Native iPhone support ready for Lotus Domino

IBM/Lotus said next week it will ship the long-anticipated real-time access support for the iPhone on its Domino messaging platform.
Lotus Domino support for the iPhone uses the Apple device's mail, calendar and contact application and synchronizes data between the two platforms in real time using Microsoft's ActiveSync protocol.

In January, IBM announced that it would add support for ActiveSync to its Lotus Notes Traveler, a server add-on that provides real-time replication between mobile devices and Notes. It is the updated Traveler software in Domino 8.5.1, which was released Tuesday, that provides the iPhone support.

Traveler already works with devices based on Windows Mobile and Symbian. Updates to Traveler in Domino 8.1.5 add remote wipe, device lock, password management, and external calendar integration to the Symbian platform.

Lotus is playing a bit of catch-up as Microsoft and other vendors such as Kerio who offer push e-mail for the iPhone.

Motorola, Nokia, Palm, Sony Ericsson, Symbian also support ActiveSync on their mobile devices.

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The only thing iPhone users have to add to their device is a configuration file that tells the iPhone how to find the user's mailbox on the Domino server. For initial set-up, the iPhone's Safari browser is used to access the Domino server and download the configuration file.

When the user signs onto Domino to get the configuration file, the user's sign-on credentials are captured by the iPhone. Those credentials are stored on the device so the iPhone and Domino can trade data without further user intervention.

Lotus Notes users have had to suffer with e-mail access via the iPhone's Safari browser and the Notes Web Access client. With that configuration, users have to manually connect to the Domino server and go through each individual e-mail via the browser.

"It has rich email, attachment support and calendaring capability and is the same user experience a user would get using the iPhone against Exchange or Google," said Ed Brill, director of product management for Lotus Software. "Clearly the iPhone is increasingly a component of an enterprise strategy. We want to support all the devices out there and this is the next one we have added."

The Domino iPhone support also features limited management capabilities, including the ability to remotely wipe data if the device is lost or stolen.

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