IBM Second Life Joint Effort to Lock Up Islands: Put Your Sim Behind a Firewall

Linden Lab and IBM have announced a joint venture to allow corporations to run islands in Second Life behind corporate firewalls.

According to the New York Times:

“The goal, they say, is to offer companies “secure, flexible and customizable” 3-D virtual environments that are designed and controlled by corporations. The initial effort is a demonstration project, running Second Life technology on I.B.M. servers, behind a Big Blue firewall. But the companies plan to introduce a corporate offering before the end of this year, either as a product or as a service, presumably hosted by I.B.M.”

Linden has been planning to ‘open the gird’ which either means open source, open architecture, or opening up the opportunity to host your own Second Life servers, depending how you look at it. Whether this contradicts, supplements, or is just a new spin on those plans remains to be seen.

From a corporate perspective, it makes sense. One of the common complaints about Second Life is that in spite being able to restrict access to islands, this isn’t the level of security that companies are looking for. Whether being behind a firewall will also prevent employees from wandering the mainland, hanging out in clubs, or visiting Xcite! I have no idea. However, the article sets the tone:

… Second Life is a freewheeling virtual world, open the to public including anonymous pranksters and hackers. It is loosely governed and managed by Linden Lab. And that has made many companies reluctant to let their employees venture into virtual worlds, which management experts hail as an innovative tool for richer and more nuanced communication and collaboration among workers, industry partners and customers.

Corporate gated communities in virtual worlds, according to Mr. Yoon, will be the equivalent of corporate intranets on the Web. An employee’s avatar can travel easily in the outside realm, but only the ones with company I.D.’s can get inside the firewall.

The “gated community” phrase, while at least maintaining the idea of land, also clarifies where Second Life is headed, and might help us understand why Linden has been spending so much time cleaning up the mainland – as companies close off their sims, put them behind firewalls, the mainland ends up being the point of interface for the casual user.