about these deliverables and to discuss sponsorship opportunities. Of course, please contact Erica or Sam directly to get answers to questions about the research, methodology, and scope. We’re at info@thinkbalm.com.

© ThinkBalm 2009. All rights reserved.

Vote for SXSW panel “Second Life: Where are they now?”

by Erica Driver

Thanks to John Swords of Circ.us, I’ve been invited to participate on a potential panel at the South By Southwest Conference, to be held in Austin, Texas in March 2010.  The title of the panel is “Second Life: Where are they now?” The other confirmed panelists are Mark Wallace (formerly of 3pointD.com and now OperationTurtle.com) and C.C. Chapman of The Advance Guard. This should be a really interesting discussion. If you agree, come help vote the panel in. You can vote and post comments on panel submissions until September 4th. Here’s the description:

“Second Life was all the rage just a few years ago. Talked about at every technology conference and covered by mainstream media, it quickly went from being hyped to being ignored. Learn what happened to Second Life and and find out where its earliest creators, users and embedded journalists are now.”

From my point of view, Linden Lab’s Second Life is not “in the past.” It is still one of the primary proving grounds for work-related use of the Immersive Internet. At ThinkBalm we’re tracking a couple dozen different enterprise immersive platforms and applications. In terms of Geoffrey Moore’s technology adoption lifecycle, we are in the early adopter phase and are facing the chasm. My take: we’ll reach the early majority adoption phase in 2013ish. (For more insights see the May 26, 2009 ThinkBalm Immersive Internet Business Value Study, Q2 2009. — and stay tuned for the upcoming ThinkBalm report “Crossing the Chasm, One Implementation at a Time,” due out in September.)

© ThinkBalm 2009. All rights reserved.

New ThinkBalm Innovation Community video: “The Bridge”

by Erica Driver and Sam Driver.

Today we released a new ThinkBalm Innovation Community work product: a 5-minute machinima (video) demonstrating the concept and value of a 3D immersive situation room, or war room. A  ThinkBalm Innovation Community project team came up with the term “bridge” from the bridge on a ship. According to Wikipedia today, the bridge is an area or room from which the ship can be commanded.

The bridge is an immersive 3D space where decision makers and project team members can meet to view and interact with data, collaborate, and make business decisions. It can be the bridge between the physical world and the virtual world; an organization and the outside world; and where we are and where we want to go. It can be the bridge among people who need to collaborate across silos, cultures, languages.

Huge kudos to the following ThinkBalm Innovation Community members for their work on this project:

• Actors: Ben Lindquist, Casey Carter, Leslie Ehle, Philippe Barreaud
• Bikeybus digital models: Julien Borne
• Green Phosphor data visualization tool: Ben Lindquist
• Voting tool: Jeff Lowe
• Location: Leslie Ehle
• Concept development: Anders Gronstedt, Ben Lindquist, Donald Schwartz , Jeff Lowe, Leslie Ehle, Philippe Barreaud, and Sandy Adam

© ThinkBalm 2009. All rights reserved.

Results from spring brainstorm on choosing immersive technology

By Erica Driver and Sam Driver.

In March and April of 2009 the ThinkBalm Innovation Community held two brainstorming sessions on the topic of choosing the right enterprise immersive platform. We held these events in the then-beta version of IBM’s Virtual Collaboration for Lotus Sametime (then called Sametime 3D). More than 30 community members participated in these two discussions.

 

Brainstorming topic 1: What should go on a requirements list?

