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The newest version of Lotus Notes and Domino will push email, contacts and calendar items to iPhone users.

Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.1 includes a few other incremental updates to functionality. But the main new feature is the addition of Microsoft's ActiveSync protocol in Lotus Notes Traveler, the software that supports replication of Notes email, calendars and contacts to smartphones.

IPhone users today can check their Notes email through an optimised website. However, they must refresh to get new messages. "Web-based access has been good," said Ed Brill, director of end-user messaging and collaboration for IBM Lotus software. "But push email is something people wanted."

Lotus Notes is still strong, says IBM manager | IBM Lotus Domino to support Apple iPhone

Early last year, Apple licensed ActiveSync so that businesses could push their corporate Exchange email messages to iPhones. Since the ActiveSync client is already embedded in the iPhone, adding ActiveSync to the Traveler product was a good way to enable push Notes email to the iPhone, he said.

Launched for 600 beta users on Tuesday, version 8.5.1 of Notes and Domino will become more widely available later this year. In a month or two, the update will be published on the Lotus Greenhouse test site, where anyone who registers can start using the software, Brill said. The full commercial release is scheduled for the second half of the year.

Users of other kinds of phones can already get Notes email pushed to their phones. With the SyncML standard, Notes pushes email to Windows Mobile and some Symbian devices.

Businesses can also push Notes email to the iPhone using third-party products. Sybase iAnywhere, for example, supports push Notes email on the iPhone through its Information Anywhere Suite. That offering launched in March and only supports email, not calendar or contacts sync.

Earlier this year, IBM said it planned to support ActiveSync in order to push data to iPhones, but it didn't say when.

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