The Second Life virtual world has suffered the reality of company firewalls in its attempts to break into the corporate world.
But not for much longer. Second Life Enterprise, announced on Wednesday, is a version of the virtual world for business, packaged as an appliance that can be plugged easily into a corporate network.
This behind-the-firewall product should give a second enterprise life to Second Life, satisfying the reservations of businesses who feel the consumer-driven open world does not have enough security, controls and content for their needs.
Linden Lab, Second Life’s creator, is offering a complete package, rather like Google’s bright yellow search appliance. It will supply and provide support for a server that can be added to a company network, with a private version of Second Life installed on it. Pricing starts at $55,000.
Workers will have Second Life client software installed on their PCs and the new corporate world will come with pre-installed essential elements and sets of standard business avatars.
“Out of the box, the system comes with content such as meeting rooms and conference areas, which are just ready to go,” Chris Collins, Enterprise general manager at Linden Lab, told me.
“There’s also a marketplace – an area where users can purchase content for their meeting rooms, or if they’re the military, it could be content for tanks and planes, all the way up to full software applications.”
This Second Life Work Marketplace, due to launch in the first quarter of next year, should provide fresh opportunities for Second Life’s ecosystem of developers producing virtual goods and enterprise applications.
An open beta testing phase for Second Life Enterprise begins today before a launch in the New Year. Those taking part include IBM, Northrop Grumman, the Naval Undersea Warfare Center and DefenseWeb Technologies.
Some, like IBM, have already set up substantial virtual operations in the existing Second Life. They will now have the option to move these behind their organisation’s firewalls or combine the two worlds as they continue work such as prototyping, simulation, training, product design and collaboration.
More than 1,400 organisations are currently using Second Life. IBM and Linden Lab announced in April last year that they would work together to develop an enterprise-class virtual world that would convince companies of the value of communicating through avatars and 3D environments.
