IBM Research Announces Sametime - 3D Project...

IBM Research has announced a new project called ‘Sametime – 3D’ to showcase integration of Lotus Sametime with several virtual environments.

According to the company, this project will show the business value virtual environments can bring to the future of unified communications.

For example, users who chat no longer need to be limited with only sending/receiving words, but can launch into an immersive 3D environment directly from within the Sametime chat session.

"Sametime 3-D" creates a virtual meeting space 'on demand' that uses the capabilities of the virtual environment, including presentation tools, access to 3-D objects in the avatar's inventory and full avatar functionality.

"The ability to easily integrate existing communication and collaboration tools in 3-D environments will allow businesses to clearly realize the ROI of virtual environments," said Colin Parris, vice president of DigitalConvergence. "Extending the real-time connection between people into a 3-D medium enhances the experience and productivity of teams located across the country or the world."

IBM notes that with its expertise, they are helping to drive the growth and adoption of the 3-D Internet and will help make the 3-D Internet an essential tool for helping people work, live and play to their fullest potential.

In addition to IBM's work with the OpenSim platform, IBM and Forterra Systems have been working together to develop and release later in 2008, a futuristic unified communications solution code-named "Babel Bridge" for the U.S. intelligence agencies. This robust feature set also addresses the needs of other industries like financial services, energy, consulting services, and healthcare.

IBM also said it is working on similar integration capabilities between Lotus Sametime software/IBM Unified Communications and Collaboration (UC2) platform and a variety of other environments including the ActiveWorlds platform.