Lotus, Motorola Make Wireless Pushes

Lotus Development Corp. and Motorola Inc. have unveiled separate initiatives to make gaining access to personal information management and business applications on wireless devices easier.

Lotus late last month extended its relationships with wireless handset manufacturers Ericsson Mobile Communications and Nokia Corp. to jointly market Lotus messaging and collaboration software to users of those companies mobile computing devices.

Separately, Motorola, of Schaumburg, Ill., and Notify Technology Corp. last month announced an agreement by which Motorola will brand Notifys wireless desktop e-mail and personal information manager notification software for Motorolas Reflex two-way messaging customers.

Lotus, of Cambridge, Mass., and Ericsson, of Stockholm, Sweden, will enable wireless customers to use the Lotus Domino Everyplace Access server to access business applications including e-mail, calendars and address books on Ericsson R380 smart phones. The phones are built on the Symbian Ltd. Epoc platform and communicate via Wireless Application Protocol.

Ericsson and Nokia, of Espoo, Finland, will offer their customers Lotus Mobile Notes, a wireless platform for messaging, collaboration and e-mail, while gaining access to Lotus 78 million Notes and Domino customers.

Lotus also plans to provide instant messaging capabilities to Ericsson R380 smart-phone users through the Lotus Sametime Everyplace server. Ericsson R380 users can access customer relationship management, SFA (sales force automation) and supply chain automation applications built on the Domino platform, officials said.

Also built on the Symbian platform, the Nokia 9210 Communicator can operate at a data transmission speed of up to 43.2K bps to enhance convenience for business users. The combination of Lotus Mobile Notes and the Nokia 9210 Communicator will enable users to complete forms, participate in workflows, access SFA tools or run interactive applications locally on their mobile devices.

Bundled versions of Lotus Mobile Notes with the Ericsson R380 and the Nokia 9210 Communicator are expected in the second half of the year.

Meanwhile, Motorola will brand and resell Notifys NotifyLink Standard Edition and Professional Edition wireless desktop products under the name of Motorola MyMail Desktop and MyMail Desktop Plus, said officials from Motorola and Notify, of San Jose, Calif. Due May 1, MyMail Desktop costs $29.95, and MyMail Desktop Plus is $49.95.

Whether workers are productive away from their PCs depends on the wireless device and user interface, said Denise Carreau, an analyst at Gartner Group Inc., in Stamford, Conn. “The value-add is synchronizing information between devices. … Lotus support for mobile devices facilitates that.”