With the launch of Second Life Enterprise, Linden Lab has delivered a polished, peppy, turn-key appliance for enterprise that’s both more than you might expect from the Lab and less than you’d hope for. I like to call Second Life Enterprise “SLEek”, which either means ‘ Smooth and lustrous as if polished’ or – “Second Life Enterprise? Eek!” but at the very least puts to rest the code-name Nebraska, which has probably notched the State up the Google rankings a bit but left a number of Nebraska residents flummoxed by their association with virtuality.
For long-time Second Life/Linden Lab watchers, Second Life Enterprise comes as….well, a surprise. Or it did for me anyways.
The Lab hasn’t always been known for, well, simplicity. The messy, chaotic nature of Second Life doesn’t always lend itself to elegance as the Lab juggled straining asset servers, a wide-ranging customer base, a vibrant economy and all the coding, infrastructure and policy challenges that go with that. Traditionally, hacking around in the code is what makes the world sing, or strain, or scream, but in this case they took a decidedly ‘clean installation’ approach to their new corporate appliance. And in keeping a focus on simplicity, SLEEK is as much about what it ISN’T as what it IS.
The Box: Second Life Enterprise (SLE) is a box. Well, two boxes actually: a ‘world server’ and a ‘voice server’. Now, I’m not much of a techy, but I’ve been in SLE, and it’s amazingly fast. Decoupled from an asset server holding terrabytes of data (as in Second Life), and hosted on some pretty sweet machines, SLE runs like lightning.
But it’s just that: a box. Ready to ship. Hand-packed, I suppose, by the gnomes at Linden Lab and delivered to your doorstep. You can host it in your corporate data center, put it in the cloud, or just polish it up and use it as a foot rest if you want.
What it is NOT is some sort of special region sitting at Linden Lab and somehow running on the same infrastructure as Second Life. Which is why I prefer to call it ’stand-alone’ rather than ‘behind-the-firewall’ although you can put it behind a firewall if you want to.
The Avatars and the World
SLE comes with a bunch of politically correct and business-attired avatars. Up to 800 avatars can be supported ‘in-world’ at any one time on 8 active regions. You can connect SLE to your corporate database using LDAP protocols to auto-generate avatar accounts and names (real names, names that you assign, or names that employees choose). Otherwise, SLE looks and feels exactly like Second Life. You can build in the same way, parcel regions the same way, stream media, assign permissions and groups, all the same stuff you can do in Second Life, only in a much much much smaller world.
In fact, the size of an SLE installation is one of the surprises, because the Lab hasn’t really released “Second Life in a Box” they’ve released a “Mini Estate in a Box”. Which means that we won’t see enterprise continents popping up any time soon. We won’t see some kind of ‘mega education campus’ or a mirror world or a private Zindra.
Now, having said that, one of the key features of SLE is the ability to turn regions on and off at will and move them around. You can create an inventory of regions…say, a conference space and a meeting space and a bunch of sailing sims or something, and you can place them on the map of your little mini world, or take them down and put them back into inventory. So while the active size of your virtual environment is 8 regions, you have a bit of wiggle room in being able to keep some stuff in reserve and pull it out as needed.
God Powers
Now, again, depending on where you sit, the lack of ‘deep controls’ is either a smart move by the Lab or a bit of a shocker. If you were imagining estate level Windlight controls or being able to tweak the physics then forget it. “God Powers” as an SLE administrator are pretty much limited to being able to kick or ban people, to move regions around, and to do a couple of cool things through an admin panel, primarily related to tracking and user database integration.
But there’s no poking around in the server code to do the stuff that you can do in OpenSim, for example, which I think is good: it means that the OpenSim development community can continue to offer virtual world solutions that are significantly cheaper (SLE clocks in at $55k just to get started) and more flexible, because of their ability to tinker around in the server modules.
Which means we really need to keep thinking of SLE as ‘mini-estates’. For an extra $14,000 a year for 8 regions, what you get is the ability to host the boxes yourself, and to be disconnected from the Second Life. Think of it as a a $14,000 security charge over simply buying and paying tier for 8 regions in Second Life.
The Market
With the launch of SLE, Linden Lab also announced a new Marketplace.
This will also come as a surprise to Second Life watchers. Because the Marketplace is NOT XStreet, the commerce site that’s connected to Second Life. It’s a separate entity. Part of the reason for this is that the easiest way to manage transfer content into SLE was on a region basis – something not unfamiliar to users of OpenSim. It’s far easier to back-up a full region and transfer it, put it in storage, and load it up again later, than it is to figure out how to transfer a single item, like a house or chair or animation.
