Intelligent Enterprise

Already joined at the enterprise hip, IBM and Research In Motion are rolling out a new and extended full range of IBM Lotus collaboration software for use on BlackBerry devices.

Announced at this week's Wireless Enterprise Symposium, the Web 2.0-powered offerings build on the two firms' longtime effort to bring business applications to enterprise users.

BlackBerry users will be able to access IBM offerings ranging from WebSphere Portal and IBM Lotus Connections to IBM Lotus Notes and Lotus Sametime unified communications.

"Most companies now recognize collaboration as a way to optimize their businesses through people working together," said Bob Picciano, Lotus Software GM, in a statement. "For example, I can find expertise exactly when and where I need it through Lotus Connections on my BlackBerry."

Portals and dashboards are available via IBM WebSphere and IBM dashboard software, which enable users to build Web sites. Messaging and calendaring applications available through IBM Notes and Domino enable users to access data in a similar fashion to their usage of their PCs. Both companies pointed to the capability of the new collaborative effort to bring social networking applications to BlackBerry smartphones.

Some users have already tried various pieces of the joint effort. For example, William Campbell, the manager for computing services at Standard Life hailed the community-building features of the IBM-RIM partnership.

"Lotus Software on BlackBerry is critical to our business as it allows Standard Life to enable better collaboration across the world at any time," he said in a statement. "We have taken the BlackBerry way beyond e-mail, adding a high level of rich functionality resulting in what our employees call 'the laptop in your pocket.'"

The Lotus Collaboration Software suite for BlackBerry devices are available this week; mobile applications Lotus Sametime and Lotus Connections are available as free downloads for Lotus customers on BlackBerry's IBM resource Web site.