IBM announced that after two years in development and testing by more than 25,000 businesses around the world, <A HREF="http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/22169.wss">Lotus Notes 8 and Lotus Domino 8 will be generally available today, Friday, August 17.</A> IBM Lotus Notes 8 and IBM Lotus Domino 8 represents the industry's first enterprise collaboration solution largely designed with input from its customers.

Research and insight gained from IBM R&D Laboratories and businesses worldwide indicate overall collaboration has superceded email as the key characteristic of their desktop experience. Consequently, Lotus Notes 8 is designed to transform the inbox into an integrated workspace that brings together email, calendar, instant messaging, office productivity tools and custom applications.

More than 93 percent of Lotus Notes customers are using the most recent two releases, a high adoption rate. Further, annual service subscription renewal rates within Lotus Notes licenses exceed 20 percent of the industry average, indicating broad, fast adoption. "Some people have actually switched from Microsoft Outlook at home to Notes 8 since we showed them how," said Marc Frasier, IT Mgr, Well Dynamics of New Zealand. "I'm pretty confident that we'll be rolling out 8.0 pretty close to launch date."