IBM and Research In Motion (RI

The new features will help customers form teams, share information, and stay in touch in real time.

"The new Lotus collaboration features and developer tools on the BlackBerry platform will deliver productivity beyond the office extending IBM software and services so that individuals can access all of the resources they need to keep their business moving, anytime, anywhere," said Bob Picciano, general manager, IBM Lotus Software.

The new capabilities previewed at Lotusphere include:

mobile access to open document format-based IBM Lotus Symphony documents -- and later presentations and spreadsheets;

IBM Lotus Quickr Web 2.0-based team software to help individuals find, access, share and work with business content such as documents, photos, and videos on their BlackBerry smartphones;

IBM Lotus Connections functionality for access to activities, blogs, and communities in order to augment the access already available to profiles and tags.

IBM and RIM will also preview something new for developers -- BlackBerry platform support for IBM Lotus Domino Designer and XPages. The BlackBerry Java Development Environment (BlackBerry JDE) for Eclipse plugs into IBM Lotus Domino Designer, making it easier to develop new software applications for BlackBerry smartphones. BlackBerry platform support for XPages enables developers to write a rich application once for both Web and secure use on BlackBerry smartphones.

IBM and RIM are rolling out these features and tools for BlackBerry smartphones in the coming months: Lotus Symphony document viewing and the new capabilities for Lotus Connections will be available in the second quarter; and the Lotus Quickr team room and Designer offerings are planned for availability in the second half of 2009.

Additionally, IBM Lotus Notes and Domino and IBM Lotus Sametime unified communications and collaboration software, which has worked on the BlackBerry platform for several years, is now also compatible with the BlackBerry Storm smartphone. The companies recently made a new presence and awareness-everywhere feature available on the Blackberry. This is made possible by the new BlackBerry Client for Lotus Sametime which provides smartphone customers with real time communications capabilities throughout the smartphone's applications.