At IBM's annual Lotusphere conference in Orlando, Florida, on 21 January, IBM and SAP of Germany announced plans to deliver their first joint software product. The product, codenamed 'Atlantic', will integrate IBM Lotus Notes software with the SAP Business Suite.

Atlantic is designed to create a new style of applications that present information and data that users familiar with the Lotus Notes desktop will find particularly useful. This will make it easier for users to do their jobs and greatly enhance the return on investment that companies have made in their enterprise systems.

The two companies aim to providing users critical business information in an intuitive, easy-to-use interface with a view to facilitating timely and more informed business decisions. The assumption, of course, is that they are familiar with the Lotus Notes desktop.

Michael Rhodin, general manager, IBM Lotus Software, says: "We're creating a richer collaboration environment. Businesses are looking to find better ways to collaborate and manage their business processes. This IBM-SAP solution addresses both challenges in one seamless package for millions of users."

According to IBM, Lotus and SAP have thousands of mutual customers who have been asking for the functionality that Atlantic software will provide. Many of IBM's top customers also use SAP solutions.

Jean Michel-Ares, CIO, Coca-Cola Company, which has SAP and IBM Lotus as "strategic partners", "Our IT goal is to help our people to be more responsive, productive and effective, and SAP and IBM Lotus have helped us get closer to that goal. The partnership between IBM Lotus, SAP and The Coca-Cola Company promises to deliver additional value to our associates and improve the tools they use every day."

Says Vishal Sikka, CTO, SAP, "This agreement is a great example of how SAP enables our customers to empower their users by providing easy access to SAP business processes and data through productivity tools and user interfaces of their choice." He says the agreement reaffirms "the strong commitment we have to our partnership with IBM".

IBM and SAP have collaborated for over 35 years to bring joint customers cutting-edge solutions to improve business efficiency, according to IBM. This collaboration covers more than 13,000 client sites for their millions of users.

Currently planned for inclusion in the first release of project Atlantic is support for SAP workflows, reporting and analytics, and the use of roles from within the Lotus Notes client. In addition, tools are planned to be included to provide the ability to extend and adapt these roles and capabilities, as well as leverage additional collaborative and offline capabilities inherent in Lotus Notes and Domino products. The initial release is planned to ship in the fourth quarter of 2008 and will be sold by both companies.

IBM Global Business Services will be available to provide consulting and perform services if customisation of the product is required. SAP practitioners, other global and regional systems integrators will also be enabled to customise Atlantic software to meet demand.

SAP Business Suite is a comprehensive family of adaptive business applications, providing functionality for complete integration, industry-specific capability, massive scalability and easy collaboration over the Internet.

IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8 enterprise collaboration software was developed with input from more than 25,000 customers. Lotus Notes 8 software transforms the inbox into an integrated workspace. It brings together email, calendar, instant messaging, productivity tools like Lotus Symphony, collaborative applications, and the ability to build and deploy customer business or third-party applications, including help desk, customer relationship management, sales force, discussion forms and blogs.

According to IBM, Lotus Notes and Domino products have around 135 million licensed users worldwide.