Glob – The Indusgeeks Blog

Los Altos Hills, CA, May 5, 2010 – Innovation in Learning, a pioneer in the field of Immersive HealthCare Learning, Training and Collaboration, announced today  that it has entered into a global partnership with India-headquartered Indusgeeks Solutions, a leading virtual worlds development and serious games company.

Under the terms of the agreement, Innovation in Learning and Indusgeeks will work jointly to address the global Healthcare Training and Simulation market for both products and services.

“Innovation in Learning is excited to have Indusgeeks as our Global Partner”, said Dr. Parvati Dev, Cofounder and CEO of Innovation in Learning.  “Innovation in Learning seeks to empower healthcare professionals and students by presenting new immersive learning experiences for them on a browser based, easy to use, hosted platform called CliniSpace^TM. Indusgeeks offers dedicated technical and design solutions within the Immersive Internet domain. Immersive, interactive, virtual solutions like CliniSpace^TM provide medical and nursing schools as well as hospitals, an easy to use, hosted solution to achieve their training and quality objectives.”.  “This partnership” Dr. Dev added, “will also allow IIL to enter new Asian markets, especially India, which is a major future market for the Healthcare training and collaboration sectors.”

“Innovation in Learning has great credentials in the Healthcare training market, owing to the fact that they’re being led by accomplished academics like Dr. Dev and Dr. Heinrichs (Dr. Wm. LeRoy Heinrichs is an Emeritus Professor at Stanford University School of Medicine).” said Siddharth Banerjee , CEO of Indusgeeks.  “We are privileged to partner with IIL and help extend its expertise to a 3D immersive platform like CliniSpace^TM, a first of its kind solution in the Healthcare Training space.”  “Indusgeeks will also market and provide support for the Clinispace^TM platform across Indian and other Asian markets” mentioned Siddharth. “In addition, we will also jointly offer our services to create custom simulations and training solutions for global clients who are looking to create their own solutions on platforms like Second Life, OpenSim, Open Wonderland, Shockwave, Flash, Unity3D etc. in the Healthcare market.”

According to Dr. Heinrichs,  co-founder of IIL, “Our future plan and vision for this partnership, is to enable current generations of students to learn collaboratively and experientially using online virtual medical environments. Here, they can immediately gauge the application of their knowledge, skill, and attitude with the virtual patient’s responses.  We hope this innovative learning methodology will revolutionise medical education in the US and across the world.”

About Innovation in Learning: Innovation in Learning Inc. (IIL) provides products and services for virtual training environments in the healthcare sector. IIL’s products include CliniSpace™, a 3D immersive medical environment hosted on, and accessed via the Internet;  DynaPatient™, virtual patients with dynamic pathophysiology models; and clinical training scenarios, curricula and assessment tools. IIL’s principals are leaders in the healthcare simulation field, with numerous publications and recognition for their research.

About Indusgeeks Solutions Pvt. Ltd: Indusgeeks is an award winning 3D immersive solutions and virtual worlds development company. Voted as one of the hottest start-ups in India for the year 2010, Indusgeeks is a market leader in creating rich 3D and 2D, browser based, immersive virtual environments that work on low-end hardware and bandwidth. Indusgeeks’ global clientele includes the Govt. of Dubai, Tata Indicom, The Brand Union, Gazzetta dello Sport, Mahindra Satyam, Idaho State University etc.

Official Press Release here: http://www.indiaprwire.com/pressrelease/health-care/2010050649938.htm

Indusgeeks was featured on the Business Channel ETNow recently. Find the video here : Indusgeeks on ETNow Technoholik .

The show featured Indusgeeks CEO Siddharth (Sid) Banerjee talking about  Metamersive Learning Spaces application developed on the Second Life platform  and an older marketing campaign done for Child Rights and You (CRY). It features client and partner testimonials from CRY and Learning Possibilities.

Indusgeeks is proud to present Metamersive Learning Spces  as one of the very few  3D Training, Learning and Collaboration( 3DTLC) related solutions featured on the Second Life Work website by Linden Lab. We are now extending the MLS framework to other virtual environments like Open Sim, Shockwave, Unity 3D and Flash.

Metamersive Learning Spaces features ( demo video here ) :

1) Fully functional 3d multiuser classroom

2) Automated converters for PowerPoint and other audio/video media

3) Easy Web Interface to point media to different screens in the 3D environment

4) Full Security with Private regions and group limitations

5) Text Chat logs

6) Customizable 3D Learning Environment

In the last post on the State of Virtual Worlds we covered my impressions from the Engage Expo’09 at San Jose. In this post we’ll look to answer why companies are moving back to basics with Virtual Worlds.

The phrase “Virtual World” became so popular in 2006-08 that almost anyone doing anything remotely 3D or 2D started ‘tagging’ their work as such. I think that led to a vast amount of generalization. Increasingly,now  the trend is towards the opposite end. We see most companies trying to distance themselves from the term. So words like “Immersive”, “Interactive” and “Real time” are being used with more frequency to describe environments which would have passed off as “Virtual Worlds” about a year back .

Ironically, these words were being used to describe “Virtual Worlds” back in 2007 as well. This movement back to look at fundamentals of what “Virtual Worlds” mean and do, is not limited to semantics only. Most companies including ours are trying to go back to basics and keep what is important and shed what is not. I think the need to make 3D environments complex started when people thought that all virtual worlds had to mimic something like Second Life.  Which meant most 3D environments needed :

1. Multiuser capability -with very high concurrences ( without any thought for whether those levels were required for the solution)
2. Full 3D – high graphic requirements  ( again without any thought for whether a 3D environment was even required for the solution let alone high graphics)
3. Ability to author objects – ( most environments do not require users to be able to create content- most clients still insisted on this capability!)

