IBM announces their 3D collaboration solution for enterprises, universities called Sametime 3D using OpenSim and LotusSametime . I guess they beat LL Nebraska to the market with a commercial inside-the-firewall offering. We also noticed that IBM added a vivox integration to OpenSim so you can run your own voice servers as well.
IBM is also targetting the same education market that LL is after. According to the press release: "With IBM's new virtual meeting service, teachers would be able to tell which students are present and better control the environment."
I suppose Mitch Kapor must be chuckling a little on this as he is both on the Board of LL and the creator of Lotus Notes.
Maria Korolov has a more detailed interview with on the IBM product managers here, where she reports that 4 region starter pack will price at $50k. But you gotta believe IBM is looking for much bigger price tags than that.
I like this part at the end of the IBM release: "IBM is helping clients to develop their virtual world strategies, and is providing them with offerings that enable adopters to better collaborate. In addition, IBM is leading an initiative to help improve compatibility between disparate virtual worlds. IBM also uses virtual worlds to conduct research, host events, and to welcome new employees."
Also noticed a new hosted world using opensim/rex = Sketchworld
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Comments
and here is IBM's corporate
Thu, 07/16/2009 - 18:18 — RightAsRain Rimbaudand here is IBM's corporate spew marketing thing about their offering:
I fail to see how a server
Sat, 07/18/2009 - 01:31 — Captcha (not verified)I fail to see how a server with 4 simulators can be worth 50000 USD. They are running a stock Opensim which is free with some scripted prim applications that can be made by script kiddies. There isn't anything special about this yet they try to charge 50000 USD for this. They didn't even bother to change the default textures of the land. One should really expect to see such a large company coming up with something more advanced after having several developers coding for years now on the Opensim project.
Also worth to note is that Opensim still has tons of bugs in it, yet IBM tries to sell this for 50000 USD to their clients at this stage.
This would make you think twice about buying anything from IBM doesn't it? They put 3 kid coders (yes not programmers with years of experience but young staff that still needs to learn a lot) to experiment and test with the other coders of the Opensim project (many volunteer non profit programmers) for a period of 2 years. Now that Opensim is kinda getting stable, KINDA = Link 3 prims, attach them to your head, teleport and get stuck at 128,128,128 in the next place with both simulator and viewer crash as result. But suddenly this has become a product worth charging 50000 USD towards customers for it?
Opensim is still years away from being software that is stable enough to even think about selling services with it. It isn't robust in any way and can be exploited in an easy way as well.
Heard about the IM messaging bridge between Opensim and Second Life? With the software being open source it is very easy for hackers to exploit it and retrieve conversations which take place in these so called "behind firewall solutions".
This seems a bit lame, taking a free product, plastering your company logo on it and charging 50000 USD for it. If you wish to charge so much money for a product then you can start from scratch and develop your own thing. It makes you look like a hussler.
It's a bit like BMW would take a Ferrari apart, have their engineers decode the electronics for the engine, take molds from the model, put together a brand new car with an extra spoiler and sell it for the same price as a brand new Ferrari. People would laugh and find them cheap and think twice before buying a BMW.
Some of these IBM programmers even blog about their work on Opensim and have had massive critiques on Linden or on the easter egg some of the programmers of Opensim put in the code back in april. Today their employer wants to rake in 50000 USD for unstable code by slamming on their label on the software. Who deserves critiques now?
Opensim is made by the efforts of 1000's of people, many companies work on it including IBM, Microsoft, Intel many smaller companies and individuals. 1000's of people have installed Opensim, provided feedback and helped to improve the code over the past years. Charging 50000 USD for an unfinished product equals asking for feedback.
50K is a lot, but I think for
Sat, 07/18/2009 - 14:16 — RightAsRain Rimbaud50K is a lot, but I think for IBM guys is about as cheap as you can get anything from them. OpenSim seems a lot more stable/useful than you might be aware. We are using it now on the http://heritage-key.com grid. Check out Virtual King Tut and prolly you will be surprised at how good it is. Still a long way to go, but I remember SL a few years ago being pretty flakey. Big upside with OpenSim is that is not clogged onto one grid owned by one company. I am hoping we will see more distributed maybe even P2P with OpenSIm sooner rather than later.
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