So the Marketplace will be a sort of ‘region show room’ where corporate clients will be able to browse a catalog of regions and upon purchase have those region files securely delivered to their admin dashboards. Now, a region can include a single chair. I don’t see why there would be a particular lower limit on what someone loads into a region they’re selling. Or maybe a clothing designer throws together a region with vendors filled with outfits. The SLE client buys the region, brings it “live”, unpacks the clothing, and shuts the region down again.
Amanda noted in her blog post:
The SL Work Marketplace
Which also indicates a few things: one, that they’re hoping to sell MORE than the content you typically find on XStreet (say, a Web module for managing textures, or a user authentication module), and that two, they hope to open up a second market for content creators, in time, after they’ve given it a test run with solution providers.
In the meantime, there will be a barrier, because shifting existing content from Second Life to SLE won’t be easy: you’ll need release forms, with real names, for every script, texture and prim that you want to shift over. For existing businesses in Second Life who want to move to SLE, this could be incredibly problematic. On the other hand, it puts in a level of content protection that respects content creators who never intended their in-world work to go, well, out of world.
Where We Go From Here
There’s no interoperability between SLE and Second Life. You won’t be leaving a business meeting behind the firewall and zipping over to Caledon for a formal dance. We’re not seeing, with the birth of SLE, an interconnected universe of mini-worlds. What we’re seeing is a nice, simple box that Enterprise can fiddle around with a little, use for meetings or training, prototyping or data visualization.
With the amount of content (scripts, codes and objects), that have been developed for Second Life, we’ll see a slow migration of ‘business-friendly’ content shifting to the new Marketplace – a sort of step-by-step migration which will favor solution providers to start, and everyone else ‘in time’.
For most corporate customers, however, this will be enough. With concerns over corporate security (and the Lab released a security white paper which helps to further ease fears), or about letting staff ‘mingle’ on the main grid, enterprise will have a new option to take advantage of the power of virtual environments.
Once that environment includes the MediaAPI (rumored to be ready in Q1 2010) we’ll see further applications that extend the power of both Second Life and SLEEK.
What the Lab has done is release a fully-functioning box that isn’t loaded up with new features and makes a simple value proposition: join us in Second Life or run a little environment of your own behind your firewall or up in the cloud. Hop on board, grab a seat, let’s take a ride.
Join Us
In case you missed it, Mark Kingdon will formally unveil SLE at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in San Francisco. You can watch the event live (or view the archive once the show is over).
I spoke today with a few of the SL Developers, it would seem not all of them are happy.
The majority of the SL Developers were not informed about this new opportunity. It would seem a ’secret meeting’ was held this week, to inform the Gold SL Developers. What strikes me as odd? One look at that ‘Gold’ list and it’s obvious that a lot of them are just not qualified to work in the Enterprise sector.
Linden Lab are ‘bundling’ content with the server which means LL will be in the content business.
Unless you can offer more, it would seem this is not a market for the ’small developer’. Yet again, it’s going to be down to the ‘Golden’ few of chosen developers and FIC. Or the ‘chosen’ companies who’ve had products given to them to sell exclusively on behalf of Linden Lab! Immersive Workspaces anyone?!
Well done Linden Lab, as a freelancer I rely on work, it would seem my choices of developers is new reduced to a small select group of goldies.
Stephen
Ok, so you *did* know about this — or at least, you are shilling for it now, too.
So your card gets cut, too, and I won’t buy from you, either.
Re: “that two, they hope to open up a second market for content creators, in time, after they’ve given it a test run with solution providers.”
Um, right. that’s utter bullshit, and you know it, Dusan. They will enable their special friends in GSPs FIRST, then after that, the cleared new registered merchants of XStreet will be allowed to come to WStreet — as I call it — for the ultimately shakedown of the old world.
So sure, this provides a rich new lucrative area for people like Kimberly Rufus-Bach (Kim Anubis) and you and others like Aimee Weber or Lordfly Digeridoo to sell your consulting and your content.
The rest of us will be locked out, either because we can’t pay the fee to join the GSPs AND get clearance into the list (that’s why they call it “gold”) and we won’t even be able to clear the more open, but still closed list of “Verified Merchants” which the Lindens are hinting at and tinkering with and will roll out as “SL Marketplace”.
