The corporate virtual world

There is new emerging job for CIOs and IT departments at many big corporations that have employees scattered across the country as well as around the globe. According to Business Week, IBM has found a hi-tech way to overcome new employees' geographic and cultural barriers by setting up a way for them to interact virtually using the same kind of 3D technology that runs virtual worlds such as Linden Lab's Second Life videogame. IBM has built so-called "virtual work spaces" that let workers use avatars, or graphic representations of themselves, to handle such tasks as rehearsing presentations or learning about employee benefits. Sun Microsystems executives say that virtual worlds can help their scattered colleagues forge closer bonds. "Virtual world technology is a way to bring the company together to build a global corporate culture where people are on equal footing," said Nicole Yankelovich, principal investigator at Sun Labs. Does your company have such needs, and the resources and capability to get on board with of this new trend?

For more on this emerging trend:
- See this BusinessWeek article