(July 31, 2003) - Research In Motion (RIM) has announced support for the IBM Lotus® Instant Messaging (IM) Everyplace 3 application on RIM's Java-based BlackBerry Wireless Handhelds™. RIM and IBM have collaborated over the past several months to test and optimize performance of Lotus Instant Messaging Everyplace on the BlackBerry wireless platform. Key IM features are now available wirelessly to BlackBerry enterprise customers, including presence awareness, chat (one-to-one and one-to-many), instant messaging between both desktop and other mobile users, IM contact list access, IM/email/SMS alerts, profile editing, multilingual support, single name/password sign-in, behind-the-firewall security, and message logging.

BlackBerry is an open and extensible platform that enables support for Lotus Instant Messaging Everyplace on two fronts: handheld and server. Both the Lotus Instant Messaging Everyplace client application and RIM's Java-based handhelds support the J2ME MIDP standard and the BlackBerry Browser supports standard mark up languages such as WML, cHTML, XHTML Basic, and HTML. On the back-end, Lotus Instant Messaging Everyplace is also supported through the Mobile Data Service feature of BlackBerry Enterprise Server™.