IBM to Run Its Own Second Life

IBM is getting ready to host its own Second Life servers for private in-company work and collaboration, separate from the online service's public "main grid."

Technology giant IBM has long been one of the most prominent corporate presences in Linden Labs‘ virtual world Second Life—and it turns out the company like SL so much, it’s planning to set up its own private world. Earlier this week, IBM announced it will be the first company to host regions of the Second Life environment behind its corporate firewall.

The idea is to create a region of Second Life where IBM employees can meet and collaborate securely about confidential topics without any data streams leaving IBM’s secured network. But, if IBM employees want, they’ll be able to seamlessly travel to Second Life’s “main grid,” which currently boasts millions of accounts. The project will mark the first extension of the Second Life Grid outside of Linden Labs, and may lead to other companies and enterprises adopting Second Life technology for virtual meetings, online training, and as a replacement for conference calls and other distance communications. Second Life offers instant messaging, real-time voice communications, and relatively robust 3D content creation tools. Linden Labs has released the source code for its Second Life viewer application as open source.

“As virtual world technologies and platforms become more commonplace, we see a need for an enterprise-ready solution that offers the same content creation capabilities but adds new levels of security and scalability,” said IBM’s VPP for digital convergence Colin Parris, in a statement. “Combining IBM and Linden Lab’s solutions together has the potential to make custom-created environments a viable option for enterprises.”

Some 6,000 IBM employees already have Second Life avatars, and the company has been using the platform for online training, collaboration, and as a virtual meeting space. IBM and Linden Labs have also been collaborating on virtual world interoperability: that is, being able to walk (or fly, or slither) an avatar from on virtual world to another.

IBM’s extension of the Second Life grid be being undertaken as a joint development effort, with no money changing hands.