Lotus Software
Encyclopedia
Lotus Software is a software company with headquarters in Westford
, Massachusetts
. Lotus is most commonly known for the Lotus 1-2-3
spreadsheet
application, the first feature-heavy, user-friendly, reliable and WYSIWYG
-enabled product to become widely available in the early days of the IBM PC
, when there was no graphical user interface
. Such a useful tool certainly helped to spread the adoption of the PC, both for administrative and scientific applications. Much later, in conjunction with Ray Ozzie
's Iris Associates
, Lotus also released a groupware and email
system, Lotus Notes
. IBM purchased the company in 1995 for $3.5 billion, primarily to acquire Lotus Notes and to establish a presence in the increasingly important client–server computing segment, which was rapidly making host-based products like IBM's OfficeVision
obsolete.
and Jonathan Sachs
with backing from Ben Rosen
. Lotus' first product was presentation software for the Apple II
known as Lotus Executive Briefing System. Kapor founded Lotus after leaving his post as head of development at VisiCorp
(the distributors of the Visicalc
spreadsheet
) and selling all his rights to the VisiPlot and VisiTrend products to VisiCorp.
Shortly after Kapor left VisiCorp, he and Sachs produced an integrated spreadsheet and graphics program. Even though IBM and VisiCorp had a collaboration agreement whereby VisiCalc was being shipped simultaneously with the PC, Lotus had a clearly superior product. Lotus released Lotus 1-2-3
on January 26, 1983. The name referred to the three ways the product could be used, as a spreadsheet, graphics package, and database manager. In fact, the latter two functions were less often used, nonetheless 1-2-3 was the most powerful spreadsheet program available. Sales were huge, turning Lotus into the largest independent software vendor in the world almost overnight. The business plan had called for $1 million in sales in the first year, but actual results were $54 million.
In 1982 Jim Manzi came to Lotus as a management consultant, and became an employee four months later. In October 1984 he was named President, and in April 1986 he was named as CEO, succeeding Kapor. In July of that same year he also became Chairman of the Board. Manzi would remain at the head of Lotus until 1995.
grew, Lotus quickly came to dominate the spreadsheet market. Lotus introduced other office products such as Ray Ozzie
's Symphony in 1984 and the Jazz
office suite for the Apple Macintosh computer in 1985. Jazz did very poorly in the market. (In Guy Kawasaki's book The Macintosh Way, Lotus Jazz was described as being so bad, "even the people who pirated it returned it.") Also in 1985, Lotus bought Software Arts
and discontinued the latter company's VisiCalc program.
In the late 1980s, Lotus developed Lotus Magellan
, a file management and indexing utility. This period also saw the release of Manuscript, a word processor, Lotus Agenda
, an innovative personal information manager (PIM), which flopped, and Improv
, a groundbreaking modeling package for the NeXT
platform. Improv also flopped, and none of these products made a significant impact on the market.
" cases which started in 1987. Lotus sued Paperback Software and Mosaic for copyright infringement, false and misleading advertising, and unfair competition over their low-cost clones of 1-2-3, VP Planner and Twin, and sued Borland
over its Quattro spreadsheet. This led Richard Stallman
, founder of the Free Software Foundation
, to found the League for Programming Freedom
(LPF) and hold protests outside Lotus Development offices. Paperback and Mosaic lost and went out of business; Borland won and survived. The LPF filed an amicus curiae
brief
in the Borland case.
. Several of these (1-2-3, Freelance Graphics, Ami Pro, Approach, and Lotus Organizer
) were bundled together under the name Lotus SmartSuite
. Although SmartSuite was bundled cheaply with many PCs and may initially have been more popular than Microsoft Office
, Lotus quickly lost its dominance in the desktop applications market with the transition to 32 bit applications running on Windows 95
. In large part due to its focusing much of its development resources on a suite of applications for IBM's then new (and eventually a market failure) OS/2
operating system, Lotus was late in delivering its suite of 32 bit products and failed to capitalize on the transition to the new version of Windows. It now has very little market share. The last significant new release was the SmartSuite Millennium Edition released in 1999. All new development of the suite was ended in 2000 with ongoing maintenance being shifted overseas.
Lotus began its diversification from the desktop software business with its 1984 strategic founding investment in Ray Ozzie
's Iris Associates
, the creator of its Lotus Notes
groupware platform. As a result of this early speculative move, Lotus had gained significant experience in network-based communications years before other competitors in the PC world had even started thinking about networked computing or the Internet
. Lotus initially brought Lotus Notes to market in 1989, and later reinforced its market presence with the acquisition of cc:Mail
in 1991. In 1994, Lotus acquired Iris Associates
. Lotus's dominant groupware position attracted IBM, which needed to make a strategic move away from host-based messaging products and to establish a stronger presence in client–server computing, but it also soon attracted stiff competition from Microsoft Exchange Server
.
