IBM announced that its Lotus Notes 8 and Lotus Domino 8 would be generally available in India now.

These two products have undergone two years of development and testing by more than 25,000 businesses around the world.

IBM Lotus Notes 8 and IBM Lotus Domino 8 represent the "industry's first enterprise collaboration solution" and are largely designed after getting inputs from customers, a company statement said.

According to the statement, research and insight gained from IBM, R&D laboratories and businesses worldwide indicate overall collaboration has superseded e-mail as the key characteristic of their desktop experience.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," IBM said.

More than 93% of Lotus Notes customers use the most recent two releases, a high adoption rate, the company said. "Further, annual service subscription renewal rates within Lotus Notes licences exceed 20% of the industry average, indicating broad, fast adoption," it added.

Lotus Notes 8 is much more than e-mail, IBM said, adding, that it integrates work by building in instant messaging and presence awareness, office tools to create and edit documents, presentations and spreadsheets and infusing a business' custom applications, including help desk, CRM, sales force, discussion forums and blogs.

PTI