ThinkBalm’s “Distillery” — an immersive technology selection experience

by Erica Driver and Sam Driver.

What do whiskey and enterprise immersive software have in common? Not much, unless you’re on ThinkBalm Island in Second Life (or, shortly, the ThinkBalm region of ReactionGrid). We are excited to announce that construction on The Distillery is complete!

About the Distillery

In January, we published a ThinkBalm Immersive Internet analyst report titled The Enterprise Immersive Software Decision-Making Guide, a use case-based guide designed to aid business decision makers in the enterprise immersive software selection process. This report was sponsored by Linden Lab, ProtonMedia, Teleplace, and Virtual Italian Parks. To develop this report, ThinkBalm analysts held structured briefings with nineteen enterprise immersive software vendors and conducted interviews with fifteen early adopters who were involved in the technology selection process. In the report, we present “if/then” scenarios and highlight good-fit vendors for common situations, with a focus on the most prevalent use cases: meetings, conferences, and learning and training.

The report offers guidance on how to: 1) ask core business questions to frame the discussion, 2) choose a research-and-demo, do-it-yourself, or combination approach, 3) identify requirements based on your use case, and 4) filter your options based on important limiters. The Distillery is an immersive experience built around these concepts. Our intentions are to replace the boring ole’ webinar with an engaging, interactive activity, and create an unforgettable immersive learning experience.

Instead of grain mash being processed and distilled to make whiskey, ThinkBalm’s technology selection process helps business and technology decision makers winnow their vendor options from dozens down to just a few. Stop 1 on the tour is the Options Vat, where we discuss core business questions. Stop 2 is the Requirements Room, where we lead participants through a discussion about the features and functions needed to satisfy the most common use cases: small meetings, large meetings and conferences, and learning and training. Stop 3 is the Filter tower, where we discuss important limiting factors like security concerns, system integration requirements, scalability requirements, and technology prerequisites. The final stop is the Recommendations Room.

Preliminary tour schedule

ThinkBalm will be offering public tours of The Distillery in Second Life at the following times. All times are Second Life time, which is the same as Pacific time. Here is the Time Zone Converter, should you need it.

• Tuesday, March 2, 8-9AM Second Life time (morning)
• Wednesday, March 3, 6-7AM Second Life time (morning)
• Monday, March 8, 5-6PM Second Life time (evening)

We will publish additional tour dates as they are scheduled. We also offer private and semi-private tours for members of the ThinkBalm Innovation Community and for ThinkBalm clients. Let us know if you’re interested.

© 2010 ThinkBalm. All rights reserved.

Coming up: ThinkBalm Innovation Community’s problem-solving session #1

by Erica Driver.

Next week, the ThinkBalm Innovation Community will experiment with a new event format: a problem-solving session (details here). Two members of the community will each have about 20 minutes to present an Immersive Internet-related problem they are working on and get input from other participants. We expect about a dozen and a half community members — all Immersive Internet advocates, implementers, explorers and technology marketers — to participate in this event. Participants will collaborate together in an immersive environment (we will meet in ThinkBalm’s Teleplace environment) to increase their first-hand experience with immersive technology and collectively build the body of knowledge about how virtual worlds, immersive learning environments, and virtual event platforms can benefit business. 

Part I: Laura Handrick, VP of Innovation at The Maids International

Laura Handrick, VP of Innovation at The Maids International will share a bit about what her team is working on and will pose the following questions for discussion:

1. How can a virtual learning space be used to entice / encourage / inspire management to replicate best practices in the real world?
2. What kinds of scripted objects should we create that are unique to our business (such as our proprietary back-pack vacuum)?
3. What kinds of giveaways might inspire visitors to return? Should we create virtual uniforms that hang on a rack that anyone visiting is free to wear?
4. How much security should we have?  We’re in a business with competitors, but not too worried that they will steal our ideas by visiting our virtual world space. However, once we begin to provide video programs, manuals, etc., we’ll have to prevent them from being replicated.

Part II: Richard Hackathorn, founder and president of Bolder Technology, Inc.

Richard Hackathorn, founder and president of Bolder Technology, Inc. will share some thoughts about Immersive Intelligence, which is a collaborative data-driven decision process for understanding complex systems using immersive spaces. To explore and mature the concept of Immersive Intelligence, he will raise the following questions for discussion:

1. What are the use cases? Expected business benefits? Unique contributions?
2. What is the architecture? How should a virtual world interact with a massive database?
3. How can millions of objects be created that convey rich visualization of the underlying data?
4. How do you visualize complex analytics acting on the base data?
5. What are some good current examples that illustrate key concepts?
6. How do we weave the collaborative elements into data visualization? To make decisions?
7. How do we engage people from the arts, architecture, sciences, etc?
8. How should we organize an open community? Financial model?

If you are an Immersive Internet advocate, implementer, explorer, or technology marketer and are interested in participating in this or future ThinkBalm Innovation Community events, we invite you to request membership in our LinkedIn group. You can find more info here.

© 2010 ThinkBalm. All rights reserved.

SAIC/Forterra acquisition: what it means for the enterprise immersive software market

by Erica Driver and Sam Driver.

On February 1, 2010, Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) announced that it had acquired the OLIVE product line from Forterra Systems. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. SAIC had been working with Forterra on and off for the past six years and SAIC had been working with OLIVE internally for the past year and a half. Moving forward, the company plans to offer OLIVE solutions to customers, as well as to use it internally.