In the second quarter of 1995 IBM
launched a hostile bid for Lotus with a $60-per-share tender offer, when Lotus' stock was only trading at $32. Jim Manzi looked for potential white knights, and forced IBM
to increase its bid to $64.50 per share, for a $3.5 billion buyout of Lotus in July 1995. On October 11, 1995 Manzi announced his resignation from Lotus (by then known as the Lotus Development division of IBM). He left with stock worth $78 million dollars.
Gradually, the Lotus.com web site changed the "About us" section of its web site to eliminate references to "Lotus Development Corporation". The Lotus.com web page in 2001 clearly showed the company as "Lotus Development Corporation" with "a word from its CEO" http://replay.web.archive.org/20010331033934/http://www.lotus.com/home.nsf/welcome/corporate by 2002 the "About us" section was removed from its site menu, and the Lotus logo was replaced with the IBM logo http://replay.web.archive.org/20020401053822/http://www.lotus.com/. By 2003 an "About Lotus" link returned to the Lotus.com page on its sidebar, but this time identifying the company as "Lotus software from IBM" and showing in its contact information "Lotus Software,
IBM Software Group" http://replay.web.archive.org/20030608070445/http://www.lotus.com/engine/jumpages.nsf/wdocs/aboutlotus. By 2008, the Lotus.com domain name stopped showing a stand alone site, and started redirecting to the IBM.com domain name, to the page www.ibm.com/software/lotus. The assimilation was complete.
(NSA) had backdoored the export version of Lotus Notes, but this is a mis-characterization of what actually happened. Prior to that year, Lotus had been restricted from exporting software that used encryption keys that were longer than 40 bits by United States law. Under an agreement with the US government, Lotus was allowed to start exporting 64 bit keys, so long as 24 bits of each key were recoverable using a special key issued by Lotus to the NSA. The result was that the newer version of Lotus Notes provided stronger protection against industrial espionage than any previous version had been allowed to provide, and it provided no less protection against decryption by the NSA than the previous versions had given. (US export regulations were changed in 2001, so current versions of Lotus products are able to use longer keys and they no longer provide NSA with access to any key bits.)
Following in founder Mitch Kapor
's footsteps, Lotus has always had a reputation as a progressive company. Lotus's first employee was Janet Axelrod who created not only the Human Resources organization but was the central figure in creating the much respected Lotus culture. As she continued to build her organization and play a central role with the senior management, she eventually hired Freada Klein as the first Director of Employee Relations to help with her emphasis on ensuring a fair workplace. In 1986, Lotus was the first major company to support an AIDS
walk. In 1990, Lotus opened a daycare center for the children of its employees. In 1992, Lotus was the first major company to offer full benefits to same-sex partners. In 1998, Lotus was named one of the Top 10 best companies to work for working mothers by Working Mother magazine.
In 1995, Lotus had over 4,000 employees worldwide and IBM's acquisition of Lotus was greeted with apprehension by many Lotus employees, who feared that the corporate culture of "Big Blue" would smother their creativity. To the surprise of many employees and journalists, IBM adopted a very hands-off, laissez-faire attitude towards its new acquisition.
However, by the year 2000, the inevitable assimilation of Lotus was almost complete. While the mass employee defections that IBM feared did not materialize, many long-time Lotus employees did complain about the transition to IBM's culture (IBM's employee benefits programs, in particular, were singled out as inferior to Lotus's very progressive programs).
Lotus's headquarters in Cambridge used to be divided into two buildings, the Lotus Development Building (LDB) (on the banks of the Charles River
) and the Rogers Street building, located adjacent to the CambridgeSide Galleria. However, in 2001, then President and General Manager, Al Zollar decided not to renew the lease of LDB. The subsequent migration of employees across the street (and into home offices) generally coincided with what was probably the final exodus of employees from the company. Today, IBM's offices at 1 Rogers St supports mobile employees, Watson Research Center
on User interface
, and IBM DataPower
.
The integration of Lotus into IBM continues. Today, it is a software brand in IBM's Software Group. Within Lotus, there is still a strong sense of unity. Many former Lotus employees, though they have moved into and embraced IBM, still identify with Lotus and see themselves as part of the Lotus community.
technique as taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
. Incidentally, competitor Borland
code-named their Quattro Pro
software "Buddha", as the software was meant to "assume the Lotus position" and take over Lotus 1-2-3's market.
