GIVING a fillip to its online business strategy by taking advantage of Web 2.0 technologies, IBM last week announced that live sales agents from Singapore, Australia and Malaysia will staff its virtual IBM Business Centre in the popular virtual world Second Life.

This team - who will appear as "avatars" or virtual 3-D images - will also help clients from New Zealand.

Second Life is a virtual reality world on the Internet in which one can create an identity, meet people, buy land and build one's own objects.

Many companies, like IBM, have sensed a business opportunity in Second Life and have set up virtual stores where they interact with other companies and clients and do business.

The IBM Asia-Pacific sales agents join others from North America, Latin America and Europe who started working in Second Life in May this year.

Speaking to BizIT, Foo Yan Nuen, Singapore country manager of ibm.com, a business unit within IBM, said the centre has had 10,000 visitors since it opened.

"It (the centre) offers visitors the opportunity to connect with a real IBM representative 24 hours a day, five days a week."

She added that the virtual business centre offers a place for IBM sales people, clients and partners to meet, learn, collaborate, and conduct business together.

It has six areas: reception; sales centre; technical support library; innovation centre; client briefing centre; and conference centre.

Ms Foo noted: "Accessible through Second Life, it's unique because it is staffed by real IBM sales representatives from around the world, not robots or kiosks - people who can chat with visitors in several languages and build business relationships."

IBM has 5,000 employees in the virtual universe community. Apart from Second Life, its employees are also visiting and working in other 3-D sites like Active World and There.com.

More than 230 IBM researchers, consultants, and developers use virtual worlds to experiment with and develop social networking tools and to design new ways of learning and doing business, Ms Foo said.

IBM has approximately 50 other virtual islands in Second Life for purposes such as research, onboarding (that is introduction and familiarisation process) of new employees, developer support and IBM internal and client meetings.

According to IT research agency Gartner, by the end of 2011, it is expected that 80 per cent of active Internet users and Fortune 500 enterprises will have a "second life" online, although not necessarily in the Second Life portal.

Currently Second Life has more than eight million registered users, up from one million in October 2006.

Paula Summa, worldwide general manager of ibm.com, said there has been a huge surge in the popularity of web activities like social networking.

"People are very accustomed to meeting each other online socially. We've just applied that concept to the business world," said Ms Summa, who manages 4,000 employees globally, and was responsible for generating 11 per cent of IBM's revenues in 2006.

She added: "Social networking and virtual world participation is skyrocketing in Asia. Asia is, after all, a hotbed for 3-D gaming. Why not 3-D business, too?"

The virtual centre is staffed by ibm.com employees who speak one or more of the following languages: Bahasa Malaysia; Cantonese; Tagalog (Philippines); Mandarin; English; Portuguese; German; Spanish; Dutch; Italian; French; and Canadian French.

IBM's virtual business centre's technical support library gives visitors access to technical information including redbooks and systems journals.

"One advantage of going to a virtual world to get your information is that finding it can be faster and easier than just navigating a website," IBM's Ms Foo noted.

In the virtual business centre you can browse the 3-D book shelves, view a 3-D book or just ask the librarian, just like in the real world, she added.

"This is just one of several major steps IBM has taken to improve the overall online experience for its clients," Ms Summa added.

Is this article useful to you?