IBM Research announced a new project, dubbed "Sametime 3-D," demonstrating the integration of Lotus Sametime with several Virtual World Platforms (refer to AI 70). The project showcases the business value virtual environments can bring to the future of unified communications.
Specifically, users can instant message a colleague and instead of only chatting with one another, launch into an immersive 3-D environment directly from within the Sametime chat session. "Sametime 3-D" creates a virtual meeting space 'on demand' that uses the capabilities of the virtual environment, including presentation tools, access to 3-D objects in the avatar's inventory and full avatar functionality.
As the 3-D meeting space is launched, people have the option to attach files, select a meeting space type and sign in using their existing enterprise authentication tools.
Future work includes the provision of recording and reporting capabilities that the meeting initiator can use to capture text chat, video recording of the meeting and maintain a record of participants and materials, including the entire meeting space.
IBM has demonstrated Lotus Sametime with the OpenSim Virtual World Platform (refer to AI 28). YouTube has a video of this capability that can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzuiEzTah5w. This shows instructions for an engineer working on hardware with a conversation between a subject matter expert and the engineer needing guidance.
"The ability to easily integrate existing communication and collaboration tools in 3-D environments will allow businesses to clearly realize the ROI of virtual environments," said Colin Parris, vice president of Digital Convergence.
"Extending the real-time connection between people into a 3-D medium enhances the experience and productivity of teams located across the country or the world."
The IBM collaboration vision is to foster innovation and business agility by making it easier for people to find, connect to and collaborate with one another through a unified communications experience -- right from their familiar devices, applications, and processes.
In addition to IBM's work with the OpenSim platform, IBM and Forterra Systems have been working together to develop and release later in 2008 a futuristic unified communications solution code-named "Babel Bridge" for the U.S. intelligence agencies.
This robust feature set also addresses the needs of other industries like financial services, energy, consulting services, and healthcare.
The combination of IBM Sametime's unified communication and collaboration platform and Forterra's Virtual World Platform called OLIVE™ (refer to AI 67) immersive 3-D environment takes group collaboration productivity to a new level, incorporating not only voice, video, and media, but it adds the important element of a sense of presence and digital identities that build stronger relationships.
Also, IBM is pursuing similar integration capabilities between Lotus® Sametime® software/IBM Unified Communications and Collaboration (UC2™) platform and a variety of other environments including the ActiveWorlds platform (refer to AI 74).
