IBM launches Lotus software product line ups

New Delhi, Feb 20 (UNI) The IBM India Software Lab (ISL) today launched its new softwares expanding its Lotus' collaboration portfolio, which is one of the important product line ups from the company.

Lotus represents an alternative to other rigid, closed and proprietary offerings in the market.

ISL, the high-end product development lab for innovative products and technologies, has created large components of the new portfolio especially for Lotus Notes 8 and portlet catalogs of business portlets.

''The increased customer momentum towards adoption of web-based social collaboration tools shows that businesses are transitioning from quest for personal productivity to 'team productivity,'' Mr R Dhamodaran, Director, IBM Software Group, IBM India/South Asia told reporters here.

He said the company's market strategy will be to get partners who really have the capability to share the market.

Key highlights of the product include, 'Recent Contacts' and 'Message Recall' where with Recent Contacts, users will get a one-click, dashboard view of recently sent emails and chats to quickly locate a key contact.

The Message Recall feature will let users quickly recall an email message after it has been sent by mistake, saving a user from a potential conflict or miscommunication situation.

The company also announced the launch of IBM Lotus Connections, IBM Lotus Quickr, IBM Lotus Sametime 7.5.1 and IBM WebSphere Portal Express Version 6.

The company also demonstrated IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8 and announced the product's open beta program starting this month. The new Lotus Notes client includes major upgrades to core applications and expanded integration with the new collaboration tools announced today.

''The reinvention of Lotus is happening through IBM's strong support of Open Standards. The Lotus Sametime 7.5 is the first to offer a major enterprise collaboration platform built on Eclipse framework. The openness of Eclipse gives our partners and customers the flexibility they need to build a unified collaboration platform designed to meet the challenges of their business in an open and accessible environment,'' added Mr Dhamodaran.

The India lab has been the lead lab developing the Lotus Sametime 7.5.1 server development on Linux platform.

According to industry analyst firm, Frost and Sullivan, the Indian market for Advanced Collaboration Platform is expected to grow from 10.7 million dollars in 2006 to 22.7 million dollars in 2008 and further double-up to 41.7 million dollars by 2010.

The firm also said manufacturing and IT/ITeS verticals have been the key adopters of Advanced Collaborative tools in the country.

In 2005 IBM was the Indian market leader in this space with 44.5 per cent market share according to Frost and Sullivan.

IBM also gave an overview of IBM Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino 8 that will include advanced usability features and new interface to manage information overload.

IBM, Lotus, and Lotusphere are trademarks of IBM Corporation in the United States, other countries or both.

UNI