Tuesday, October 23, 2007

IBM, Linden Labs, and Virtual World Interoperability

I attended a great session today at Dr. Dobbs Island hosted by Ziggy Figaro (exec editor of InfoWeek). DrCP Cydrome (IBM's VP of Digital Convergence) spoke as well as Ginsu Linden. It is obviously very early days, but was an interesting conversation. A bit from the chat stream below.

Noteable Links:
Architecture Working Group
PC World Article
IBM Press Release

Ziggy Figaro: What is IBM getting from this - why is IBM involved?
DrCP Cydrome: There is a significant capacity to transform enterprises using this technology
Ziggy Figaro: How so?
DrCP Cydrome: Even as much so as the web did and IBM sees itself as one of the leaders here in this effort
DrCP Cydrome: Given the many enterprise processes that can benefit from this innovative learning and collaborative capability we see this as a new step for enterprises
DrCP Cydrome: towards cost reduction, increased efficiency, and optimization
...
DrCP Cydrome: Also think of the enterprises who would like to sell or provide services to consumers -they could maximize their investments if worlds were interoperable and
Ginsu Linden: right like the old services, or like the IM services today, or like SNS (Facebook, MySpace),
Zha Ewry: Content often was trapped in one part of that space, and until we got to a single markup, it was costly to move it between those spaces.
Ginsu Linden: you find that you wish you had more interoperability through any service that's walled now.
DrCP Cydrome: Also given interoperability there are many business models that would permit investment of new services and capabilities in this space.
DrCP Cydrome: With walled approaches the economics does not sustain broad expansion

Ziggy Figaro: What's in it for LL?
Ginsu Linden: And you have another service with, say, a user base that is focused on a specific experience around an interest, like music or clothes or books.
Ziggy Figaro: You're hte market leader here - and market leaders in most industries are resistant to standardization.
Ginsu Linden: If the two services can interoperate, then they will both be more valuable.
Ziggy Figaro: Or they "embrace and extend" like those fabulous fellows in Redmond, Wash.
Ginsu Linden: What's in it for LL is to expand the market. It doesn't mean much to lead a market that doesn't grow.
Ginsu Linden: We think that the key to growth to Internet scale is in interoperability.
Ziggy Figaro: Ah. So a piece of a big pie is worth more to LL than most or almost all of a smaller pie?
Ginsu Linden: Of course.
Ginsu Linden: In order to be involved in an Internet scale phenomenon, you really have to be com

Zha Ewry: Also.. please note that our work, on this, the Architecture Working Group is being hosted on the SL wiki, Feel free to come look
Tao Takashi: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Architecture_Working_Group

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