These requirements led to over engineering and unnecessary cost and timel; with real Return on Investment ( RoI) falling  as the capabilities were rarely used. Or in the worst case, due to the necessity to include these features costs would shoot up ; and the client would back out due to budget constraints.

Over a period of time though the vendors and clients have become more aware of  the what and how of using  these 3D environments.  Expectations have become more realistic and so have outlays and billings. This rationalization was necessary and good for the industry.

Thanks to spectacular early failures, the recession and increasing realism in part of the industry advocates and vendors; in 2009 the market has become more realistic and sustainable. Now these environments , especially for enterprise deployment, previously grouped under “Virtual Worlds” as a whole get categorised as :

1. Interactive – at this stage it can be 3D or 2D
2. Immersive – mostly 3D but could also be 2.5 or 2D.
3. 3D – Only if required
4. Online – hosted on a server either connected or not connected to the Internet.
5. Multiuser – only if required with defined concurrency levels;usually between 10-100 concurrent users for most enterprise type environments.
6. High graphics – only if required. Infact most clients are willing to compromise high end graphics for the ease and savings associated with being able to run these environments on  commodity grade computers.
7. Closed authoring – almost no enterprise asks for content creation capabilities for users. In fact it’s considered a nuisance in most cases.

Thus we see an increasing shift towards distinguishing between features which were previously bundled together into what came to be defined as a “Virtual World”. And this modular approach has led to higher Returns on Investment and faster deployment time. In doing so, the lines between Serious Games, Simulations and what used to be called “Virtual Worlds” is becoming more distinct. This is healthy and lets virtual worlds like Second Life do what they are good at doing,namely create a virtual community based around art, entertainment and virtual goods, while keeping a limited and focused tool set for other immersive applications. Ultimately, I think the industry really didn’t have any choice but to get back to basics and this may yet lead to the redemption of 3D , multi-user, online, immersive, interactive environments aka ‘virtual worlds’

- Sid Banerjee

Am posting this from my room in Guwahati. All hail the new messiah .. the HSIA ( short for High Speed Internet Access) Device.. my Photon + . I brought along my lil Lenovo S10-2 netbook instead of my XPS and my shoulders have professed undying love already.. ! I was here on the invitation of the ABP Group ( Telegraph, Business World etc.) to speak on ‘Looking at Tomorrow – Emerging Entrepreneurs’.  Having had a packed week before the conference I arrived in Guwahati on the 27th of August without a single slide for the presentation on the 28th !

But I really wanted to test the power of virtual communications and productivity and sure enough as soon as the lights blinked green on my Photon + USB..I knew, I would be okay. This is what 24×7, universal access to broadband can do. Give you the confidence to prioritise work .. not on the basis of scarce resources ( i.e. Internet availability ) but on merit and availability of your time. So I worked through the night and early morning with Google, girl friend in L.A. and Ashi in Bombay to finish off the presentation.

The next day ..at the conference the presentation was well received ( thanks Ashi and Namita) . The accounts of other entrepreneurs such as Mr. Santosh Ostwal of Ossian ( Pune) who has created a mobile controlled device for water pumps which won a global award from Nokia made me think of convergence between mobile and computers again! With a slew IEDs ( Internet Enabled Devices) available in the market the days of ‘anytime access’ can’t be far behind..  India with it’s 441+ million mobile connections projected to grow upwards of 700 million by 2012 will be one of the first countries I believe to be significantly affected by this ICT revolution. For the first time in Indian history – ‘real time’ information will be available through various IEDS like netbooks, mobiles etc. at the doorstep of the ‘aam admi’  - the socio – economic – political implications of this are immense and I touched upon the same in my presentation at the summit.

Another thing I noticed during my first visit to Guwahati was the energy radiating from the youth. After years of separatist and insurgency marked violence the region, at least Guwahati, seems to want to get down to business. Interactions with another panelist Mr. Parthapratim Phukan , CEO of Gray Matter ( a marketing research and consulting ) company based out of Guwahati made me realise the youth here wanted to move on.. needed to move on..  Can Internet technologies like Social networks and Virtual worlds ( which are infact two facets of the p2p networking) bridge the alienation at the average youth in the North East of our country feels from the ‘mainstream’ India. What if ubiquitous IEDS and reliable broadband ( both of which are still unavailable – at most places in the North East and indeed most of India) could bring together people from all parts of India seamlessly without 3 hour flights, army barracks, terrorist threats and language barriers. Could we indeed build the future India as an ‘idea state’ with a sense of shared identity through a virtual universe?  Would this in turn solve the problem of alienation and lead to greater normalcy on the ground for the citizens of our country living in remote locations ( geographically) ?  It might be idealistic and naive to believe that ICT can be the cure to all problems of North East India but we can make a start by reaching out.. from the comforts our home to see if we can make ‘any’ difference.

I believe in the near future networks of people will form for social, business and other purposes seamlessly using 2D and 3D virtual worlds ( think Facebook, Linkedin and Second Life ) and companies like Indusgeeks needs to play an enabling role in the process. The government needs to make Internet access a priority as countless studies have shown the benefits to the overall population when this is done.

Final thoughts from this trip as I pack up… need to spend some time looking at the magnificent Brahmputra before I head towards the airport..

Note to self need to visit here more often..nudge nudge ABP Group.. NICT 2010?

- Sid