A Virtual world is an on-line three dimensional multi-user environment that was developed using technology from Massively Multi-player On Line Game (MMOG). These virtual world environments are starting to group together and are now forming a virtual universe environment.   Examples of MMOG environments are “World of Warcraft” and “Everquest”.  Examples of other virtual world environments are secondlife.com, there.com, and multiverse.com.

A character in a virtual world environment is referred to as an Avatar, and the Avatar is generally a 3 Dimensional representation of a real person or other such character in a virtual space. Invidual virtual worlds are now being connected using Hypergrid so you can teleport your avatar from one virtual world to another.

Real Businesses are now moving into Virtual Worlds and our providing access to real products and services. The next generation of the 3D internet is now emerging as these virtual worlds begin to link up.  Just like the 2D internet where we witnessed the emergence of e-Business we are now entering a new era in on line computing called v-Business.

OpenSimulator, often referred to as OpenSim, is an open source server platform for hosting virtual worlds. Or in other words, OpenSimulator is an open source virtual world engine. The engines details can be viewed at www.opensimulator.org. It is an approach to the design, development, and distribution of software, offering practical accessibility to a software's source code.

Open source OpenSimulator is a 3D Application Server. It can be used to create a virtual environment (or virtual world) which can be accessed through a variety of clients, on multiple protocols. OpenSimulator allows you to develop your environment using the technologies you feel work best.

It is capable of hosting alternative worlds with differing feature sets with multiple protocols. OpenSimulator is designed to be easily expanded through the use of plugin modules and several modified distributions exist, such as realXtend, additional plugins can be found on the OpenSimulator Forge. Multiple servers can be integrated into a 'grid' which allows larger more complex areas to be simulated.

The Open Source Definition is used by the Open Source Initiative to determine whether or not a software license can be considered open source. OpenSimulator designed the software to be easily extendable through loadable modules to build completely custom configurations. OpenSimulator is released under a BSD License, making it both open source, and commercially friendly to embed in products.

Out of the box, OpenSimulator can be used to simulate a virtual environment similar to Second Life ™ (including client compatibility). Other environments, protocols and features are supported via add on modules. For a list of available modules check out the Forge site.

The v-Business Sandbox was built by members of IBM's virtual universe community. This is a 100% volunteer effort to develop a virtual world for the purpose of understanding how we can better assist and develop vritual worlds for business.

The Virtual Universe Community or VUC is a group consisting of over 5000 individuals across the world in IBM today.