IBM is preparing to ship a new version of its Lotus Notes and Domino applications on 17 August, according to a company webpage published on Tuesday.

International versions of the application are slated for release from September.

Version 8 of the messaging and collaboration platform is based on the Eclipse framework, and is built around a new platform dubbed Expeditor.

The platform allows developers to create Eclipse-based code for use within the client that can function on Linux, OS X and Windows platforms.

The client also will be able to run Eclipse plug-ins for use in a sidebar, for instance pulling information from enterprise applications using RSS and Atom feeds.

Lotus Notes will also incorporate additional productivity applications such as OpenOffice.

IBM is battling Microsoft's Exchange in the email server market. According to 2006 market share data from Radicati Group, Exchange runs 31 per cent of the world's email servers, and IBM runs 21 per cent.