Virtual Worlds for Business - IBM creates OpenSIM Data Center

Note: this entry has been cross-posted.

Virtual World News had an article a couple of days ago on IBM’s announcement that they had built a 3D data center simulation using OpenSim, which I found particularly fascinating because I have long believed that the potential of Virtual Worlds like Second Life and OpenSimulator was far larger and with potential for much broader application than what we are currently seeing. Take, for instance, this comment by an IBM researcher on the topic:

“Viewing information about your data center in 2-D text — even in real time — only tells a data center manager part of the story, because our brains are wired for sight and sound,” said IBM Researcher Michael Osias, who architected the 3-D data center service. “By actually seeing the operations of your data center in 3-D, even down to flames showing hotspots and visualizations of the utilization of servers allows for a clearer understanding of the enterprise resources, better informed decision-making and a higher level of interaction and collaboration.”

Visualization is extremely important, and the ability of virtual worlds to enhance visualization and make use of our visual/spatial processing abilities (using the concept of space as a memory cue and productivity enhancer) is absolutely fascinating and intuitive. We are quite simply built to work in a 3D world with maximum effectiveness, and evidence suggests that people have been formally taking advantage of this astounding ability since before 85 BC. IBM obviously believes that this has practical business application, and while some may question whether there is truly any practical benefit to using virtual worlds in this way, I strongly believe that we will discover over time that it’s one of the most powerful and effective uses of the technology - for business or otherwise.

I remember back in high school more than a decade ago, while reading a book about computer graphics programming in class one day I came across a quote (likely only half-remembered now) that really struck me powerfully : “Computers may be great at business and calculations, but graphics is what they are for“. I doubt that the author of that book (it may have been Michael Abrash, I cannot recall after so much time) could have envisioned how powerful commodity graphics and general-purpose computing hardware would become in less than 20 years from the time he wrote that, but I’m willing to bet that he’d feel similarly about 3D technology and virtual worlds : It’s what computers are for. How exciting to be able to use a system like loci by actually building our own 3D representations, and then to use that representation to manage extremely complex real-world systems that are difficult to truly understand in a flat printout or 2D program.