There also was (circa 1995) the assertion by one Lotus cc: Mail employee that "Quattro Pro" was taken from the Italian word "quattro", or number four, thus asserting that it was one better than Lotus 1-2-3.
Westford, Massachusetts
Westford is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 21,951 at the 2010 census.-History:Originally a part of neighboring Chelmsford, West Chelmsford soon grew large enough to sustain its own governance, and was officially incorporated as Westford on September 23,...
, Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
. Lotus is most commonly known for the Lotus 1-2-3
Lotus 1-2-3
Lotus 1-2-3 is a spreadsheet program from Lotus Software . It was the IBM PC's first "killer application"; its huge popularity in the mid-1980s contributed significantly to the success of the IBM PC in the corporate environment.-Beginnings:...
spreadsheet
Spreadsheet
A spreadsheet is a computer application that simulates a paper accounting worksheet. It displays multiple cells usually in a two-dimensional matrix or grid consisting of rows and columns. Each cell contains alphanumeric text, numeric values or formulas...
application, the first feature-heavy, user-friendly, reliable and WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get. The term is used in computing to describe a system in which content displayed onscreen during editing appears in a form closely corresponding to its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product...
-enabled product to become widely available in the early days of the IBM PC
IBM PC
The IBM Personal Computer, commonly known as the IBM PC, is the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform. It is IBM model number 5150, and was introduced on August 12, 1981...
, when there was no graphical user interface
Graphical user interface
In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...
. Such a useful tool certainly helped to spread the adoption of the PC, both for administrative and scientific applications. Much later, in conjunction with Ray Ozzie
Ray Ozzie
Raymond "Ray" Ozzie is an American software industry entrepreneur who held the positions of Chief Technical Officer and Chief Software Architect at Microsoft between 2005 and 2010...
's Iris Associates
Iris Associates
Iris Associates was a software development company founded in Littleton, Massachusetts on December 7, 1984 by Ray Ozzie to build the software ultimately known as Lotus Notes. Tim Halvorsen and Len Kawell, who joined Iris shortly afterwards in January 1985, met Ray Ozzie years before when all of...
, Lotus also released a groupware and email
Email
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
system, Lotus Notes
Lotus Notes
Lotus Notes is the client of a collaborative platform originally created by Lotus Development Corp. in 1989. In 1995 Lotus was acquired by IBM and became known as the Lotus Development division of IBM and is now part of the IBM Software Group...
. IBM purchased the company in 1995 for $3.5 billion, primarily to acquire Lotus Notes and to establish a presence in the increasingly important client–server computing segment, which was rapidly making host-based products like IBM's OfficeVision
IBM OfficeVision
OfficeVision is an IBM proprietary office support application that primarily runs on IBM's VM operating system and its user interface CMS. Other platform versions are available, notably OV/MVS and OV/400...
obsolete.
History
Lotus was founded in 1982 by partners Mitch KaporMitch Kapor
Mitchell David Kapor is the founder of Lotus Development Corporation and the designer of Lotus 1-2-3. He is also a co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and was the first chair of the Mozilla Foundation...
and Jonathan Sachs
Jonathan Sachs
Jonathan Sachs was the programmer who co-founded Lotus Development Corporation with Mitch Kapor in 1982 and created the first version of the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet program...
with backing from Ben Rosen
Sevin Rosen Funds
Sevin Rosen Funds is a venture capital firm that was established in 1980 by L. J. Sevin and Ben Rosen. SRF was involved in the financing of Citrix, Cypress Semiconductor, Electronic Arts, Lotus Development Corporation, Silicon Graphics, and Vitesse Semiconductor...
. Lotus' first product was presentation software for the Apple II
Apple II
The Apple II is an 8-bit home computer, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products, designed primarily by Steve Wozniak, manufactured by Apple Computer and introduced in 1977...
known as Lotus Executive Briefing System. Kapor founded Lotus after leaving his post as head of development at VisiCorp
VisiCorp
VisiCorp was an early personal computer software publisher. Its most famous products are VisiOn and VisiCalc.It was founded in 1976 by Dan Fylstra and Peter R. Jennings as Personal Software, and first published Jennings' Microchess program for the MOS Technology KIM-1 computer, and later Commodore...
(the distributors of the Visicalc
VisiCalc
VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet program available for personal computers. It is often considered the application that turned the microcomputer from a hobby for computer enthusiasts into a serious business tool...
spreadsheet
Spreadsheet
A spreadsheet is a computer application that simulates a paper accounting worksheet. It displays multiple cells usually in a two-dimensional matrix or grid consisting of rows and columns. Each cell contains alphanumeric text, numeric values or formulas...