It’s really an ugly, nasty !@$@!#$ thing that accelerates globalization and injustice in really horrifically nasty ways that don’t happen in the real world — and that is why I call the people doing it “bolsheviks” and the system “technocommunists” as the end justifies the means, and the means is mass murder, virtually speaking.
So there will be two things that happen:
1) Zha Ewry will now use this awful situation where suddenly most of the grid is told to go drink at the “coloureds only” drinking fountain to hustle interoperability. He will say, see, I told you if you didn’t make things interoperability your goods would be stuck in a walled garden. That interoperability is being designed to strip out the metadata of DRM, IP, even just civilizational norms (age verification) is something he blandly blinks at and people like Morgaine Dinova actively agitate for — they need to get rid of copyright in order to save it, see *cough*.
2) If that route doesn’t come together for technical or even political reasons, then some pipeline will be made, as you suggest, and as I hinted earlier today in my blog saying that Desmond’s servers, say, will simply get re-saved or put in a space with a couple of switches that *does* enabled the Firewalled to walk on them and buy on them.
This paragraph is really evil, and it’s not surprising that the most draconian and nasty Linden on the forums, infamously saying “I will delete you!” is the Linden putting in this really vicious Bolshevik program:
“The SL Work Marketplace will be the first virtual world application and solution marketplace in the world. It will allow large organizations to download entire regions of collaboration tools, meeting and event solutions, training solutions, work avatars, business-oriented environments, and much more, into their stand alone SL Enterprise environment and make enterprise-wide use of that content under an organizational site license. For Solution Providers and content creators, this opens up a whole new market for work-related content. Initially, we’re only accepting content from Gold Solution Providers and Recommended Application Providers, but we will open up the application process to a broader audience soon.”
1. “Site licenses” are the new “copyright” – you might even call them Sitearm Licenses. That means, as in Sitearm’s vision of the world, you shed copyright and IP as outdated and unpreservable, and you cast your lot with big organizations/companies/educators/governments that license entire kits and caboodles of content-on-a-sim.
I used to explain this as copyright shifting to events/emphemera/experiences instead of reamining in discrete objects, but it amounts to the same thing if you work it by sim.
Is this the evil thing Desmond has been cut in on ?
2. What are Recommended Application Providers? I’m going to guess that those are scripters who suck up to the Lindens particularly well in office hours? People who develop various third-party applications? Like how to save your inventory offline. Like how to run a vendors system like Hippo online connected to SL. Like how to run a security system enabling you to block and ban people — and spy on them as they shop to scrape commercial data. etc.
So Dusan, while you are still styling yourself as this thinky guy who is just chronicling all this and finding out about it maybe only 5 minutes before the rest of us, you are still part of the problem, and not part of the solution, by being the solutions provider in fact.
The solution writ large for virtual worlds does not and should not involve having corporations suck out the content and people and capitalize on them obscenely with $55,000 sims, while everyone else takes a number to get into a showroom group where they *might* get their little office chair and table set seen by the big guys and cleared by Amanda. Ugh.
Like the rest of the world, and frankly, um, THE INTERNET, it has to be free, open, without friction to enter for those wishing to sell things, etc. ebay and amazon did not evolve this way, Dusan.
It’s one thing to have a giant walled garden with proprietary code that puts in DRM and guards IP — that’s the main grid concept and I’m all for that.
It’s another to dump that as “technically infeasible” and created only firewalled solutions for the rich and famous and then allow a sherpa class to shepherd in the vetted and cleared. It’s like the way the ESC put their friends on the CSI island shops. Same concept, only bigger.
I think non-Gold developers, inworld creators with huge businesses that in fact may be on the work slowdown today, bloggers, everybody who hates this turn of events have to organize a better protest than the one tomorrow — or turn that one tomorrow into something more coherent and focused
o demand to open up the SL Work Marketplace immediately to all who wish to participate
o if this is not “technically feasible” (sure to be the excuse) immediate creation of a task force with a broad cross section of resident merchants that works to make it both technically feasible and politically feasible by not postponing the integration of “everybody else” into the mix only after the GSPs have cleaned up and cornered the market.
Meanwhile /cut card to you Dusan.
@David, I understand your anger with the decision to use Gold Solution Providers first. I am just considered a “solution provider” by Linden Lab and know I too will not benefit, or have the opportunity any time soon because of Nebraska. But from the business point of view, I also can see the desire to use a limited group of content providers at first, those who, at least by name, are some of the best builders in the business. Why wouldn’t the Lab want to package the very best content with their shiny new machines?
