The Risk Factor

A couple of years back, I wrote a story for IEEE Spectrum on Why Software Fails. I opened with the story that has been floating around the software business for the past twenty years about the disappearing warehouse. Well, yesterday I read a story in the Wall Street Journal about another "disappearing" warehouse - this time to help hide accounting fraud.

The Conference Board, a leading business thought leadership organization, has released a report on the trend of companies using virtual worlds. As the Conference Board notes in its press release,

Leading companies including Cisco, IBM, and Dell already have a substantial presence in Second Life. Retailers such as Circuit City and Sears also have a presence, and information services providers such as Reuters have built large installations that offer a menu of financial data, including videos of up-to-the-minute news clippings.

The Conference Board report discusses eight questions executives should ask about whether they should create a presence in virtual worlds, ranging from "What is your entry strategy" to "Is your IT department up for the job?"

You can tell that virtual worlds are more than a fad when the Conference Board writes a report on it.