IBM is joining forces with SAP to create joint software that ties its Lotus Notes groupware to SAP’s Business Suite applications.

Codenamed Atlantic, the effort is scheduled for availability late this year and allows Notes clients to access SAP workflows, reporting and analytics without moving out of the Notes environment. Tools will be included to develop and customise capabilities.

Michael Rhodin, IBM Lotus general manager, said Atlantic’s capabilities will soon be extended to trip planning, budget management and time entry. “People having to switch between applications just to get information is a tax we can no longer take,” Rhodin said.

Alan Lepofsky, senior strategy manager at Lotus, said Atlantic is different from the integration Lotus users had before with SAP data using Lotus Enterprise Integrator or Lotus Enterprise Solutions tools.

“Atlantic is co-developed between us and SAP using the Notes composite application model, and is built with open standards using Eclipse, which gives vendors like SAP the ability to build for software in ways they couldn’t before.”

SAP runs a similar-sounding development effort with Microsoft called Duet, which links Office productivity applications with SAP’s business processes and data.
But Lotus’s Lepoksky said, “Where Atlantic differs significantly from what Duet does is that it is fully customisable.”

Lepofsky also said IBM and its Lotus subsidiary would work with the open-source community, pointing to another Lotusphere announcement, that of Foundations, a future line of small business software servers aimed at companies with under 500 employees. Another announcement, codenamed Bluehouse, is a web-based service that provides secure collaborative capabilities for small and medium-sized businesses.

Lotus Foundations and “Bluehouse” will benefit SMBs because the solutions require minimal technical expertise and are automatic, allowing companies to focus on the business, rather than on managing technology.

Lotus Mashups is a developer tool that will go into beta shortly, and provide a way to develop composite applications; Lotus Protector for Mail Security is an email server appliance.