Only time will tell just how many orders are placed, how much content is transferred to these stand-alone systems, and just whether or not the purchased content covers the dollar cost each year for membership to the Gold Solution Provider club. Personally, I think instead of small time builders like us complaining, we better get started on building conference centers and war rooms so that we have something that might be purchased if/when the orders come in.
@Dusan, for Nebraska/SLEek to be “put in the cloud”, it would have to be packaged differently than its current configuration. The cloud is on demand infrastructure and applications, able to be built up and torn down very quickly. The fact that the software is installed directly on physical boxes rather than into configuration files and virtual disk images, prevents SLEek from being a cloud candidate. If you want on-demand, cloud virtual worlds, then you need to look no further than how Reaction Grid has set up their hosting environment using OpenSim. (I am not an employee of RG or receive any compensation from them)
<With the amount of content (scripts, codes and objects), that have been developed for Second Life, we’ll see a slow migration of ‘business-friendly’ content shifting to the new Marketplace – a sort of step-by-step migration which will favor solution providers to start, and everyone else ‘in time’.
You are DEAD wrong about this, and your head will spin at how fast this happens, and with what devastation. Shame on you!
Coyle,
What you are saying is absurd — and frankly, corporativist, and you know what *that* means.
amazon.com and ebay.com and craigslist.com never said “We’re going to run with a short list of our special content providers *first*, then cut in the rest of the general public*.
Everybody got to come and sell at the same time, and that’s how it thrived.
Much later, they may have made various power-sellers lists, but that’s when people began to critize ebay as jumping the shark.
Making economies that only the FIC get to participate on the fake excuse that only they make quality content is a doom proposition, like Soviet communism. The Politburo use to control content, too, with a system like the Soviet Writers’ Union, Goskomizdat, and Glavlit, which didn’t let even a matchbox go out the door withour being cleared by a censor. We saw how well that worked — that social experiment’s best night goggles are now on sale on W. 42nd Street in the flea market.
You do not get excellent content by creating vetted list of “excellent” content creators (says who?) — that system caves in on itself — it’s death.
Um, I hate to do this, but I predict SLEEK will sink like a stone. 8 regions for $55 k is ridiculous and 800 avatars for $55 k is not a whole lot better. 8+800 with no contact with the wider grid or even other SLEEK closed shops and a limited supply of stuff that can be installed is going to prove about as exciting as watching grass grow. LL has managed to distil all the difficulties with SL (tying regions to specific boxes instead of using dynamic resource allocation, tiny avatar populations, clunky control systems) into a new bundle and raise the price of regions from $1 k to close to $7 k. I truly hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am.
A company that wants to vet their solution providers before they interact with the enterprise (aka cash cow) clients? Color me unsurprised.
This is an experiment by LL and they understand that companies buying this product will be Googling around to see more about the solution providers they will be dependent upon. It is little wonder they want providers that will toe the company line during the sensitive early adoption phase, and not providers who throw Internet tantrums when they don’t get their way or who throw terminology from discredited ideologies around as if they had no meaning beyond mudslinging.
Okay, I have calmed down.
I spent time in-world talking to a lot of people/developers. Mainly to judge reactions, and talk to about how I and they feel. Most are saying this is good opportunity, some of them are combining forces, making provisions so they can now compete at the level needed for Gold Provider status.
Also an apology. I spoke to the developers of the Immersive Workspaces solution, which is built exclusively on Second Life. I presumed it was created by LL, I was wrong. Sorry. They have invested a large amount of time and money in creating it, it was in 1.0 in December 2007.
Good luck to them, as a developer, I applaud anyone who can create something at that level. I also think it’s great they’re combining a web based system and a virtual world. I also applaud anyone who has that much faith in Linden Lab. Of course, I’m also not that naive to think that a product like Immersive Workspaces has been developed in isolation. I know for a fact it’s in 25+ companies, I recently worked on it as a developer for one of Immersive Workspaces resellers. It must have had a level of investment and introductions to that level of opportunity. It’s just too well polished. In fact, it’s seamless. It even has features I thought impossible in the current Second Life. I should also add, that the Gold Reseller in question, told me that Immersive Workspaces is creating more business for them than anything before. I don’t know the revenue, but from the size of the work, it must in the be regions of 100′000s of dollars. I like Justin Bovington, he’s a good guy and a total SL fan. His knowledge of current work in SL, the history of the platform and his enthusiasm for the future… was well, infectious. Got to love those Brits!
