IBM Lotus offers online virtual office world with Sametime 3D
An online virtual world is usually a place of imagination and fantasy, where gravity is an option.
Except when the creator is IBM’s Lotus division.
Today, the computer giant is launching a new service at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston. Called Sametime 3D, this virtual world is mundane and workaday on purpose.
Instead of exotic islands and futuristic nightclubs, IBM’s digital universe features conference tables, a gigantic appointment calendar, and a flip chart. At least one of the avatars, the computer-created characters that stand in for real people using the service, is wearing a tie.
This unlikely business product is one of three new projects from the Boston-area IBM Lotus team, all designed to offer the appeal of the latest personal software ideas in office applications. Besides the virtual world, the group’s products include Twitter-like “micro-blogging’’ as part of a Facebook-style social networking application, and a service that enables “cloud computing’’ - using remote computers connected by the Internet to do work that has traditionally been performed on a local machine.
“A lot has changed in the way people are interacting at home,’’ said Bob Picciano, general manager, IBM Lotus Software. “We want to bring that into work.’’
Sametime 3D enables users of Lotus’s instant-messaging client, Sametime, to set up and use virtual meeting spaces, select colleagues from their Lotus Sametime contact list, and invite them to take part in a virtual meeting.
The newest version of Lotus Connections software, previewed at the Enterprise 2.0 conference yesterday, features what the company is calling a “Twitter-like experience’’ that allows users to “share short, yet critical pieces of information.’’ The new version of Connections will also contain a “wiki’’ application that allows people to create, share, and modify content in real time.
LotusLive Connections, which will be available next week, brings some trendy cloud-computing features to Lotus users, allowing them to share documents and data that are hosted “in the cloud’’ - meaning, on easily accessible Web servers.
“IBM has been very aggressive in seeing these opportunities and going for them,’’ said Larry Hawes, lead analyst for Collaboration & Enterprise Social Software with the Gilbane Group in Cambridge, speaking from the Enterprise 2.0 show floor. “A lot of kids who are just entering the workforce don’t really use e-mail, for example. They are going to have a different way of working. These new products get IBM ahead of that.’’
IBM’s Lotus is not alone in adding Web 2.0 features. Microsoft’s SharePoint product, which competes with Lotus, does not have virtual places or micro-blogging, but it has incorporated Web 2.0 features like blogs, wikis, and Facebook-style networking.
D.C. Denison can be reached at denison@globe.com. 