) and selling all his rights to the VisiPlot and VisiTrend products to VisiCorp.
Shortly after Kapor left VisiCorp, he and Sachs produced an integrated spreadsheet and graphics program. Even though IBM and VisiCorp had a collaboration agreement whereby VisiCalc was being shipped simultaneously with the PC, Lotus had a clearly superior product. Lotus released Lotus 1-2-3
Lotus 1-2-3
Lotus 1-2-3 is a spreadsheet program from Lotus Software . It was the IBM PC's first "killer application"; its huge popularity in the mid-1980s contributed significantly to the success of the IBM PC in the corporate environment.-Beginnings:...
on January 26, 1983. The name referred to the three ways the product could be used, as a spreadsheet, graphics package, and database manager. In fact, the latter two functions were less often used, nonetheless 1-2-3 was the most powerful spreadsheet program available. Sales were huge, turning Lotus into the largest independent software vendor in the world almost overnight. The business plan had called for $1 million in sales in the first year, but actual results were $54 million.
In 1982 Jim Manzi came to Lotus as a management consultant, and became an employee four months later. In October 1984 he was named President, and in April 1986 he was named as CEO, succeeding Kapor. In July of that same year he also became Chairman of the Board. Manzi would remain at the head of Lotus until 1995.
Dominance
As the popularity of the personal computerPersonal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
grew, Lotus quickly came to dominate the spreadsheet market. Lotus introduced other office products such as Ray Ozzie
Ray Ozzie
Raymond "Ray" Ozzie is an American software industry entrepreneur who held the positions of Chief Technical Officer and Chief Software Architect at Microsoft between 2005 and 2010...
's Symphony in 1984 and the Jazz
Lotus Jazz
Lotus Jazz was an office suite for the Apple Macintosh, released in 1985, after the substantial success of Lotus 1-2-3 for the IBM-compatible PC...
office suite for the Apple Macintosh computer in 1985. Jazz did very poorly in the market. (In Guy Kawasaki's book The Macintosh Way, Lotus Jazz was described as being so bad, "even the people who pirated it returned it.") Also in 1985, Lotus bought Software Arts
Software Arts
Software Arts was a software company founded by Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston in 1979 to develop VisiCalc, which was published by a separate company, Personal Software Inc...
and discontinued the latter company's VisiCalc program.
In the late 1980s, Lotus developed Lotus Magellan
Lotus Magellan
Lotus Magellan was a groundbreaking DOS-based desktop search package, conceived and developed by Bill Gross and released in the 1980s by Lotus Development Corporation, most famous for Lotus 1-2-3....
, a file management and indexing utility. This period also saw the release of Manuscript, a word processor, Lotus Agenda
Lotus Agenda
Agenda is a DOS-based personal information manager, designed by Mitch Kapor, Ed Belove and Jerry Kaplan, and marketed by Lotus Software.Lotus Agenda is a "free-form" information manager: the information need not be structured at all before it is entered into the database...
, an innovative personal information manager (PIM), which flopped, and Improv
Lotus Improv
Lotus Improv was a spreadsheet program from Lotus Development that attempted to re-define the way a spreadsheet should work. Instead of treating the grid as the system for referencing data, Improv made all data exist in named ranges. Operations on the data then referred to these names, rather than...
, a groundbreaking modeling package for the NeXT
NeXT
Next, Inc. was an American computer company headquartered in Redwood City, California, that developed and manufactured a series of computer workstations intended for the higher education and business markets...
platform. Improv also flopped, and none of these products made a significant impact on the market.
"Look and feel" lawsuits
Lotus was involved in a number of lawsuits, of which the most significant were the "look and feelLook and feel
In software design, look and feel is a term used in respect of a graphical user interface and comprises aspects of its design, including elements such as colors, shapes, layout, and typefaces , as well as the behavior of dynamic elements such as buttons, boxes, and menus...
" cases which started in 1987. Lotus sued Paperback Software and Mosaic for copyright infringement, false and misleading advertising, and unfair competition over their low-cost clones of 1-2-3, VP Planner and Twin, and sued Borland
Borland
Borland Software Corporation is a software company first headquartered in Scotts Valley, California, Cupertino, California and finally Austin, Texas. It is now a Micro Focus subsidiary. It was founded in 1983 by Niels Jensen, Ole Henriksen, Mogens Glad and Philippe Kahn.-The 1980s:...
over its Quattro spreadsheet. This led Richard Stallman
Richard Stallman
Richard Matthew Stallman , often shortened to rms,"'Richard Stallman' is just my mundane name; you can call me 'rms'"|last= Stallman|first= Richard|date= N.D.|work=Richard Stallman's homepage...
