IBM has used the Lotusphere 2009 conference in Orlando to preview upcoming enhancements to its Lotus Sametime family of web conferencing and collaboration services.

Lotus Sametime 8.5, planned for launch in the second half of 2009, will support Apple's iPhone, and offer improved audio and video quality.

It will also include a web browser client for businesses that want to use Sametime to communicate externally with customers.

"It is IBM's vision to deliver unified collaboration from interfaces that our customers are most comfortable working with," said Bruce Morse, IBM unified communications software vice president, during the event's keynote.

Rob Ingram, Lotus Sametime senior product manager, told vnunet.com that version 8.5 will be built around open APIs to allow web developers to easily integrate the software with other enterprise applications.

Ingram added that the Sametime iPhone client interface is designed to be intuitive for Apple users, and that video conformity around standards such as ICE would encourage more business users to communicate via video because streaming through firewalls would no longer be a barrier.

He also promised new bandwidth management capabilities, but said that these will come after the Sametime 8.5 release.

Open APIs for web developers will allow content to be easily transferred between Sametime and enterprise applications, such as SAP. Ingram gave the example of customers clicking on a Sametime meeting participant's name to view SAP data, such as their HR record.

Also at Lotusphere, IBM demonstrated new integrated telephony software planned for release in the second half of 2009.

Sametime Unified Telephony will make voice calling easier and more intuitive, according to the company, and "eliminate the need for desktop phones" with a new soft-phone feature.

For example, Sametime users can click on the name of a contact they are trying to reach and the software will figure out how to reach them, Morse explained.

Users will be able to switch the conversation to a mobile handset with one click and without alerting other callers, he added, and new drag-and-drop capabilities will allow users to select names from their Lotus contact list and insert them into a conference call window to allow them to join the call.

Finally, Sametime users will be able to create rules for how they want to be located by other callers, for example diverting calls to their desktop phone if they are in a meeting.

The Sametime client will also synchronise with Lotus users' calendars so that Sametime will automatically divert the calls when they are in meetings.

Sametime Meeting will also be part of IBM's LotusLive software, which allows businesses to integrate Lotus software with applications from Salesforce.com and Skype.