Virtual world developer for enterprise and government, Forterra, have released a white paper titled Recipe for Success with Enterprise Virtual Worlds.

Aside from an overview of the potential of virtual worlds in business, the cost comparisons may catch the eye of some enterprises looking at cost-cutting measures.

Additionally, an interesting case study is provided on Accenture and its initial use of Forterra’s OLIVE platform to determine the utility of the approach for its own business. The short story is that Accenture are working on a wider business case for virtual world utilisation as a money-saving proposition – in their case primarily for training and meetings.

If you’ve not heard of Accenture then you won’t be aware of what a behemoth they are in the worldwide business sphere. As a management consulting company they have more than 186 thousand employees with a revenue of over US$23 billion. If widespread adoption were to occur in a business that size, it alone would create some significant momentum in the virtual world sphere. Add to that the impact Accenture have in their consulting role – if they end up advocating enterprise virtual worlds as a legitimate business strategy, then even the more optimistic forecasts to date on adoption of the technology may start to look conservative.

You can download the full paper here – by pitching their product mid-field between teleconferencing and videoconferencing, Forterra has started to make inroads with companies of the scale of Accenture and assisted in the eventual development of a cohesive ROI case. That can only assist the wider virtual world industry in demonstrating its potential. It’s ironic that the ecomonic downturn may be the thing that helps overcome the intrinsic cynicism of business toward virtual worlds as it becomes apparent they may actually assist in business costs.

What’s your view? Is Accenture’s momentum in the area a sign of further significant growth on the horizon or just a behemoth of a company testing the waters to keep abreast of developments?