As we have written about in previous stories, Lotus has finally announced its first release of the first ever Mac-specific targeted products with the news that Lotus Notes 8.5 is available for Mac systems running OS X Leopard; and in addition, Lotus will be also be releasing Symphony for Mac.

The release of the Notes 8.5 client on the Mac platform is a major shot in the arm for the Mac platform in the enterprise space. In addition, iNotes has been released, which allows anyone with a Notes license to access Note using the Safari browser on a desktop/laptop or the mobile Safari browser found in the iPhone.

Lotus’s decision to spend a great deal of effort to get Notes running on the Mac platform could pay dividends in its battle with Microsoft Exchange. Several high profile companies are already using Lotus Notes 8.5 for Mac in production environments.

In addition, Lotus will be bringing the Symphony suite to the Mac platform later this month. The Symphony suite features word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation applications that have been customized and ported to the Mac platform. The best part about the release of the Symphony suite is that it will be available free of charge to Mac users.

The continued focus on getting both Mac and iPhones more connected in the enterprise environment is being driven by demands from the user community. The decision of Lotus to focus on this area could be very beneficial to the Mac platform’s wider acceptance in the Enterprise market space. Still, use of Lotus Notes trails Microsoft Exchange by a wide margin. Of course, Microsoft has also stepped up its support of the Mac platform with a release of a newer version of the Entourage client, which adds additional Exchange support. iPhones are currently able to connect to Exchange servers using ActiveSync.