Other announcements at Lotusphere include:

-- IBM and SAP plan to release in March their first joint software product called Alloy, which links Lotus Notes with SAP Business Suite. Alloy is designed to present data from SAP applications within Lotus Notes. Both companies will sell the product. IBM and SAP announced this collaboration, code-named Atlantic, at last year's Lotusphere.

-- IBM and Research In Motion will deliver new Lotus software capabilities for BlackBerry phones. By the second quarter, BlackBerry users will be able to access Lotus Symphony documents, as well as Lotus Connections activities, blogs and communities. In the second half of the year, BlackBerry users will have access to Lotus Quickr team software, while developers will gain additional functionality thanks to new BlackBerry platform support for IBM Lotus Domino Designer and XPages.

-- The next version of Lotus Connections will add a Facebook-like "wall" to profiles where information can be posted, as well as Twitter-like microblogging capabilities for employees to share short updates of their actions and whereabouts. Connections is also gaining a new wiki service.