The BIG and the small struggle

As part of my very first post I said that Virtual Worlds are now entering that part of the business process where performance is required.

When you require performance you require more efficiency. And more efficiency on the market.

I remember my first Real World/Virtual World conference in some rank club in London. We were setup besides Forterra and their platform Olive. Very nice guys and at this time they were the only major players in the forum. The rest of us were SL Developers or Flash worlds sort of thing.

I was very impressed with their software, thought the graphics were less than SL however what looked possible looked great. Then we started talking about money.

• The license was X
• The build was Y
• The support was Z

I was shocked.. the old scots in me came out ... "HOW MUCH?" but then I seen their client list. I was just as shocked, Governments, Local Authorities, Training and Simulation. All markets I wanted to get Second Places into. However we were stuck then with just Second Life and no SLA's hence no real competition for Forterra.

But things have changed in the past 3 years. There are a lot of Virtual Worlds out there that will allow companies like Second Places to develop and market on the backs of their Virtual World.

Systems like OpenSim, Unity 3-D to name a few and more coming out every day. Allowing us, as developers, the ability to host, build and supply to the market.

But it is sad news never the less that there are twitters and blogs that Forterra are reducing in size with the possibilities of lay offs and possible sale.

Forterra were the behind firewall solution providers when Second Life was still in nappies. Olive and There never got the publicity SL got from the media but they did have the clients that Second Life could only dream about.

So its not confirmed but it looks like the Forterra I was so jealous of 3 years ago is going another direction.

But as the market develops and grows the market changes as well.

We will see quite a lot of this as the market starts to look for return rather than just doing.