Video: Nortel Acquires DiamondWare to Launch Enterprise World

Nortel announced today that it had acquired DiamondWare to provide integrated, 3D voice for its upcoming enterprise virtual world, web.alive, also announced today. We first talked about web.alive (code named Project Chainsaw) with lead architect Arn Hyndman in June. At the time, he noted that Nortel was very interested in virtual world technology and already deploying it with test clients, but not ready to productize the enterprise environment. That time has come. As the name implies, web.alive will integrate with the Web, and Nortel says the system will package "leverage voice, HD audio, presence, identity and corporate security technologies to bring boring conference calls to life in a virtual world within the security of each corporation's own network," though Hyndman told us that the company is already using it internally for training, collaboration, and other applications as well.

""Nortel's R&D and incubation teams are focused on creating revolutionary communications experiences to improve the way businesses interact with their employees, partners, and customers and web.alive will be one very tangible example of that focus," Nortel CTO John Roese said in a statement. "web.alive will help businesses deal with one of the major drawbacks of most communication technologies today – the ability to give users a "real-life" experience that is more interactive and intuitive. For example, if you're participating in a conference call today it is difficult to have sidebar conversations, to know who else is in the meeting, who is speaking and the relationship or business history of all the participants. web.alive will address those issues by pulling together the IT and telecom worlds to give each avatar access to a wealth of information in ways we have never seen before."

That's eloquently put, but I prefer the way Hyndman explained the transition for Nortel in June: "The phone is a very primitive and ancient device. [...] It's kind of an anachronism today. [...] To me, the phone is eventually going to be replaced, or maybe superseded in the same way that television has superseded the radio. That's why we're interested in virtual worlds as a possible alternative."

In addition to being used behind the firewall Nortel says that web.alive can be added to the external website for customer interaction with service reps, sales reps, and product demos. Internally, the software can be connected to existing project and customer relationship management software.

While the phone may be going the way of the dinosaur (or, more accurately, radio), Nortel has emphasized the importance of quality voice communications all along the way. Along those lines comes the acquisition of Nortel for up to $10 million ($7 million in cash and up to $3M to DiamondWare security holders based on business in the next 40 months). It's worth noting that DiamondWare already licenses its voice technology and has partnered with a number of virtual worlds providers, including BigWorld Technology, Monumental, Total Immersion Software, and Vivox (and Vivox in turn provides voice for Second Life, Twinity, Simutronics, Icarus, and more.)

"We evaluated a number of approaches and ultimately found DiamondWare to have not only the most effective but also the most mature and scalable system, expertise and technology in this domain," blogged Roese. "We worked closely with them and demonstrated their technology as an element of our overall system. Based on exceptional feedback from early customers and great technical interaction, we concluded that an acquisition made sense to accelerate our move to these new immersive clients and environments for the new communications world. All of their technical expertise and capability – which goes beyond spatial audio – is in line with our vision and strategy of creating better, more realistic and more useful communications and collaborative experiences as communications and IT converge. Again, very consistent with the overall vision of the company."

We'll be following up with Nortel, but, for now, here's video of Hyndman discussing web.alive and a demo of the service.