, founder of the Free Software Foundation
Free Software Foundation
The Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software...
, to found the League for Programming Freedom
League for Programming Freedom
League for Programming Freedom was founded in 1989 by Richard Stallman to unite free software developers as well as developers of proprietary software to fight against software patents and the extension of the scope of copyright...
(LPF) and hold protests outside Lotus Development offices. Paperback and Mosaic lost and went out of business; Borland won and survived. The LPF filed an amicus curiae
Amicus curiae
An amicus curiae is someone, not a party to a case, who volunteers to offer information to assist a court in deciding a matter before it...
brief
Brief (law)
A brief is a written legal document used in various legal adversarial systems that is presented to a court arguing why the party to the case should prevail....
in the Borland case.
Diversification and acquisition by IBM
In the 1990s, to compete with Microsoft's Windows applications, Lotus had to buy in products such as Ami Pro (word processor), Approach (database), and Threadz, which became Lotus OrganizerLotus Organizer
Lotus Organizer is a personal information manager. It was initially developed by Threadz, a small British software house, reaching version 3.0. Organizer was subsequently acquired by Lotus Development Corporation, for whom the package was a Windows-based replacement for Lotus Agenda...
. Several of these (1-2-3, Freelance Graphics, Ami Pro, Approach, and Lotus Organizer
Lotus Organizer
Lotus Organizer is a personal information manager. It was initially developed by Threadz, a small British software house, reaching version 3.0. Organizer was subsequently acquired by Lotus Development Corporation, for whom the package was a Windows-based replacement for Lotus Agenda...
) were bundled together under the name Lotus SmartSuite
Lotus SmartSuite
SmartSuite is an office suite from Lotus Software. The company made versions of its office suite for IBM OS/2 and Microsoft Windows.-Status:SmartSuite is in maintenance mode, and supported with fixes and fixpacks on Windows 2000 and Windows XP...
. Although SmartSuite was bundled cheaply with many PCs and may initially have been more popular than Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office is a non-free commercial office suite of inter-related desktop applications, servers and services for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, introduced by Microsoft in August 1, 1989. Initially a marketing term for a bundled set of applications, the first version of...
, Lotus quickly lost its dominance in the desktop applications market with the transition to 32 bit applications running on Windows 95
Windows 95
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products...
. In large part due to its focusing much of its development resources on a suite of applications for IBM's then new (and eventually a market failure) OS/2
OS/2
OS/2 is a computer operating system, initially created by Microsoft and IBM, then later developed by IBM exclusively. The name stands for "Operating System/2," because it was introduced as part of the same generation change release as IBM's "Personal System/2 " line of second-generation personal...
operating system, Lotus was late in delivering its suite of 32 bit products and failed to capitalize on the transition to the new version of Windows. It now has very little market share. The last significant new release was the SmartSuite Millennium Edition released in 1999. All new development of the suite was ended in 2000 with ongoing maintenance being shifted overseas.
Lotus began its diversification from the desktop software business with its 1984 strategic founding investment in Ray Ozzie
Ray Ozzie
Raymond "Ray" Ozzie is an American software industry entrepreneur who held the positions of Chief Technical Officer and Chief Software Architect at Microsoft between 2005 and 2010...
's Iris Associates
Iris Associates
Iris Associates was a software development company founded in Littleton, Massachusetts on December 7, 1984 by Ray Ozzie to build the software ultimately known as Lotus Notes. Tim Halvorsen and Len Kawell, who joined Iris shortly afterwards in January 1985, met Ray Ozzie years before when all of...
, the creator of its Lotus Notes
Lotus Notes
Lotus Notes is the client of a collaborative platform originally created by Lotus Development Corp. in 1989. In 1995 Lotus was acquired by IBM and became known as the Lotus Development division of IBM and is now part of the IBM Software Group...
groupware platform. As a result of this early speculative move, Lotus had gained significant experience in network-based communications years before other competitors in the PC world had even started thinking about networked computing or the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
. Lotus initially brought Lotus Notes to market in 1989, and later reinforced its market presence with the acquisition of cc:Mail
Cc:Mail
cc:Mail is an obsolete, store-and-forward LAN-based e-mail system originally developed on Microsoft's MS-DOS platform by Hubert Lipinski in the 1980s. At the height of its popularity cc:Mail had about 21 million users.-Message store:...
in 1991. In 1994, Lotus acquired Iris Associates
Iris Associates
Iris Associates was a software development company founded in Littleton, Massachusetts on December 7, 1984 by Ray Ozzie to build the software ultimately known as Lotus Notes. Tim Halvorsen and Len Kawell, who joined Iris shortly afterwards in January 1985, met Ray Ozzie years before when all of...
