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IBM Lotus Notes Traveler, a push e-mail technology that lets users access e-mail and other content from Lotus Notes and IBM Lotus Domino Web Access users, has been extended to support Nokia’s S60-based mobile smartphones.
This means content enabled through Traveler, certified to work on Research in Motion’s BlackBerry smartphones and smartphones from AT&T and Sprint since August, can be accessed by any of the 80 million users all over the world who use Nokia S60-based 3rd Edition handhelds.
That frees potentially quite a lot of corporate road warriors who live on Nokia’s Symbian platform to tap into e-mail, calendar, address book and to-do list data from a Lotus Domino Server when they’re not chained to their desktop or laptop.
This is contingent on, of course, whether or not their companies already license, or are inclined to purchase Lotus Notes.
IBM notes on its Web page for Traveler that those who wish to license Lotus Notes Traveler must own a license and active software subscription and support for Lotus Notes and Domino Web Access applications versioned 8.0.1 or later. Oh, and companies must run at least one Lotus Domino 8.0.1 or later server.
Traveler will be available for the more than 40 S60 3rd Edition devices, which include Nokia E71, Nokia E66, Nokia E90 Communicator, in December.
If you believe what any of the computing experts are saying, mobile computing marks the future of high-tech. IBM predicts one billion mobile Web users by 2011 and the purchase of Apple’s iPhone by more than 13 million users in less than 18 months indicates the smartphone shift is afoot.
iPhone users leverage the device for media, music, gaming, social networking and location-based services.
Yet IBM moved to cater to these customers who are enterprise mobility-hungry with iNotes ultralite, a free Web application that lets corporate workers access their Lotus Notes e-mail, calendar and contacts lists through Apple’s Safari browser on Apple’s iPhone.
Indeed, IBM, Microsoft, Nokia, Research in Motion and scores of others are looking to make sure they are ready for any potential tidal shift to mobile computing from the PC.
There are more than 140 million Lotus Notes and Domino licensed users worldwide. By porting Lotus Notes to as many smartphones as possible, IBM is looking to cement its role as a trusted provider for customers entertaining enterprise mobility purchases.
This can only help IBM’s Lotus Notes pie grow larger, which the company hopes to do at the expense of Microsoft Exchange Server, Sun Microsystems, Cisco, Google and other productivity and collaboration software makers.