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INDUSTRY NEWS


24 June 2008

Steps for IT Leaders to Encourage Investment in Virtual Worlds


With many business leaders still skeptical about the benefits of virtual worlds, Gartner has advised several simple steps that IT managers can take in order to encourage investment in virtual worlds, which many organisations have found enhance social interactions and deliver innovation.

The analyst urged IT leaders to frame virtual worlds as training environments, which can replicate specific environments and provide scenario-based training exercises. IT also suggested extending virtual world deployment to support collaboration and employee interaction.

While interaction and collaboration are recognised as key drivers for employee satisfaction, productivity and innovation, Gartner added that remote workforces also require virtual worlds as a channel for non-specific social collaboration, replacing 'casual' social conversations that once took place around the water cooler.

Steve Prentice, vice president at Gartner, said: "Despite understandable concerns about investment during a time of growing business uncertainty, we believe that the internal deployment of virtual worlds offers most enterprises significant benefits in cost savings and improved productivity."

Meanwhile, IT security firm Secure Computing recently announced a new partnership with VMware to create and distribute secure gateway appliances for virtualised environments.

© 2006 Adfero Ltd.

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