The innovation center of T-Systems in Munich is a creative laboratory and showroom for innovations. Here, experts work together as a team and often playfully on the technology trends of tomorrow. Customers can now also participate in interactive workshops as 3D avatars. To this end, T-Systems, together with the start-up "doob group", recreated the rooms virtually, making around 400 3D avatars of T-Systems employees using data from scans.
A completely normal day at the innovation center in Munich. On the agenda – a design thinking workshop. A moderator from T-Systems welcomes the participants, a round of introductions is followed by an explanation of the goals, the workshop then begins. The participants quickly engage in lively discussions, laugh and start sticking post-its. Everything as usual, except for one thing: all of the participants are working from home.
It is their 3D avatars who make gestures and interact with their workshop guests in the virtual innovation center, similar to in real life.
Outstanding graphics performance with minimal latency are essential for ensuring digital, interactive workshops run smoothly. To ensure this is possible at all times, the innovation center uses flexible IT resources from the Open Telekom Cloud.
At T-Systems' virtual innovation center in Munich, participants work as 3D avatars on innovative technology trends.
T-Systems developed the virtual image of the showroom in Munich together with the virtual reality start-up "doob group". The 3D specialists from Düsseldorf realize virtual worlds and avatars for VR applications. The start-up uses a proprietary gaming engine for this purpose, which is hosted in the Open Telekom Cloud. The software is not only suitable for games, but also for other graphical applications with high performance requirements, such as the virtual innovation center. For example, a technology that originally came from the gaming world is used for a business collaboration platform.
To participate in training courses and workshops, employees spend a lot of time traveling. The virtual innovation center offers a real alternative to this - and an absolutely unique and immersive experience for workshop participants.
Andreas Droste, Senior Innovation Manager, T-Systems International
To ensure the required computing power is available, CPUs, RAM and GPUs from high-performance P100 Nvidia graphics cards can be added flexibly and on-demand via the public cloud solution. And thanks to scripting in Terraform, resource management is completely automated. The Open Telekom Cloud data centers, all of which have multiple certifications, also ensure high data security and data protection in accordance with GDPR.
Different types of media, such as audio and video conferences or live stream cameras, can be used in the virtual world so that external experts can be called in for assistance. The virtual innovation center is therefore a real collaboration platform. VR glasses are not necessarily needed by the participants, as they can simply participate in virtual sessions via their browsers.
Free space for digital innovation and creativity: In its innovation center, T-Systems enables customers to experience innovations. In intensive and interactive workshops, subject experts discuss their business challenges together with customers and accompany them through all stages, from consulting and brainstorming to the development of prototypes, and subsequent implementation, scaling and operation.