Prok, I would take a day to sit back and think. You’re shouting off your mouth, you may regret it later. You’re cruising to get a banning, again. Which would be a great shame. I really think you’re over reacting. I have always respected you, until now that is. I think the truth here is that SL is changing, the old SL is still the old SL – thriving and getting better and yielding more $$ for the content creators than ever before. A fact. I just cannot help thinking you’re a nostalgic old romantic. The world of SL is bound to change, with new uses of the platform emerging. As Philip always said, there is room for everyone in Second Life. The danger comes when the ‘old guard’ try to control the new world order. Let’s also face it Prok. You’re acting like the mad-old-uncle who complains about the ‘modern world’. If you’re really a man of your word, then put action into play, show your disgust by closing your accounts.
Still not happy about how the Gold Sellers are ‘the’ developers. I do though understand the reasons, LL have to create accountability. Someone told me that one developer wouldn’t apply for Gold Status, as it would mean they would have to go ‘legitimate’: declare their true identity and start to pay taxes. Let’s leave that one there. Any developer who cannot justify the $500 investment for Gold status is not the right company to be dealing with Enterprise clients. I just hope LL will allow more companies into the Gold List.
S.
S.
It’s interesting, Prok, how you misspell my name when you’re flaming me but not when you aren’t. I’m surprised you don’t make dog-barking noises at me to mock my name the way kids did in grammar school.
David’s comment is very good and I suggest you read it again.
Gold SPs are the guinea pigs of the Marketplace, sure. I figure we were selected for this because, gee whiz, we jumped through lots of hoops (to prove we can do the same for our customers) and we paid for the opportunity. I know you like to cast me as some sort of independently wealthy entrepreneur, but you’re wrong. I started my SL business on the strength of five bucks and a Premium SL account, with no previous experience using Photoshop, scripting, creating animations, or 3D models. I’ve learned a lot here. I didn’t start with an unfair advantage, and anyone who is willing to work as hard as I did can go to http://secondlifegrid.net/technology-programs/join-solution-provider-program to learn how to become a Solution Provider themselves.
[...] Nebraska Dilemma (Second Life Behind the Firewall) [Dusan has a much more interesting thread going on this topic. Emotions are running high on this one for [...]
and I thought $1200 and 295 a month was highway robbery….
Oh, bullshit. All of it.
I’m hearing from people who have been intimidated into silence with their criticism about this who in fact are on the inside of this process. And that’s creepy-scary, and that lets me know there is big-time greed and thuggery afoot here, likely above my pay-grade as a blogger.
If someone is responding to this ugly social Darwinism by trying to swim upstream to be a feted GSP, they will be laughed at, because it’s not about how you try harder to be a good creator, it’s about how you try harder to conform and flatter, to put it mildly.
Gold SPs are nothing new, and they are not guinea pigs, but Orwellian pigs, some of whom are more equal than others.
I do not regret a thing about what I am saying, whatsoever. I’m calling it correctly, absolutely, and the scared people privately contacting me lets me know that. Awful, awful, awful.
The modern world is what *I* represent. Freedom. Access. Openness. Opportunities. The medieval world is what the Lindens and their GSPs represent — closed shops, guilds. The internet is not a guild.
It’s absolutely preposterous to pretend that the Gold Sellers are the accountable ones. And I can’t WAIT to see those um Recommended Application Providers. Will we see Adam Zaius, reverse engineer, libsl’s Eddy Stryker, and Fractured Crystal of Emerald among those “accountable” ones?!
All of this is sordid and disgusting.
P.S. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that I’ve paid the Lindens far, far, FAR more than you ever have dreamed of Kimberly Rufer-Bach, so — bark bark, the caravan has moved on.
While conformity and flattery gain no influence with the folks running the Lab today — they are businesspeople and that doesn’t help their bottom line — I’m pretty sure rudeness and constant attacks on LL would hurt someone’s chances of being involved in their enterprise plans.
Arf.
what the animals on the farm never get, is that the farmers always eat them in the end.
thats the story after 30 years of “content creators” and “technology solutions investment providers”
rule one for new tech– dont ask evangelists to pay . In fact only companies that pay them ever succeed.
accoutability does not require a 500 dollar price tag. Thats the thinking that creates bernie madoffs.
