We recently took a peek at Qwaq, whose secure virtual workspace represents some strides for "serious" virtual worlds. The company's Qwaq Forums uses Open Croquet mainly as a back-end, adding its own tools and features. Now Intel is getting involved, as the announcement comes that Qwaq will bring Miramar, Intel's 3-D information space technology, to market.

The agreement, announced at the Intel Developer Forum, will enable a new desktop visualization edition of Qwaq Forums that will integrate 2-D desktop applications and shared 3-D information workspaces so that large numbers of users can be served by enterprise information. Qwaq and Intel say they'll be working together to integrate Miramar technology into a new cross-platform edition of Qwaq Forums, which is expected be available next year.

“Early adopters at Intel are currently using the Qwaq Forums to improve their teamwork," explained Justin Rattner, senior fellow and director or Intel's Corporate Technology Group in his keynote on the future of virtual worlds. "The combination of Miramar and Qwaq Forums will enable information, which is now only available to individual departments or divisions, to be easily accessed and shared across the enterprise, in dynamic unified views,”

Rattner added that Intel envisions the desktop visualization edition of Qwaq Forums could be used to coordinate and enhance productivity among the company's global workforce.

Qwaq Forums is designed to allow users to establish workflow steps, create or review information in software applications, and evaluate designs in 2-D and 3-D collectively; at the same time, they can discuss topics using built-in text and voice chat. Moreover, the Qwaq Forums virtual workspaces are persistent, allowing users to view changes or modifications to forums that might have occurred since their last visit to the virtual space.

“Virtual workspaces have already proven their value for enterprise collaboration,” said Greg Nuyens, Qwaq chief executive officer. “The desktop visualization edition of Qwaq Forums provides distributed enterprises with a powerful new way to visualize and share information globally. Intel’s selection of Qwaq Forums to be the delivery platform for its Miramar technology is further recognition of the strength of our architecture and our approach to enterprise collaboration.”