IBMs Lotus Software division will bundle its Domino application server with its Domino Everyplace mobile access product to deliver improved mobile and wireless capabilities to Domino.
The bundling, announced Monday at the IBM Software Symposium in Vienna, Austria, will be available with the release of Domino 6, expected later this summer.
Separately, Lotus, of Cambridge, Mass., announced version 3.5 of its Domino.doc document management application, featuring improved collaboration capabilities, thanks to support for e-mail attachments and instant messaging and presence detection.
The bundling of Domino with Domino Everyplace will provide wireless real-time access, synchronization via the SyncML open standards synchronization markup language, and SMS (short message service) capabilities to key Lotus Domino data including e-mail, calendar and Personal Information Management data, according to Lotus officials.
Company officials said the bundle will make mobile access a central attribute of the Lotus Domino server. Previously customers had to buy separate mobile server components, including Domino Everyplace Access and Domino Everyplace SMS to get such mobile capabilities. Current Domino subscribers will be able to take advantage of the wireless integration for previous versions of Domino, officials said.
“The bundle makes it easier for IT administrators by integrating core wireless and mobile functionality into the Domino server itself,” said Ken Bisconti, vice president of messaging solutions at Lotus, in a statement. “Mobile work-forces receive unlimited access to information and enterprises can achieve higher levels of ROI from wireless and mobile devices.”
Also in version 6, Domino Everyplace will share technology with the IBM WebSphere Everyplace Server, allowing Domino customers to make their Domino applications interoperable with non-Domino applications. This will enable, for example, a third-party mobile sales application to interact with the calendar or contact lists in Lotus Notes, as eWeek first reported last December.
Previously, customers had to use Domino Everyplace Server in combination with WebSphere Everyplace Server to take advantage of such capabilities.
The new version of Domino.doc meanwhile will add support for e-mail file attachments and content as well as presence awareness and instant messaging, based on Lotus Sametime instant messaging platform, so that the authors of documents can be reached through the system.
Domino.doc 3.5 is expected to be available in the third quarter of this year.
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