That’s right, cube, these grapes are really sour.
tending a vinyard is a good analogy. just be sure to know if your making wine or raisens.
Ms. Rufer-Bach, you’re still labouring under the peculiar assumption that I or anybody else would just *love* to suck up to power and ingratiae ourselves in sycophantic ways to Linden Lab to make sure pretty-please-with-sugar-on-top they will pick me, pick me! for their FIC programs.
Are you on drugs?!
I have no interest in such a scheme — ever. Nor would I want this for my tenants. And it is is entirely unnecessary. There is no need for the Lindens to create a separate and not-equal “marketplace” like a Soviet beriozka for the companies. They could integrate all of this with the main grid if they wished. In fact, we know they have this capacity, are promising some sort of system, but merely want to cut YOU ALL in FIRST. It’s all grossly disgusting.
gotta luv how “transparency” is truly transparent after one truly learns how to see.
If sucking up to LL worked so well, Prok, why’d I have to fill out a heap of paperwork, meet a bunch of strict requirements, and pay to be “given” this opportunity? Ah well . . .
You’ve been posting about me across the blogoverse today, telling the world that I work closely with LL, that I’m a profit-oriented businessperson, and that I’m essentially one of the players behind the scenes that has a lot of influence on the fate of the metaverse? That sure paints an attractive picture for prospective clients. You might as well have handed me a bunch of banner ads, a wad of cash, and a pony.
I’d say thank you if I didn’t figure you’d be infuriated.
I simply don’t see the appeal in a 55k beta solution. People will pay 55K a year easily for software licensing, but for a beta product?
The marketplace sounds awful as described here.
Gold Solution providers being able to sell is fine but the absolute BS LL come out with to explain their favoured deals is wearing really thin, you can’t keep spinning every favoured deal as “Beta testing”, it’s absolute balderdash.
They’re also going out of their way to bring more divisive nonsense to mainland, Linden Lab do not listen to their core customer base, exemplified yet again with their so called business friendly mainland ideals they sneaked into this issue.
I have to agree with Alberik and Ciaran – I really do think the price tag will knock out a bunch of sizeable businesses that may like to get involved.
I also would love to be a fly on the wall when the first corporate shifts from the main grid to this and has to fill out the forms for prim transfers
Fill out a heap of paperwork and pay to be in the GSP? All clubs have application forms and dues, Kimberly; you’re happy to pay them and you know it. To be crying poor pitiful me about this here, and bragging about “we in California” in other threads lets us know that maybe your issue is you are a wannabee. Weren’t you originally from somewhere else?
Like I said: the problem isn’t that there are cool kids or that we can’t all be cool kids. High school is like the rest of life, we got all that. The problem is that the cool kids are running not just the popularity contests and the sports and the yearbook, they’re running the entire economy and the government too.
Ciaran, let me break it down to you:
You are speaking like this because you have not seen all the manuals and files on this product.
That’s because it’s not being shown to the public.
Things that seem vague to you are kept that way deliberately as you have no “need to know”. But those who do have all they need to know to make this “a cult” as it has already been described.
I like Justin Bovington, he’s a good guy and a total SL fan. His knowledge of current work in SL, the history of the platform and his enthusiasm for the future… was well, infectious. Got to love those Brits!
I’ve known Justin as Fizik since before you were born. He’s all these things you say. It’s not clear how SL Enterprise and Immersive Workspaces relate to each other, but THAT they relate is clear, one is a product to use in the other, and they are all in like Finn.
But Fizik is now my ex-friend. Because wonderful Fizik presided over/was present for/did nothing about (pick one), a very bad thing: the decision to create a separate, closed marketplace, one being called “the first in the world” (as if the marketplace of 30,000 sims and 1.5 million people now is “just us chickens” — literally! — and doesn’t count, because it isn’t “for enterprises”.
Ugh, ugh, ugh. This unseeming, ugly, sordid chasing after enterprise business and hatred of the ordinary consumer as something that should be fled from, or managed as a giant bundle.
No one should have done that if they cared about the world as Justin claims he does. For me,if Justin sucks up to Coke and makes a machinima with Coke, I can only say “God bless you” and vote for his machinima. That kind of merchandising, enterprising, grabbing at commercial opportunities I get. It’s open, it’s free, anyone who has the resources can go for it. It’s not closed. You work, you show your stuff, you are picked.
