IBM and Linden Lab to Explore Enterprise-Class Solution for Virtual World Creation and Collaboration

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--IBM (NYSE:IBM) and Linden Lab®, creator of the virtual world Second Life®, today announced the two companies are exploring the development of enterprise solutions for security-rich, custom virtual world creation and collaboration on the Second Life Grid platform. At the Virtual Worlds 2008 conference, they will demonstrate hosting regions of the Second Life Grid behind IBM’s firewall that will combine the operational scale and security of IBM’s BladeCenter with Second Life’s dynamic content creation tools and vibrant user community.

“We share a vision that virtual world technologies and collaboration represent the future of business communication. Deploying regions of the Second Life Grid behind IBM’s firewall is a major milestone in the evolution of the Internet and will help accelerate the growth and adoption of all virtual worlds.”

The Second Life Grid is a platform that enables organizations to create a public or private virtual environment using Linden Lab’s 3-D online virtual world technology. This marks the first time a portion of the Second Life Grid will be deployed behind a corporate firewall, with the goal of creating a solution that businesses can quickly deploy to get work done in a new way.

IBM plans to pilot a solution internally which, at that time, will be designed to allow IBM employees to explore the Second Life mainland and seamlessly cross over into IBM’s custom-built world behind the firewall without having to log on and off. This is similar to using the same browser to access corporate intranet pages as well as non-secure Internet sites. The goal is to allow IBM employees to access public spaces and private spaces within one Second Life client interface while privatizing and securing portions of the Second Life Grid behind IBM’s firewall.

As more enterprises explore the use of virtual worlds for internal and external communication and collaboration efforts, a need has arisen for solutions that are security-rich, flexible and customizable. To meet this growing demand, IBM and Linden Lab plan to work together to explore the benefits of enabling enterprises to cost-effectively develop their own virtual worlds.

Additionally, deployment of the Second Life Grid behind IBM’s firewall is intended to allow for an environment of security-rich content creation, data assets and internal communications such as chat, IM and voice, while also enabling connection to the wealth of user-generated content on the Second Life mainland.

“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 Colin Parris, Vice President, Digital Convergence, IBM. “Combining IBM and Linden Lab’s solutions together has the potential to make custom-created environments a viable option for enterprises.”

“The Second Life Grid was built to allow enterprises to reap the benefits and methodologies of virtual worlds,” said Ginsu Yoon, Vice President of Business Affairs, Linden Lab. “We share a vision that virtual world technologies and collaboration represent the future of business communication. Deploying regions of the Second Life Grid behind IBM’s firewall is a major milestone in the evolution of the Internet and will help accelerate the growth and adoption of all virtual worlds.”

As more enterprises and consumers explore the 3-D Internet, the ecosystem of virtual world hosts, application providers, and IT vendors need to offer a variety of standards-based solutions in order to meet end user requirements. To support this, IBM and Linden Lab are exploring interoperability for virtual world platforms and technologies, and plan to work with industry-wide efforts to further expand the capabilities of virtual worlds.

IBM BladeCenter integrates servers, networks, storage and business applications in highly efficient one-inch systems that sit in a rack like books in a shelf.

For more information about IBM’s 3-D Internet initiatives, please visit http://www.ibm.com/virtualworlds/.

For more information about the Second Life Grid visit http://secondlifegrid.net/. The Second Life community maintains information about the Architecture Working Group at http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Architecture_Working_Group.

About The Second Life Grid

The Second Life Grid is a sophisticated development platform created by Linden Lab, a company founded in 1999 by Philip Rosedale, to create a revolutionary new form of shared 3D experience. The former CTO of RealNetworks, Rosedale pioneered the development of many of today’s streaming media technologies, including RealVideo. In April 2003, noted software pioneer Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus Development Corporation, was named Chairman. Based in San Francisco, Linden Lab employs a senior team bringing together deep expertise in physics, 3D graphics and networking.

Note to editors: Second Life® and Linden Lab® are registered trademarks of Linden Research, Inc.