The upcoming Sametime 7.5 desktop client, which will also offer voice-over-IP (VOIP) capabilities, will be available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X when it is released.
A Linux server version of Sametime 7.5 is expected in early 2007. IBM last month released a Linux edition of Version 7 of its related Lotus Notes collaboration software.
This is the second enhancement in two months for Sametime. In late June, IBM said it would integrate Sametime 7.5, which has 16 million mostly corporate users, with Microsoft Corp.'s communication tools, enabling users to launch Sametime instant messaging with a single click on a name or e-mail address from within Microsoft Office, SharePoint or Outlook.
Lotus Notes users who upgrade to more recent versions of Sametime can also get the same "presence" and IM features built into Notes without having to pay for the full Sametime client, according to David Marshak, IBM Lotus' senior product manager.
A full Sametime subscription costs US$55 per user per year and includes instant messaging, VOIP and click-to-call functionality with certain brands of telephones, including those of Avaya Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc.
On Linux, Sametime will be available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) 9 immediately after the launch, and SLED 10 soon after that, Marshak said.
Major IM clients that already run on Linux include AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), Gaim, Yahoo Instant Messenger and Skype. But IBM's Sametime is targeted at businesses, schools and governmental bodies that want to run Linux on the desktop, rather than hobbyist or individual users of Linux, Marshak said.
IBM's largest Sametime customer is a manufacturing company with 390,000 seats. It counts about 30 companies and organizations that each have more than 100,000 Sametime subscribers, said Marshak.