In a total of 20 minutes – ten minutes each brainstorming session — participants came up with nearly 50 items that should go on a requirements list for enterprise immersive platforms. Participants submitted their ideas and then voted on the ideas submitted. The items that received at least one vote were:

• Avatar and identity
  • Better gestures, more natural avatar behavior
  • Pre-made, customizable avatars
  • Non-human avatars to reduce fashion show workload
  • Interoperability for avatar assets
  • Detect or ask gender and set avatar gender automatically
  • Option to load photo onto in-world profile
• Communication
  • Spatialized (positional) voice
  • Reliable media streaming
  • Back channel for audio and text support
  • Admin controls like muting voice, muting text, etc.
• Integration: Import data from external sources and feed it back out easily
• Ease of use
  • Easier navigation (e.g., “auto-follow” feature)
  • Browser-based clients
  • Minimized learning curve for new users, with easy orientation area
• 3D assets
  • 3D object visualization for sharing component designs
  • 3D data visualization
• Platform support
  • Support for multiple operating systems (e.g., Linux, Mac, Windows)
  • Thin client for mobile device access
• Security
  • Granular access control over spaces
  • Public / private (firewalled or not)
• Scalability: Maximum number of users

Brainstorming topic 2: What are generic “must-have” features?

During the two sessions, we generated more than 30 “must-have” features. You’ll see there is lots of overlap between these items and the items that should go on a requirements list. The must-have features that got at least one vote from participants included:

• Communication and collaboration tools
  • Multi-user whiteboards
  • Drag and drop PowerPoint support
  • Session recording and playback
  • Voice and media work across firewalls
  • Dial-out support for including participants who just have a phone
  • Chat and voice, both group and private
  • Web camera support
• Ability to launch from Web browser
• Globalization (e.g., multi-language support, translation)
• Ease of use
  • Camera stability and ease of use
• Cost: reasonable acquisition and operational costs
• Integration
  • Content management systems and document repositories
• Standards support
  • Scripting in Java

Brainstorming topic 3: How do you choose in an emerging market?

During the two sessions, we generated more than 40 thoughts about how to choose an enterprise immersive platform in an emerging market. The items that got at least one vote from participants included (in order of number of votes, then alphabetically:

• Cost
• Demo the platform for your target users
• Ease with which you can get people into and using the platform
• Focus on concepts first, not technology
• Choose open source
• Community of IT experts
• Reference customers
• Size of vendor
• Try as many of the products as you can in realistic situations
• Business case
• Capability maturity in relevant areas that integrate with the immersive platform
• Customer service
• Features
• Hold off on investment until a stable, out-of-box solution is available
• Look for vendor that has long history of offering collaboration apps
• Match features with needs
• Number of apps that are integrated with it
• Out of box templates and processes
• Use case and requirements
• Vendor has security clearance experience

The outcome of these brainstorming sessions is just the tiniest tip of the iceberg. These lists may be helpful to the enterprise immersive platform vendors, as well as to Immersive Internet advocates and implementers trying to make a technology decision. The enterprise immersive platform decision-making process is a complex one that should always start with, “What are you trying to do?” At ThinkBalm, we are now in the planning stages of a comprehensive research study that will result in a guide to making the right technology decision. Stay tuned for more info!

© 2009 ThinkBalm. All rights reserved.

Who is in the ThinkBalm Innovation Community?

by Erica Driver and Sam Driver.

The mission of the ThinkBalm Innovation Community is to advance adoption of work-related use of the Immersive Internet. Since its launch in August of 2008, the ThinkBalm Innovation Community has evolved into a mix between a social network, collaborative laboratory, and guild. We just completed some analysis on the membership of our community, and here’s what we found:

• We currently have 323 members: all are Immersive Internet advocates, implementers, explorers, or technology marketers.
• More than 80% of the members are non-technology marketers.
• They have more than 210 different job titles.
• They are in dozens of industries, with technology-related and education-related sectors being the most prevalent.
• More than 50% of our members are at or near the top of their organizations, with roles like owner/founder, manager / director, chief executive, and executive / VP.
• Many community members are sole practitioners or independent consultants.
• About 70% of members are in the US. The next-largest populations are in the UK and Canada.
• And, anecdotally, new members are increasingly explorers — they haven’t done much with the Immersive Internet yet, but see its promise.

 

 

© ThinkBalm 2009. All rights reserved.

Welcome to the new ThinkBalm Web site

by Sam Driver.

We’ve overhauled our web presence, with a focus on finding information more easily.

Some highlights:

• The new and improved homepage, with access to a web-browser based 3D meeting space
• The Reports tab, with quick access to our research reports.
• The Services tab, with descriptions of our offerings for both technology vendors and businesses adopting immersive technology for work.

