During the Virtual Worlds Conference and Expo, held earlier this month at the LA Convention Center, there was a lot of conversation about the use of Virtual Worlds in the “Enterprise” space. Enterprise meaning corporate.

More and more companies are using virtual worlds to strengthen their communication externally with customers and business partners and internally with employees. Many in attendance were of the opinion that in a few years virtual worlds as part of the enterprise application will be widespread and a part of most people’s daily corporate lives.

The enterprise session I attended featured a case study providing a detailed look at the U.S. Army National Guard’s Joint Training Directorate’s virtual world for collaboration, which is scheduled to launch next April. The collaboration tool will soon have virtual classroom capabilities and more, integrated across multiple agencies and emergency management organizations.

Emergency response personnel will be able to virtually train for a variety of emergency situations. The plan is to create training locations and military bases that accurately represent the terrain and skyline one would see if there in real life. (The National Guard found that people really wanted NYC to look like NYC, Baghdad to look like Baghdad, etc.) The National Guard worked with existing virtual worlds to leverage assets with the express intent to re-purpose imagery in order to keep development costs down.

One of the features they plan to implement that really caught my attention was the ability for families to log-in and upload files to deployed soldiers who were also logged-in. Children would be able to upload report cards, art work and photos via file share in order to instantly show their deployed parent.

Since the conference, an article has been written on how Forterra was recently awarded the contract to develop non-player characters for this virtual world, which is a relatively new idea for virtual worlds. Non-player characters will reduce the need for live roleplayers and trainers without sacrificing the engaging nature of the scenario when they are present. See the below article for more.

http://www.virtualworldsnews.com/2008/09/army-taps-forte.html

Will be interesting to see the response once the world launches. Check back here for more info on this and other enterprise worlds/applications.

Melissa Hart, Account Supervisor

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