Lotus Development Corporation's Irish operation, employing more than 500 people, is working on a major programme to localise new Lotus eSuite software for 16 countries. It is due for worldwide release in the first quarter of next year.

Lotus has already announced that it will be developing new products for the low-cost network computing environment.

The new software is designed to reduce the expense of computing while increasing productivity. It should speed up deployment of Internet, intranet and extranet (I-net) applications.