Remember back in August where we predicted that a corporate/enterprise version of the Second Life grid was more or less inevitable? Well, that appears to have functionally come to pass, though the details are still hazy.
Rivers Run Red has partnered up with Linden Lab to provide a product called Immersive Workspaces to (what appears to be primarily) the global enterprise corporate market. Immersive Workspaces is a fusion of Second Life grid technology along with a blend of Second Life objects, web-sites and web-services, all apparently very tightly integrated.
As a part of the partnership, each company may either individually or jointly sell and market each other's products, and Linden Lab has an exclusive license to Rivers Run Red's Immersive Workspaces product. For its part, Rivers Run Red will provide "product and content development services to Linden Lab's clients and developer community". Right now, the only known customers of Immersive Workspaces appear to be Unilever and Diageo.
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'Linden Lab has provided us with the most versatile, advanced platform on which to develop our solutions,' said Justin Bovington, CEO of Rivers Run Red. 'This agreement will now allow us to work more closely to create and deliver the most relevant solutions for the emerging virtual enterprise market.'
Rivers Run Red was not immediately available to comment, and Linden Lab -- well, they don't answer -- so there are a number of things we don't know or can only speculate about.
The spaces look as if they may well be all of relatively identical design. Cookie-cutter 3D environments.
We do not know if they truly exist on a separate grid from the main adult Second Life grid, but the spaces are implied to be private. We do not know if there is any crossover permitted between spaces, and if they are generic Second Life simulators, or if they have been customized to this new purpose.
UPDATE: Rivers Run Red removed all mentions of Linden Lab, and their partnership with same from their website, a few hours after we published this piece. We are making further inquiries.
