Nortel Shows off "Web Alive" Virtual World

Nortel demoed its own virtual world prototype last week. Web Alive, a secure enterprise environment, comes out of Nortel's research wing, that models itself on a VC funding approach. The new world is planned to tie in to Nortel's push for unified communications, tying voice integration, immersive presence, and a browser-based virtual world to third-party products like Sametime.  The voice integration, which may be coming through cooperation with Diamondware, offers a 44Khz codec through a technology that will be available for middleware licensing.

It seems like Nortel is approaching it as an enterprise collaboration tool, though with a particularly large focus on voice. Since Nortel is talking about integrating with Sametime, though, and IBM is already developing its own app to bring Sametime to the virtual world, this might be a part of the same project..

If not, since Nortel's demo seems to focus on the voice, that may eventually become the main product it brings to market. The enterprise space is still relatively open, though, so voice might just become the driving factor if Nortel pursues Web Alive to full development. [via ZDNet and TMCnet]