Not so the GSP system; not so the SL Work Marketplace which is not just about working hard or hoping to get seen but a discretionary process dominated by one company. It’s wrong, wrong, wrong.
I’m not whining about filling out the paperwork and paying to be a GSP. I’m pointing out that I’m in the program because I met the requirements, not because I licked someone’s boots. Your idea that I’m a wannabe because I’m not a native Californian is one of the dopier things I’ve ever seen you post, and along with your high school comparison, tells us a lot more about you than it does about me. This isn’t about me. It’s about a new product offered by Linden Lab. Using me for a chew toy isn’t getting anyone anywhere.
The pricing is high, but not prohibitively high for a business or public entity once there is a need. Even small companies spend more than that for software important for the core business.
While SLE will help persuading firms to seriously consider the SL platform, I think in many cases the client may decide that the extra benefits are not really worth the extra money, and fall back to either the poblic SL or a OpenSim installation.
Considering the odds that most companies with enough users to actually make use of a VW installation may have IT staff, how does this hope to compete at all with the insanely easy task of setting up OpenSim and your own asset server where you control everything behind the firewall and you’ve got the source code to the product as well? I guess LL never heard of Apache?
Meine Güte, warum macht ihr euch den hier alle in die Hose. Nicht zu fassen. Selbst ein Gimpel versteht, dass nach dem Announcement von SLE (nein ich nenn es nicht SLEEK, so ein Quatsch!) sich völlig neue Welten auftun. Business-Welten, die übrigens jetzt schon in dem ach so freien Second Life vorhanden sind. (Second Life economy hits major milestones in Q3: … . 1 Billion in User-to-User transactions) Wer verdient da eigentlich die ganze Kohle? Nerds!?!?
Eben nicht. Es sind Leute, die wissen, wie man Geld macht. Und das weiss Linden Lab eben auch. SLE hat nichts, aber auch gar nichts mit der eigentlichen Idee von Second Life zu tun. Deshalb gibt es logischerweise auch keine Verknüpfung, kein Gateway. Wozu auch. Unternehmen, die immersive Internet dazu nutzen, Meetings, Events und eLearning-Lösungen zu realisieren, machen das, weil sie eben gerade nicht wollen, dass solche Individuen, wie die, die hier bloggen, auf Ihre SIM schneien. Die wollen eine virtuelle Umgebung anders nutzen. Dafür ist SLE gemacht.
Das muss man einfach nur begreifen. Strengt euch einfach ein wenig mehr an.
Offenbar Sie sind wie die typischen Spiel-Götter, dass zahlreiche Nutzer verwirren-to-User-Transaktionen mit “Gesundheit der Wirtschaft”. Es ist nichts von alledem. Es zeigt, aufwühlen, und oft ausweglose Armut. Wer macht das Geld? Wer sind diese Freaks? Ragt ein paar von ihnen, und auf ihnen, nur ein Oligarch uber-BANK machen aus all den Devisen-und Transaktionsgebühren.
Firmen, die die Welt noch in Tumbleweeds in den Jahren 2006-2007 sind nicht diejenigen, die in der Lage sein, uns zu zeigen, dass sie wissen, wie man Virtualität besser als wir würden. Unbeeindruckt.
Greetings everyone, and dusan
Thanks for your article and the time you’ve invested in it to share with us your view and your description of Linden Labs new baby.
Now, just as i am writing this comment i am trying to figure out how the average resident can profit by this project which was announced on secondlife’s main blog, twitter and company website available for everyone to read and kind of hard not to get noticed this time. I wonder if Secondlife is going to end up being what it seems to turn into for me… into a paradisiacal environment for enterprises to have important meetings in their virtual suits, without having to travel around. I assume it might turn exactly into that as it seems to bring more money into big double L’s briefcases. Will the masses of average residents be ignored more and more with time, having to comply and jump up in joy with all new policy upgrades Linden Lab launches now and then because that’s the only way they will spend time for those who join Secondlife for the mere entertainment?
Kigh Kline:
“Es sind Leute, die wissen, wie man Geld macht. Und das weiss Linden Lab eben auch.”
I pretty much agree with you on that point. Will they ever invest any of that money into those i mentioned above, though? Perhaps in more attractive SIM prices? I doubt it. Yes, Linden Lab knows how to deal with company financial recources. The Better Business Bureaus rate of “F” is not that important if the numbers on their bank accounts are right.
