Amphisocial is the first to integrate Google's browser based office suite (Google Apps) to virtual worlds. The first showcase is the beer distribution game. The game is, thanks to virtual world technology, now available to geographically distributed teams.
Amphisocial last week
announced the integration of Google Apps with the company's
PIIVOT (Platform for Immersive Interaction using Virtual
Online Technology) collaboration platform. This is the
first time Google App services and content have been combined with
a 3D virtual collaboration platform.
Google estimates it has more than 1.75 million enterprise
customers on Google Apps with 3,000 more businesses signing up
every day. "By delivering the Google Integration, Amphisocial is
connecting Realxtend and Opensim users with one of the fastest
growing enterprise collaboration platforms in business today. In
July 2009, IDC conducted a poll of 262 corporate executives and
found that almost 20% of respondents said Google Docs was widely
used in their organization, up from almost 6% in October 2007. By
using PIIVOT, companies add the benefits of immersive collaboration
to their existing Google Apps investment.", says Amphisocial
founder, Anu Mishra.
Google Apps offer a powerful way to create new documents online
for free. Many of the aspects we have come to expect from a locally
running office suite are missing, but it is still possible to do
most of the spreadsheets, slideshows and texts using the service.
The really good part here is that you can share the documents and
co-edit them practically with anyone who has access to an e-mail
account and a web browser.
Virtual worlds offer users ability to meet online even over
great geographical distances. The user experience is immersive and
enjoyable, comparable to meeting someone in the real world. Natural
extension to just talking and chatting with someone is to watch
videos, edit documents and do things people do at business meetings
generally. That is just where Google apps step into the
equation.
Users can securely bring live content from their company's
Google App account or from Amphisocial's Google Docs storage into
PIIVOT's 3D world. Once there, the virtual teams can collaborate,
modify and write the content back to the Google infrastructure.
Minutes of a meeting can be stored live during the meeting and can
be accessed using Google account later. Presentations for an event
can be uploaded from the virtual world or from Google App. Various
workflows are defined within the world to enable document review,
role play etc.
The case study, beer distribution game, focuses on a workflow
wherein players with Retailer, Wholesaler, Distributor and
Manufacturer roles order beer cases at different levels of supply
chain. Throughout the process, the analysis of order data happens
LIVE with data travelling back and forth between virtual world and
Google infrastructure.
ProtonMedia's ProtoSphere virtual collaboration
platform was also recently integrated with a similar system to
Google Apps:
ProtoSphere virtual collaboration platform integrated with MS
Sharepoint. The effect to the user is pretty much the
same. However, Amphisocial's solution receives extra bonus points
from Maxping staff from using open source platform, realXtend, and
the free Google apps solution.