We hope you like the new look and feel.

© ThinkBalm 2009. All rights reserved.

New video: Aug. 4th ThinkBalm Innovation Community professional networking event

by Erica Driver and Sam Driver.

On August 4^th 2009, we held a ThinkBalm Innovation Community immersive professional networking event. A new community work product is now available: a  four and a half-minute video about the event.

Hats off to the following contributors: Jeff Barr for the location on one of Amazon.com’s islands in the virtual world of Second Life; Jeff Barr and Joel Foner for footage and images; Keely Algiere for music; and Jonas Karlsson for the Poinky’s Pods speed networking tool. A very special thanks to all the presenters: Bill Krebs, Christopher Bishop, Christopher Simpson, Claus Nehmzow, Florence Chan, Jeff Barr, Jeff Bush, John Westra, Michael Sarchet, Paul Zonca, Peter Mills, Randi Kopp, and Richard Hackathorn.

The purpose of this professional networking event was to facilitate connections among Immersive Internet advocates, implementers and explorers. We designed the event to be fast-flowing and highly engaging. We held it during the middle of the workday eastern time. More than 70 people registered from all over the US as well as from Canada, the UK, France, Spain, and Hong Kong. We experimented with a new event format:

• 13 five-minute presentations. We invited attendees who had something to share (e.g., their resume or a job description) to sign up in advance to deliver a 5-minute talk about the work or talent they were seeking. Each presenter had their own presentation station. Event participants walked or flew from one station to the next on a structured tour. Each station had the presenter’s name on it with a link to their LinkedIn profile. Each presenter was permitted to use one image or 3D object as a prop. 
• Speed networking. We held a half-hour speed networking session using a tool called Poinky’s Pods built by ThinkBalm Innovation Community member Jonas Karlsson. The tool seats participants with one other person for a five-minute exchange, after which all participants are automatically shifted to another random seat.

This was our first attempt at an immersive professional networking event and we learned a few lessons. The event took a lot of planning and preparation but it was well worth it. The two and a half hours flew by and feedback from participants was overwhelmingly positive. On the down side, most of the people who participated were looking for work, rather than offering work – which was disappointing to some. Also, during the speed networking session the “cocktail party effect” was a bit too loud. People could overhear the voices of others in nearby pods and this was distracting. But overall the event turned out to be a very fun, engaging, and valuable way for people to make professional connections.

© ThinkBalm, 2008-2009. All rights reserved.

We’re keynoting 3DTLC!

by Erica Driver and Sam Driver.

We are proud to announce that we’ve been invited to deliver the opening keynote at the 3DTLC conference, taking place on September 23rd and 24th in San Jose, California. Our session is titled, “Crossing the Chasm, One Implementation at a Time.” 

Before work-related use of the Immersive Internet can reach the early majority phase of adoption we face a wide chasm filled with barriers. This can be overwhelming when looked at as a whole. But the barriers – as well as the benefits – depend on why and how this emerging technology is put to work. Across industries and company sizes, hard-working project teams are applying immersive technology to burning business problems in eight major areas. In this session, we’ll share our research into the business value of the Immersive Internet and offer a set of good practices for knocking down the barriers to adoption.

Here’s where you come in! We are kicking off a new research report digging into how Immersive Internet advocates and implementers are overcoming – or not – the barriers to adoption. We expect to publish this report, which is a follow-on to the ThinkBalm Immersive Internet Business Value Study, Q2 2009, on the opening day of the conference. We would like to interview you if you have been part of an Immersive Internet project team and have a story to share about overcoming (or avoiding) barriers like target users having inadequate hardware, corporate security restrictions, getting target users interested in using this emerging technology, or user training taking more effort than you expected. Please contact us at info@thinkbalm.com.

The 3DTLC conference team is offering a $200 discount to attendees who mention this discount code when they register by August 14th: SPEAKERVIP. To register go here: http://www.3dtlc.com.

 © 2009 ThinkBalm. All rights reserved.