IBM plays up Workplace suite

IBM's Lotus unit on Monday updated Workplace, its collaborative software line, with enhanced development tools and a hosted document-management service offering. The announcements were timed to coincide with the Lotusphere conference taking place this week in Orlando, Fla.

The company introduced Workplace Collaborative Service, a set of Web-delivered collaborative programs, including e-mail, calendering and electronic learning tools, which IBM will sell as a single bundle. Workplace is IBM's line of Java-based productivity applications that run with the company's WebSphere Portal software. To help the transition from its current Notes and Domino to Workplace, the company released tools aimed at simplifying Workplace application development. It also added a hosted service to manage and collect reports required by Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. In a release, IBM said that version 7 of Notes and Domino will be available this summer.