LONDON - This week at the Virtual Worlds London conference and on the official Second Life blog, Linden Lab announced a new 'strategic partnership' with Rivers Run Red to create 'Immersive Workplaces', a new business collaboration suite built on the Second Life Grid platform. In another announcement in the opening keynote of the conference, Mark Kingdon / M Linden announced there will be a "behind the firewall offering" from Linden Lab in Q1 2009. 

I caught up with Linden Lab's European Director of Marketing, Clare Rees, to try to work out what Linden Lab's intentions were in the Enterprise software space. I asked Clare what the definition of a 'strategic partnership' was and what they hope to achieve with it.

"In this case " said Clare, " It's an opportunity to work closely with a company or particular organization to create a product that allows people to collaborate and hold very successfully meetings in virtual worlds." I then asked Rees why the UK firm Rivers Run Red was chosen as their strategic partner.

Rees explained that Rivers Run Red has extensive experience in this field and they also recently opened a San Francisco office.  Many social residents of Second Life may be concerned with the potential shift of Linden staff resources onto a project to deal with business only use.

However when I asked Rees if this would detract from the number of hours Linden Lab staff spend working on the resident grid she was quick to explain otherwise. 

"Rest assured that Linden Lab's core focus is continuing to deliver and improve upon the social experience that residents enjoy today. The strategic partnership actually allows us to do that without diverting resources as Rivers Run Red have such specific expertise. Ultimately we believe the increased use of the Second Life platform for all these uses will benefit everyone, including existing residents."

I then asked Clare if there would be further strategic partnerships in the future, or if the Linden Lab / Rivers Run Red partnership was exclusive.  

"Yes, " she said "there could be further partnerships in the future. Our partnership with Rivers Run Red isn't exclusive. We hope to explore other ventures to pursue the development of other use cases, such as education."