Research In Motion (RIM) and IBM this week announced a collaboration to extend Lotus Domino applications through Web services directly to BlackBerry handhelds. To help draw more Notes users to BlackBerry, RIM is also offering a free ten-user edition of BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) 4.1 for Lotus Domino or Sametime customers.

This edition of BES supports up to 15 users and can be upgraded to the full version. Both IBM and RIM believe the combination is compelling, so once it gets installed, it'll sell itself. "The intent there is to encourage more of the IBM install base to give wireless e-mail through BlackBerry a try," RIM's VP of Software David Yach told PDAStreet.

IBM VP of business development, Workplace, Portal & Collaboration Products Sean Poulley said to PDAStreet. "The RIM promotional offer to Lotus Domino customers is significant, it will help Domino customers experience the powerful value of Domino applications on BlackBerry first hand."

"Effectively what it does for both of us is give a department or a company that is new to BlackBerry incentive to give it a try without some of the impediments. Again, some of its more of a business impediment of just getting a purchase order and getting it into your budget and all that kind of stuff to do a trial," RIM's Yach added.

The aim the RIM/IBM partnership as whole is to enable broader wireless access to critical Lotus Domino business applications - such as CRM, SAP, and IBM DB2 - by extending SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) components to BlackBerry, and therefore make it easier for customers to access, view and manipulate data remotely from their handhelds. It is the first in a series of joint initiatives to provide tighter integration between BlackBerry and Lotus Domino.

The Canadian mob-e-mail vendor has had a BES for Notes for about five years now, mobilizing Lotus Domino PIM data to BlackBerry users. But with 125 millions Notes/Domino seats out there - by IBM's estimation - and BlackBerry the most popular wireless handheld in the enterprise (and the products so complimentary), the companies have decided to work more closely together, according Yach; to their mutual advantage

IBM's Poulley said, "The ability to access Domino applications on BlackBerry devices is a dramatic step forward for the so called 'mobile road warriors' who need more than email and instant messaging while away from the office. Together with RIM, we are effectively breaking down some of the barriers for mobile workers, giving them real time access to a full workplace on the go."

Yach explained the tighter relationship takes a couple of forms.

The first is to take the products they have today and make them even better through tighter integration. "One way would be having the right experts, software developers, on the two sides talking to each other," Yach said. "The kind of technical cooperation that would make product integration go even better."

The second part is extending beyond the core wireless e-mail and PIM functionality. For example, last week Yach told PDAStreet how IBM performed a demo where they took some SAP information and created a Notes application based on that info.

"What was interesting, the way they did that ended up exposing Web services. RIM independently, in the past, created tools that could take Web services and create good wireless applications. And so those two technologies just work together," according to Yach.

He added, "But you realize just working together isn't quite the same for a customer, especially when there is a support question, when something goes wrong."

Yach said here is where we get to the crux of IBM and RIM's cooperation on the Web services front: "What do we do to make sure we have customers who are successful taking these kinds of applications, like SAP going through Lotus Notes, and make sure its successful as a wireless application."

So a lot of it is not just about technology, but about business relationships; between IBM and RIM, but also between those companies and their customers.

"What we don't want is for customers to report a problem and have two organizations pointing fingers at each other," Yach said. "It becomes a sort of business integration, and not just technical integration."