It doesnt surprise me to see User hours sinking this quarter for the first time ever. And i can assure everyone that it does not have much to do with any bot policy. Voice time numbers have sunk aswell and i’ve never seen bots voicing with eachother
To answer my own question about how the average resident can profit by this new project… well, he cant. And I doubt that will ever change in the future. The question would now be… is it relevant to keep the average user happy to be able to keep company needs satisfied?
Shall we find out and see how Linden Lab reacts to even lower user hours.
Sorry for a bit of OOT in this reply
uber-BANK !?
now im laughing all day:)
adios
Does anyone have any information on the optimum number of concurrent users in Sleek. Obviously for trade shows and events this is extremely important so we know users have a seamless experience. I am not sure if it is really 700 concurrent users across all 8 regions as this would be 87.5 avatars and the half would be a little tricky.
Not knowing the answer I searched the documentation. OK all is clear now it is really 400 ummm 600 woops 700 avatars per region.
1) How many people can be in the Second Life Enterprise workspace at the same time?
As an 8-cluster system, the SL Enterprise Beta supports up to 800 concurrent users with an optimal maximum of 700 concurrent users. The best rule of thumb for bandwidth planning is 100 Kb/s per concurrent user.
(Source http://work.secondlife.com/en-US/products/serverfaq/)
2) Second Life Enterprise Beta supports up to 800 concurrent users with optimal performance at 400 concurrent users or less.
(Source Same document as above scroll to the bottom. )
3) As an 8-cluster system, the SL Enterprise Beta supports up to 800 concurrent users with an optimal maximum of 700 concurrent users.
(Source http://secondlifegrid.net.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/SL_Enterprise_Beta_FAQs.pdf )
4) This release of SL Enterprise is on an 8-core cluster server and it supports up to 600 concurrent users (optimal)
Source (http://secondlifegrid.net.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/SL_Enterprise_Beta_Datasheet.pdf )
Sorry for the confusion. I just found the answer on another link. It turns out it is really 480 users that is the optimum concurrent user count 60 users per region * 8 concurrent regions. Or is it ?
(Source http://work.secondlife.com/en-US/products/ )
I’m curious as to how much time and money Linden invested in this project as opposed to other things, like actually making sure their platform works first.
cube, I’d like to apologize for being so short with you. I disagree with you about a lot of things, but I don’t have the low opinion of you that my recent post implied. Sorry about that. It’s hard to have a reasonable discussion when someone’s trying to shove me into a meatgrinder.
I’d like to talk with you about Nebraska and the Marketplace and where we’re all headed in general sometime when I’m not a target for venting.
my emails/url is the same since 95:)
First of all, thank you that you’ve tried to comment on my german post. (Flo, well done, Prokovy, a bit more effort please or change the translator, i didnt understand a word, sorry). I try to go on in english even if its half as good as your german, Flo
).
I understood what you tried to say, Flo, and when i put all things together i think, that there is the fear that LL should put more effort in improving the performance of Sl instead of focusing on other products like SLE. In one way i agree with that, but on the other hand i think, that every new product (or concept) can help the Main Grid as well. Maybe it needs time, maybe users and companies which are using SLE give feedback and help in this way to improve SL.
But one thing is for sure: all in all SLE will help to increase the acceptance of using virtual worlds generally. So it becomes more and more »natural« – no matter how you plan to use a virtual environment. for business, for entertainment – its up to you.
And that is what i like.
hugs.
Kigh Kline: one thing is for sure: all in all SLE will help to increase the acceptance of using virtual worlds generally.
Agreed. While the pricing is reasonable and most firms and universities can certainly afford it, I think after the initial investigations many operators may decide that the advantages of SL Enterprise don’t justify the extra price, and consider the public Second Life or an OpenSim installation.
I don’t think the price is prohibitive for its market, I just do not detect any real advantages that would justify a company in going with SLEEK rather than OpenSim or SL Classic. LL has a serious problem in persisting with this policy of trying to maximise revenue from each unit of sale rather than trying to expand the volume of sales. There is a certain poetic justice that they are allowing their coding deficiencies to dictate their business plan.
I’d predict there will also be a massive problem with the foolish decision to try and maintain a select list of content creators. LL is just not very good at bureaucracy and its hard to imagine a system that would require more bureaucratic effort than pre-approved products from pre-approved creators.
[...] the Slope of the Long Tail Viewed from within the Lab, the launch of Second Life Enterprise is more of a spin-off than a shift in direction. I call it SLEEK to embody the idea that its meant [...]