Virtual tech will 'kill the office'

Nortel Networks is looking to the next generation of employees to shape the workplace of tomorrow - and high on its agenda is exploring the role of web 2.0 technologies and virtual worlds such as Linden Lab's Second Life.

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Nortel enterprise CTO Phil Edholm told silicon.com: "A lot of businesses have set up a virtual presence [in Second Life] and what they find is what's the point?

"But if in fact I could walk up to the virtual support desk and meet the avatar of the virtual support person which would then find somebody in the company that has the right skills to actually help me that could become of great value."

Edholm said Nortel has been doing some "demos and trials" with Second Life and contact centre applications. It has also been working with universities and students to learn how they use comms technology - with the aim of understanding how to translate the likes of thriving online social networks such as Facebook into a business environment.

All this is with a view to then building these next-generation functions into its products.

He said: "If you get these students coming out of university and they're used to doing their homework with their friends on IM, they're used to Facebook, they're used to virtual worlds - how do you recreate that environment in the work world?"

Edholm reckons it won't so much be a workplace of the future - rather the potential of "true mobile broadband" offered by future fourth-generation networks will mean work is something that is done, not necessarily a place you go to.

Eventually, he predicts, bandwidth across different types of networks will converge so the type of network being used does not impact on the experience of the user - be it wi-fi, cellular or wired. This prediction has been dubbed 'Edholm's Law'.

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