IBM ships Lotus Notes and Domino 8

IBM has started shipping its Lotus Notes 8 and Lotus Domino 8 e-mail client and server platforms.

Both products will be available from 17 August, said Big Blue. IBM said the two-year development of the products had greatly relied on customer input to create the extra functionality, including increased productivity and greater security.

IBM said Lotus Notes 8 integrates work by building in instant messaging and presence awareness, office tools to create and edit documents, presentations and spreadsheets, and "infusing" a business' custom applications, including help desk, CRM, salesforce, discussion forums, blogs and more.

Built on eclipse.org open standards, Lotus Notes 8 supports businesses' existing applications and extends their life by combining them through mashups with newer applications, resulting in composite applications.

Lotus Notes 8 software starts at £50 per client, and the cost of IBM Lotus Domino server software is based on workload.