Oak Brook International taken a majority stake in IBM and Lotus Premier Partner REAL Information Systems, the builder of Web authoring, customer relationship management and development applications. The new alliance aims to become the premier AS/400 e-business solution provider to Britain’s leading businesses.

This is an article from InternetNews.com on the instant messaging wars. The article says that executives from Excite@Home, Microsoft, Activerse, Tribal Voice , Prodigy Communications, Yahoo!, AT&T and Infoseek asked AOL to make its instant messaging servers open to other vendors.

Last week at Solutions ’99, the IBM Technical Developer Conference presented by IBM, Lotus and Tivoli, Cipher’s Knowledge.Works was named the winner of the Cross-Industry Solution Showcase award.

Here’s an article from News.com on IBM’s new AS/400e servers. The servers put Domino and AS/400 applications on a single server and consolidate multiple Domino servers.

Information Week has this article on IBM’s plans to launch three new servers running only Lotus Domino.

Lotus announced that Domino.Doc 2.5, Lotus’ enterprise-wide document management and Knowledge Management solution, is now shipping. Domino.Doc 2.5 is features compatibility with Release 5 of Lotus Notes and Domino, integration with Domino Workflow 2.0 and significant improvements in performance, scalability, usability and administration.

News.com has this article on the agreement between Lotus and Macromedia. The deal will bring Macromedia’s Pathware software to Lotus.

Computer Reseller News reports that IBM plans to introduce its AS/400e 170 dedicated server for Domino Sept. 24.

Here’s an article from PC World on Lotus’ Sametime 1.5 messaging system. According to the article, Sametime 1.5 makes it easier for users to share documents and applications in real time, according to Lotus representatives.

SolCom Incorporated announced their latest release of MultiFlow, a full-functioned wide-area workflow product. MultiFlow Version 1.2 allows work process portals to include e-mail inboxes, fax machines, pagers and more. These new functions enable organizations to easily create the paperless processes needed to move their business to the World Wide Web. MultiFlow belongs to SolCom’s E-Xpress Product Suite. MultiFlow has been integrated with the Lotus Notes and Domino products and all major email programs to allow users to streamline operations.