(2006-11-27) Ibm Virtual Worlds Invest

IBM is ramping up its push into Virtual World-s with an investment of roughly US$10 million over the next year, including an expanded presence within Second Life and the development of its own 3D intranet... The company's move into virtual worlds is due in large part to the efforts of its "MultiVerse evangelists," IanHughes (Epredator Potato) and RooReynolds (Algernon Spackler in-world), who said last month that IBM wanted to make "v-business" a priority just as it championed "e-business" during the dot-com boom... "In addition to our desire to work more closely with Linden Lab, we're exploring how we can work with many virtual world players, including companies like MultiVerse and Bigworld Technology, as well as Open Source platforms like Universe.org," the spokesman said in an email. "IBM's ultimate aim is for inter-world integration, instead of separate islands of virtual worlds, where you cannot cross over from one to the other in a consistent way."