Businesses from around the world are already turning to IBM and RIM to help them take collaboration on the road. Financial services giant MetLife is among them.

“Lotus Notes on BlackBerry is used to connect diverse groups at MetLife, including sales and administration,” said Tony Arroyo, IT Manager, MetLife, New York. “Soon we will move forward with Sametime. There is also interest in the advanced collaboration tools within Lotus Notes 8.”

Standard Life PLC, a global financial services firm based in the United Kingdom with 7 million customers, has over 1,100 employees using BlackBerry smartphones and 10,000 employees using Lotus Notes to collaborate and access the corporate intranet, teamrooms and emergency contact lists.

“Lotus software on BlackBerry is critical to our business as it allows Standard Life to enable better collaboration across the world at any time,” said William Campbell, Desktop Services Manager, Standard Life, who is also presenting at the Wireless Enterprise Symposium this week. “We have taken BlackBerry way beyond email, adding a high level of rich functionality resulting in what one of our users calls ???the laptop in your pocket.’”

Johnson Controls, Inc., based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has 140,000 employees specializing in the design, manufacturing, and installation of automotive systems and non-residential climate control systems. The company provides automotive batteries and all parts of the interior systems in cars and light trucks. Reliance on Lotus Notes via BlackBerry smartphones has grown and now Johnson Controls is moving ahead with Lotus Notes 8.01 with BlackBerry.

Some of the world’s most discriminating technology experts work for the Aerospace Corporation, headquartered in El Segundo, California. Aerospace Corp. employees access Lotus Notes & Domino on their BlackBerry smartphones as they provide independent technical and scientific research, development, and advisory services to national-security space programs and major projects for the United States Air Force, the National Reconnaissance Office, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, commercial companies, and leading universities.

The BlackBerry mobile solution for the Lotus collaboration software suite is available today and is being showcased this week at the Wireless Enterprise Symposium (WES) 2008 in Orlando. The BlackBerry client software for Lotus Sametime and Lotus Connections are both now available as a free download for Lotus customers at www.blackberry.com/go/ibmresources.

For more information, visit www.ibm.com and www.blackberry.com