Windows collaboration

Internet-calling software provider Skype sees the mobile market as the next frontier for its service, but economic realities in the voice market--coupled with mobile operators who feel threatened by Skype--could put the kibosh on large-scale adoption for some time to come. Skype, a peer-to-peer software application that allows people to make free phone calls to other Skype users over the Internet, has become an easy and inexpensive way for people all over the world to stay in touch. In addition to allowing voice calling and instant messaging to other registered Skype users, the service offers premium services, such as Skypeout, which allows cheap calls from Skype to landlines or mobile phones worldwide. ***

IBM plans to unveil on Monday a version of its Lotus Notes desktop collaboration software for Linux. Lotus Notes on Linux 7.0.1, which will be generally available July 24, is based on the Eclipse open-source framework. That technology will also be used in the next update to Lotus Notes, code-named Hannover, which is expected to ship next year. "Lotus Notes on Linux was going to come out at the same time as Hannover, but we decided to roll it out earlier. There is a lot of market demand now from our customers, especially in Germany, India, China and Brazil," said Ed Brill, head of IBM's worldwide Lotus Notes sales. ***

Novell is offering a free version of Suse Linux Enterprise Server with its latest GroupWise collaboration server, which it released Tuesday. Novell's decision to bundle Suse Linux Enterprise Server with GroupWise 7 aims to take away one of the barriers to the adoption of the collaboration server, Novell's vice-president Ed Anderson had said in June when outlining details of the upcoming product. Anderson said that one barrier to companies buying GroupWise has been the additional servers required for migration. The decision to include the Linux server operating system for free may also be aimed at persuading existing GroupWise customers to migrate from NetWare to Linux, a key part of Novell's strategy. ***