. Lotus's dominant groupware position attracted IBM, which needed to make a strategic move away from host-based messaging products and to establish a stronger presence in client–server computing, but it also soon attracted stiff competition from Microsoft Exchange Server
Microsoft Exchange Server
Microsoft Exchange Server is the server side of a client–server, collaborative application product developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Microsoft Servers line of server products and is used by enterprises using Microsoft infrastructure products...
.
In the second quarter of 1995 IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
launched a hostile bid for Lotus with a $60-per-share tender offer, when Lotus' stock was only trading at $32. Jim Manzi looked for potential white knights, and forced IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
to increase its bid to $64.50 per share, for a $3.5 billion buyout of Lotus in July 1995. On October 11, 1995 Manzi announced his resignation from Lotus (by then known as the Lotus Development division of IBM). He left with stock worth $78 million dollars.
Assimilation of name and web site / branding
While IBM allowed Lotus to develop, market and sell its products under its own brand name, a restructuring in January 2001 http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-250699.html brought it more in line with its parent company, IBM. Also, IBM moved key marketing and management functions from Cambridge, Mass., to IBM's New York office http://searchdomino.techtarget.com/news/932523/Oh-Domino-Why-Lotus-is-dropping-the-ball?track=NL-201.Gradually, the Lotus.com web site changed the "About us" section of its web site to eliminate references to "Lotus Development Corporation". The Lotus.com web page in 2001 clearly showed the company as "Lotus Development Corporation" with "a word from its CEO" http://replay.web.archive.org/20010331033934/http://www.lotus.com/home.nsf/welcome/corporate by 2002 the "About us" section was removed from its site menu, and the Lotus logo was replaced with the IBM logo http://replay.web.archive.org/20020401053822/http://www.lotus.com/. By 2003 an "About Lotus" link returned to the Lotus.com page on its sidebar, but this time identifying the company as "Lotus software from IBM" and showing in its contact information "Lotus Software,
IBM Software Group" http://replay.web.archive.org/20030608070445/http://www.lotus.com/engine/jumpages.nsf/wdocs/aboutlotus. By 2008, the Lotus.com domain name stopped showing a stand alone site, and started redirecting to the IBM.com domain name, to the page www.ibm.com/software/lotus. The assimilation was complete.
Rumors
It has been repeatedly alleged that in 1997 the United States National Security AgencyNational Security Agency
The National Security Agency/Central Security Service is a cryptologic intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign communications and foreign signals intelligence, as well as protecting U.S...
(NSA) had backdoored the export version of Lotus Notes, but this is a mis-characterization of what actually happened. Prior to that year, Lotus had been restricted from exporting software that used encryption keys that were longer than 40 bits by United States law. Under an agreement with the US government, Lotus was allowed to start exporting 64 bit keys, so long as 24 bits of each key were recoverable using a special key issued by Lotus to the NSA. The result was that the newer version of Lotus Notes provided stronger protection against industrial espionage than any previous version had been allowed to provide, and it provided no less protection against decryption by the NSA than the previous versions had given. (US export regulations were changed in 2001, so current versions of Lotus products are able to use longer keys and they no longer provide NSA with access to any key bits.)
Corporate culture
Mitch Kapor
Mitchell David Kapor is the founder of Lotus Development Corporation and the designer of Lotus 1-2-3. He is also a co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and was the first chair of the Mozilla Foundation...
's footsteps, Lotus has always had a reputation as a progressive company. Lotus's first employee was Janet Axelrod who created not only the Human Resources organization but was the central figure in creating the much respected Lotus culture. As she continued to build her organization and play a central role with the senior management, she eventually hired Freada Klein as the first Director of Employee Relations to help with her emphasis on ensuring a fair workplace. In 1986, Lotus was the first major company to support an AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
walk. In 1990, Lotus opened a daycare center for the children of its employees. In 1992, Lotus was the first major company to offer full benefits to same-sex partners. In 1998, Lotus was named one of the Top 10 best companies to work for working mothers by Working Mother magazine.
In 1995, Lotus had over 4,000 employees worldwide and IBM's acquisition of Lotus was greeted with apprehension by many Lotus employees, who feared that the corporate culture of "Big Blue" would smother their creativity. To the surprise of many employees and journalists, IBM adopted a very hands-off, laissez-faire attitude towards its new acquisition.
However, by the year 2000, the inevitable assimilation of Lotus was almost complete. While the mass employee defections that IBM feared did not materialize, many long-time Lotus employees did complain about the transition to IBM's culture (IBM's employee benefits programs, in particular, were singled out as inferior to Lotus's very progressive programs).
