Nokia and IBM are linking mobile phones to Notes, the companies announced Thursday.
Nokia S60 3rd Edition devices can connect to corporate e-mail accounts via Lotus Domino Server add-on feature Notes Traveler, without any additional costs, the companies said.
Users will get real time access to e-mail, calendar, address book, journal and to-do list data from December.
The integration is something Notes users have been waiting for, according to IBM.
“We see a wide distribution of Nokia devices within our customer base. I was at a user function in Germany about ten days ago and gave a preview of this announcement to a set of our customers, and got spontaneous applause,” said Kevin Cavanaugh, vice-president of IBM Lotus Software.
Nokia dropped its own enterprise e-mail software in September, and instead decided to focus on working with the large e-mail vendors.
“This is a reinforcement of that strategy. We believe that the IT infrastructure in the corporate premises will be deployed, developed and sold by the experts in that field, meaning companies like IBM and Microsoft,” said Ilari Nurmi, vice president, Eseries sales at Nokia.
This announcement also puts functionality for Notes users on par with Exchange users, according to Nurmi, and is the most important piece that Nokia has been missing.