IBM and Circuit City go prospecting in Second Life

About a month ago, we reported about the lowdown of IBM‘s deal with the Linden Lab created virtual world, Second Life. Now, we have some more info for you. IBM plans to announce on Friday that they’ll be working with Circuit City to explore retail business models in virtual worlds. Both companies want to discover how the SL environment can be used to improve customers’ experiences with retail brands.

IBM is dead serious about this virtual project of theirs as they already have around 1,000 employees who are spending some time to get to know SL more. They also have a business unit who are doing nothing but working on future SL projects. Well, their business plans better be really good as they’ll be facing stiff competition with Sun Microsystems and Dell.

IBM’s Ian Hughes said that the company is considering creating a virtual world that would be used by their 340,000 employees for internal communications and meetings among other things. For now, the IBM-Circuit City partnership produced a 3D store wherein SL citizens can stroll around to take a look at virtual representations of consumer electronics products and try them out.

So just how much IBM moolahs are spent for this project? No specifics were mentioned but IBM’s virtual world efforts is apparently part of a group of 10 initiatives wherein IBM has committed US$ 100 million. That’s a lot of dough.

Via Gamespot

About a month ago, we reported about the lowdown of IBM‘s deal with the Linden Lab created virtual world, Second Life. Now, we have some more info for you. IBM plans to announce on Friday that they’ll be working with Circuit City to explore retail business models in virtual worlds. Both companies want to discover how the SL environment can be used to improve customers’ experiences with retail brands.

IBM is dead serious about this virtual project of theirs as they already have around 1,000 employees who are spending some time to get to know SL more. They also have a business unit who are doing nothing but working on future SL projects. Well, their business plans better be really good as they’ll be facing stiff competition with Sun Microsystems and Dell.

IBM’s Ian Hughes said that the company is considering creating a virtual world that would be used by their 340,000 employees for internal communications and meetings among other things. For now, the IBM-Circuit City partnership produced a 3D store wherein SL citizens can stroll around to take a look at virtual representations of consumer electronics products and try them out.

So just how much IBM moolahs are spent for this project? No specifics were mentioned but IBM’s virtual world efforts is apparently part of a group of 10 initiatives wherein IBM has committed US$ 100 million. That’s a lot of dough.

Via Gamespot