IBM has changed the face of Lotus Notes and Domino, adding a new version 6.5 with built in Instant Messaging and better spam defenses, better compression, encrypted email, tighter integration with Java and CORBA, further integration with Websphere and a bundled Mozilla browser.

The new version allows Notes and Domino applications to have Instant Messaging retro-fitted for virtually no effort, says IBM.

The latest version of Lotus Notes and Domino also integrates with IBM’s Web Conferencing functionality (formerly Lotus Sametime), giving users online "awareness" capabilities and the ability to initiate instant messaging sessions directly from their in-box or from within a collaborative application.

Lotus Notes 6.5 is the first release of Lotus Notes to embrace IBM's new Lotus Workplace strategy for integrating people with business processes. The Lotus Notes 6.5 interface provides a unified entry point into various collaborative applications.

Users can access collaborative tools such as messaging, instant messaging, search and calendaring and scheduling, right from the Lotus Notes 6.5 client, rather than as separate applications.

The Lotus Workplace vision looks like it is designed to offer enterprise class alternatives to basic Microsoft Office applications.

Lotus 6.5 is available on September 30, with prices for the client licenses starting at $62.80 per user, and server licenses ranging, depending on which options are chosen from $1145 per processor, just for the messaging server to the Utility server at $15,067.

Lotus Notes and Domino 6.5 run on most combinations of Windows, the IBM iSeries, the mainframe zSeries, AIX and many other Unix's such as Solaris and Linux. Notes also runs on the Mac OS. ®

Related Research
Get the News IS Weekly Newsletter, click here