On February 4^th, we spoke with executives at SAIC about the acquisition. Our takeaways are:

• SAIC’s industry focus for OLIVE will be government, energy, health, and other commercial markets. SAIC’s focus on these industries closely mirrors the industry focus Forterra had — so we don’t expect the OLIVE customer mix to change much in 2010. SAIC also says it will continue to work with channel partners with whom Forterra had relationships. Forterra had regional resellers in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, as well as associations with companies like ACS Learning Services, Lockheed Martin, and Carahsoft.
• The primary internal and external use cases will be training and business activity rehearsal. SAIC has a long history in modeling and simulation, going back two decades. The company’s primary customer, the US government, has been putting increasing training emphasis on the interpersonal realm. OLIVE fills a gap in SAIC’s existing modeling and simulation offerings: strong support for interpersonal interaction. OLIVE gives SAIC a collaborative, multiuser 3D immersive environment. SAIC has already integrated OLIVE with systems like the US Army’s OneSAF^TM (One Semi Automated Forces) simulation solution. The company is likely to integrate OLIVE with additional systems moving forward.

What it means for business decision makers

As we have detailed in the past here and here, the enterprise immersive software market is still emerging and 2010 will be a year of churn. We see the acquisition of Forterra Systems by SAIC as a positive step in the maturation of the market. While it is difficult for those who are personally involved, the industry will benefit from having a smaller number of stable, well-capitalized technology providers.

• OLIVE just gained momentum in government and military and has promise in health and energy. Now offered by SAIC, a Fortune 500 company, OLIVE has a better shot than ever of penetrating the government and military sectors. If SAIC chooses to fully develop market opportunities in the energy and health sectors, OLIVE will remain a formidable competitor to products like American Research Institute’s PowerU, Linden Lab’s Second Life Enterprise, Teleplace’s Teleplace, and ProtonMedia’s ProtoSphere
• As with any acquisition, change is inevitable. Given that the acquisition just closed this week, many open questions remain. Existing and prospective OLIVE customers should keep an eye out for changes to product pricing, packaging, and status (e.g., Meeting Labs was a new hosted offering from Forterra and its future is unclear), as well as SAIC’s relationships with Forterra’s channel partners (some of which compete directly with SAIC). 

© 2010 ThinkBalm. All rights reserved.

Video: ThinkBalm analyst Sam Driver’s guest appearance on Metanomics

by Erica Driver and Sam Driver.

On February 3, 2010, Sam Driver was a guest on the Metanomics show, hosted by Robert Bloomfield. Sam was invited onto the show to discuss social networking, immersive media and the importance of community in a digital world. A large focus of the interview was on the research reports ThinkBalm publishes — in particular our most recent report, The Enterprise Immersive Software Decision-Making Guide. Sam also discussed the ThinkBalm Innovation Community, which has a mission of advancing adoption of work-related use of the Immersive Internet — virtual worlds and campuses, virtual event platforms, immersive learning environments, and 3D collaboration tools. The ThinkBalm Innovation Community, which now has nearly 420 members, has evolved into a mix between a social network, collaborative laboratory and guild.

Here’s the video recording of Sam’s interview.

© 2010 ThinkBalm. All rights reserved.

Images from ThinkBalm Innovation Community’s un-lecture no. 6

by Erica Driver.

On January, 29, 2010 we held a ThinkBalm Innovation Community event titled ”Un-Lecture no. 6.” An un-lecture is an event during which four ThinkBalm Innovation Community members deliver 10-minute presentations about an Immersive Internet project on which they have been working. These events are a terrific way for enterprise immersive software early adopters to learn about possibilities and good practices, and to network. For more insight into the un-lecture format, see the January 14, 2009 ThinkBalm Storytelling Series report, End Death-by-Lecture: Tours, Not Speeches.

We held Un-Lecture no. 6 in ThinkBalm’s Avaya web.alive environment, at thinkbalm.projectchainsaw.com. Our presenters were:

• Joe Rigby, market manager, MellaniuM Inc. While this un-lecture utilized just the basic meeting functionality of Avaya web.alive, the technology can be used to create graphically rich scenes and environments. Joe Rigby showed examples his organization has built, leveraging content created outside web.alive, and shared insights into what was involved.
• Ariella Furman, CEO and machinimatographer, ALM Productions. Ariella is starting to see corporate clients using machinima as an alternative to traditional film production. She took us through the steps of creating corporate movies in a virtual world, highlighting the ways machinima allows film makers to do things they can’t do in the physical world — like imitate complicated camera moves and create visual effects. Here is a link to a commercial ALM Productions created for There.com and here is a link to a short movie for IBM.
• Ann Cudworth, production designer and virtual world creator, CBS Television and principal and lead designer with VSETS. Ann shared her career experiences transitioning from traditional set design to virtual set design. You can see examples of her work at Alchemy Sims in Second Life.
• John Kinsella, VP with PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors). John is a vice president at PADI, where he is responsible for – among other things – Dive World, which is PADI’s Immersive Internet presence in Second Life. John told us about his current project, which ties Dive World to scuba diver education (PADI’s core mission). PADI has created an accurate and realistic simulation of a scuba diving decompression computer. Participants can use it to learn what to expect on an actual scuba dive. Here is a link to a video about this new PADI project.

To attend future ThinkBalm Innovation Community events, please join our group on LinkedIn.

Thanks to Chris Hardy of Avaya for these snapshots.

© 2010 ThinkBalm. All rights reserved.