It’s called Project Wonderland and it’s a prototype for a virtual environment where business teams can meet and interact, but the environments so far lack polish and are graphically sparse. The project aims to allow team members using multiple forms of communication to collaborate through video conferencing, call-ins, and online avatars. The current demos are something like a graphically dumbed-down version of Second Life, which the team admits isn't much to look at, but the back end is a powerful Java-based engine which coordinates mixed communication into one virtual meeting place.
You can share documents, PowerPoints, and desktops as well, allowing a meeting to pretty much take any form imaginable within the virtual environment.
Sun is also demoing the project in applications beyond simple business meetings. The video currently showing on the project site also show salespeople sharing their products in a virtualized convention. They can use pre-recorded presentations to allow others to peruse the show floor at any time.
Whether or not flashy virtualized environments will catch on in the business world is debatable, but the Java engine which reduces the complexity of managing call-ins, video-streamers, PowerPoints, and document sharing has real potential.
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With energy costs soaring, it only makes sense for companies to look at such virtual solutions to the ever-broadening demand for presentation and tradeshow attention.
The technology has been around at Sun Labs for a while...it still needs a bit of polish and to lose it dependency on the X Server so that it is compatible with more mainstream platforms. If they get that far and market it to the correct people as a fully supported offering I could see this becoming a relatively popular product.
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