Second Life Enterprise

Linden Lab announced on Wednesday the creation of Second Life Enterprise, a secure 3D virtual meeting place for businesses.
Businesses can now host events online, behind a secure firewall, using Second Life meeting spaces. For $55,000 organizations receive a server and hardware, which allows them to control access to their events in the Second Life virtual world.
According to Linden Lab, over 1,400 organizations currently use Second Life for a more economical solution to meetings, conferences and trainings.
IBM is one of the 14 organizations already using the beta program of Second Life Enterprise and has had extremely successful results.
“The meeting in Second Life was everything that you could do at a traditional conference—and more—at one fifth the cost and without a single case of jet lag,” said Joanne Martin, president of IBM Academy of Technology in a statement issued as part of a Linden Lab case study.
According to the case study, IBM utilized the Enterprise program to create conference spaces for keynote speakers, breakout sessions, a simulated Green Data Center, a library and social areas.
Linden Lab uses Second Life technology to give Enterprise customers 3D visual, spatial audio and text collaboration capabilities. 3D avatars represent the members in an organization’s virtual environment. Enterprise has the current capabilities for up to 800 concurrent users in the same environment.
Companies control access to their Second Life environment on a secure server behind their firewall. According to the Linden Lab press release, the Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) uses Second Life Enterprise for virtual training and simulated military exercises because the security of firewall.
“Hosting the Second Life Enterprise on a secured network allows us to conduct training, concept of operation exercises and collaborative engineering activities using sensitive information in safety,” said Douglas Maxwell, program technology lead for NUWC Metaverse Strategic Initiative in a Linden Lab press release.
According to Brett Atwood, web content strategist at Linden Lab, Linden Lab created Second Life Enterprise in response to the needs of businesses with a global reach. Enterprise does not replace the human element of business communications, according to Atwood. However he says that the technology can be used to reduce travel costs accrued by professionals who work in remote workplaces.