Lotus's headquarters in Cambridge used to be divided into two buildings, the Lotus Development Building (LDB) (on the banks of the Charles River
Charles River
The Charles River is an long river that flows in an overall northeasterly direction in eastern Massachusetts, USA. From its source in Hopkinton, the river travels through 22 cities and towns until reaching the Atlantic Ocean at Boston...
) and the Rogers Street building, located adjacent to the CambridgeSide Galleria. However, in 2001, then President and General Manager, Al Zollar decided not to renew the lease of LDB. The subsequent migration of employees across the street (and into home offices) generally coincided with what was probably the final exodus of employees from the company. Today, IBM's offices at 1 Rogers St supports mobile employees, Watson Research Center
Thomas J. Watson Research Center
The Thomas J. Watson Research Center is the headquarters for the IBM Research Division.The center is on three sites, with the main laboratory in Yorktown Heights, New York, 38 miles north of New York City, a building in Hawthorne, New York, and offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts.- Overview :The...
on User interface
User interface
The user interface, in the industrial design field of human–machine interaction, is the space where interaction between humans and machines occurs. The goal of interaction between a human and a machine at the user interface is effective operation and control of the machine, and feedback from the...
, and IBM DataPower
IBM WebSphere DataPower SOA Appliances
IBM WebSphere DataPower SOA Appliances is a family of purpose-built, easy-to-deploy network devices that simplify, help secure, and accelerate XML and Web Services deployments while extending SOA infrastructure...
.
The integration of Lotus into IBM continues. Today, it is a software brand in IBM's Software Group. Within Lotus, there is still a strong sense of unity. Many former Lotus employees, though they have moved into and embraced IBM, still identify with Lotus and see themselves as part of the Lotus community.
Origins
Mitch Kapor got the name for his company from 'The Lotus Position' or 'Padmasana'. Kapor used to be a teacher of Transcendental MeditationTranscendental Meditation
Transcendental Meditation refers to the Transcendental Meditation technique, a specific form of mantra meditation, and to the Transcendental Meditation movement, a spiritual movement...
technique as taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi , born Mahesh Prasad Varma , developed the Transcendental Meditation technique and was the leader and guru of the TM movement, characterised as a new religious movement and also as non-religious...
. Incidentally, competitor Borland
Borland
Borland Software Corporation is a software company first headquartered in Scotts Valley, California, Cupertino, California and finally Austin, Texas. It is now a Micro Focus subsidiary. It was founded in 1983 by Niels Jensen, Ole Henriksen, Mogens Glad and Philippe Kahn.-The 1980s:...
code-named their Quattro Pro
Quattro Pro
Quattro Pro is a spreadsheet program developed by Borland and now sold by Corel, most often as part of Corel's WordPerfect Office.Historically, Quattro Pro used keyboard commands similar to Lotus 1-2-3. It is commonly said to have been the first program to use tabbed sheets. Actually, Boeing Calc...
software "Buddha", as the software was meant to "assume the Lotus position" and take over Lotus 1-2-3's market.
There also was (circa 1995) the assertion by one Lotus cc: Mail employee that "Quattro Pro" was taken from the Italian word "quattro", or number four, thus asserting that it was one better than Lotus 1-2-3.
Products
IBM sponsors the "Lotus Greenhouse", a community web site featuring software from IBM and its business partners.Current products
- Lotus Connections
- Lotus Domino
- Lotus Domino Web Access
- Lotus Expeditor
- Lotus Forms
- Lotus FoundationsLotus FoundationsLotus Foundations is a bundled small-business server solutions package by IBM. The package includes Lotus Domino, directory services, file management, firewall, backup, web hosting and various other productivity tools...
- LotusLiveLotusLiveLotusLive is a suite of business networking and collaboration cloud-based services hosted by the Lotus Software division of IBM. The integrated services include social networking for businesses, online meetings, file sharing, instant message, data visualization and e-mail.There are several...
- Lotus MashupsLotus MashupsLotus Mashups is a Business Mashups editor developed and distributed by IBM as part of the IBM Mashup Center system. Lotus Mashups is intended for use in professional environments, such as corporations and governments.-Interface:...
- Lotus NotesLotus NotesLotus Notes is the client of a collaborative platform originally created by Lotus Development Corp. in 1989. In 1995 Lotus was acquired by IBM and became known as the Lotus Development division of IBM and is now part of the IBM Software Group...
