IBM has announced that Lotus Sametime Standard 8 and a new product, Lotus Sametime Entry, will be available to help improve the unified communication and collaboration experience for millions of users.

IBM Lotus Sametime Entry software is designed for businesses looking for an alternative to public instant messaging services or costly proprietary offerings. Small to medium-sized businesses will benefit from the encrypted and authenticated business-ready instant messaging of Lotus Sametime Entry. Additionally, the Sametime Entry offering supports multiple server and client operating systems.

Lotus Sametime Entry software claims to include instant messaging capabilities, multi-person chat, presence awareness, spell check, rich text capabilities, emoticon support and contact list management features.

Lotus Sametime Entry software is also designed to integrate with business applications such as Microsoft Office or e-mail through Microsoft Outlook. Through this integration, organisations will be able to presence-enable e-mail inboxes and applications letting users see who is available to collaborate and start a chat instantly regardless of what they are working on. The presence awareness features in Lotus Sametime Entry software also allow users to customise their status or use default options such as away, in a meeting or do not disturb.

"For years, IBM Lotus Notes users have benefited from the core IM capabilities we are now making available to businesses with the Lotus Sametime Entry offering," said Bruce Morse, vice president of unified communications and collaboration, IBM Lotus.