- Lotus Notes Traveler
- IBM Lotus QuickrIBM Lotus QuickrIBM Lotus Quickr is social team collaboration software, used by teams of people to share content. Lotus Quickr works inside and outside firewalls.Lotus Quickr can be described as three things:...
, which replaces Lotus QuickPlace - Lotus SametimeLotus SametimeIBM Sametime is a client–server application and middleware platform that provides real-time, unified communications and collaboration for enterprises. Those capabilities include presence information, enterprise instant messaging, web conferencing, community collaboration, and telephony capabilities...
- IBM Lotus SymphonyIBM Lotus SymphonyIBM Lotus Symphony is a suite of applications for creating, editing, and sharing text, spreadsheet, presentations and other documents, and is currently distributed as freeware. First released in 2007, the suite has a name similar to the 1980s DOS suite Lotus Symphony, but the two programs are...
- IBM Lotus Web Content ManagementIBM Lotus Web Content ManagementIBM Web Content Manager is a proprietary web content management application by the Lotus Software division of IBM.- Overview :IBM Web Content Manager allows content owners within an organization to:...
Products in maintenance mode
- Lotus Domino Document Manager
- Lotus SmartSuiteLotus SmartSuiteSmartSuite is an office suite from Lotus Software. The company made versions of its office suite for IBM OS/2 and Microsoft Windows.-Status:SmartSuite is in maintenance mode, and supported with fixes and fixpacks on Windows 2000 and Windows XP...
- Lotus 1-2-3Lotus 1-2-3Lotus 1-2-3 is a spreadsheet program from Lotus Software . It was the IBM PC's first "killer application"; its huge popularity in the mid-1980s contributed significantly to the success of the IBM PC in the corporate environment.-Beginnings:...
- Lotus Word ProLotus Word ProLotus Word Pro is word processor software produced by IBM's Lotus Software group for use on Microsoft Windows-compatible computers and on IBM OS/2 Warp. Word Pro can be obtained as part of the Lotus SmartSuite office suite....
- Lotus Freelance GraphicsLotus Freelance GraphicsLotus Freelance Graphics is an information graphics and presentation program developed by Lotus Software . Lotus Freelance Graphics is a part of the Lotus SmartSuite office suite for Microsoft Windows...
- Lotus ApproachLotus ApproachLotus Approach is a relational database management system included in IBM's Lotus SmartSuite for Microsoft Windows.Start-up company Approach was first formed in 1991, won over 30 awards the first year, including "best of show" at Comdex...
- Lotus OrganizerLotus OrganizerLotus Organizer is a personal information manager. It was initially developed by Threadz, a small British software house, reaching version 3.0. Organizer was subsequently acquired by Lotus Development Corporation, for whom the package was a Windows-based replacement for Lotus Agenda...
- Lotus 1-2-3
Discontinued products
- Lotus AgendaLotus AgendaAgenda is a DOS-based personal information manager, designed by Mitch Kapor, Ed Belove and Jerry Kaplan, and marketed by Lotus Software.Lotus Agenda is a "free-form" information manager: the information need not be structured at all before it is entered into the database...
- Lotus ImprovLotus ImprovLotus Improv was a spreadsheet program from Lotus Development that attempted to re-define the way a spreadsheet should work. Instead of treating the grid as the system for referencing data, Improv made all data exist in named ranges. Operations on the data then referred to these names, rather than...
- Lotus JazzLotus JazzLotus Jazz was an office suite for the Apple Macintosh, released in 1985, after the substantial success of Lotus 1-2-3 for the IBM-compatible PC...
- Lotus MagellanLotus MagellanLotus Magellan was a groundbreaking DOS-based desktop search package, conceived and developed by Bill Gross and released in the 1980s by Lotus Development Corporation, most famous for Lotus 1-2-3....
- Lotus ManuscriptLotus Manuscript-External links:**...
- Lotus MarketplaceLotus Marketplace__notoc__Lotus Marketplace was a database program developed jointly by Lotus Development Corporation and Equifax , announced on April 10, 1990, but cancelled shortly after on January 23, 1991, mainly due to massive protests and lawsuit threats, citing invasion of privacy...
- Lotus Symphony
External links
- RPR Wyatt Products and Services on Lotus Notes/Domino
- Official website
- Lotus.com Official website (Archive)
- THE VIEW Online Knowledgebase An online knowledgebase offering expert instruction, best practices, and tips for IBM Lotus projects.
- AXLE: the Association of ex-Lotus Employees
- The Lotus Museum, artifacts and video programs from Lotus history
- Oral history interview with Jonathan Sachs discusses the development of Lotus 1-2-3, Charles Babbage InstituteCharles Babbage InstituteThe Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
, University of Minnesota - Lotus HAL.