Lotus Software (called Lotus Development Corporation before its acquisition by IBM) was an American

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

company based in

Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut assachusett writing systems, məhswatʃəwiːsət'' English: , ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is the most populous U.S. state, state in the New England ...

; it was "offloaded" to India's

HCL Technologies HCLTech (formerly Hindustan Computers Limited or HCL Technologies) is an Indian multinational information technology (IT) services and consulting company headquartered in Noida.It emerged as an independent company in 1991 when HCL entered into ...

in 2018. Lotus is most commonly known for the

Lotus 1-2-3 Lotus 1-2-3 is a discontinued spreadsheet program from Lotus Software (later part of IBM). It was the first killer application of the IBM PC, was hugely popular in the 1980s, and significantly contributed to the success of IBM PC-compatibles i ...

spreadsheet A spreadsheet is a computer application for computation, organization, analysis and storage of data in tabular form. Spreadsheets were developed as computerized analogs of paper accounting worksheets. The program operates on data entered in cel ...

application, the first feature-heavy, user-friendly, reliable and

WYSIWYG In computing, WYSIWYG ( ), an acronym for What You See Is What You Get, is a system in which editing software allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed d ...

-enabled product to become widely available in the early days of the

IBM PC The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible de facto standard. Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a team ...

, when there was no

graphical user interface The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...

. Much later, in conjunction with Ray Ozzie's Iris Associates, Lotus also released a groupware and

email Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...

system,

Lotus Notes HCL Notes (formerly IBM Notes and Lotus Notes; see Branding below) and HCL Domino (formerly IBM Domino and Lotus Domino) are the client and server Server may refer to: Computing *Server (computing), a computer program or a device that provide ...

. IBM purchased the company in 1995 for

US$ The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

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 such as IBM's OfficeVision obsolete. On December 6, 2018, IBM announced the sale of Lotus Software/Domino to

HCL HCL may refer to: Science and medicine * Hairy cell leukemia, an uncommon and slowly progressing B cell leukemia * Harvard Cyclotron Laboratory, from 1961 to 2002, a proton accelerator used for research and development * Hollow-cathode lamp, a spe ...

for $1.8 billion.

History

Lotus was founded in 1982 by partners Mitch Kapor and Jonathan Sachs with backing from Ben Rosen. Lotus's first product was presentation software for the

Apple II The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-m ...

known as Lotus Executive Briefing System. Kapor founded Lotus after leaving his post as head of development at

VisiCorp VisiCorp was an early personal computer software publisher. Its most famous products were Microchess, Visi On and VisiCalc. It was founded in 1976 by Dan Fylstra and Peter R. Jennings as Personal Software, and first published Jennings' Microches ...

, the distributors of the

VisiCalc VisiCalc (for "visible calculator") is the first spreadsheet computer program for personal computers, originally released for Apple II by VisiCorp on 17 October 1979. It is often considered the application that turned the microcomputer from a hob ...

, and selling all his rights to Visi-Plot and Visi-Trend to Visi-Corp. Shortly after Kapor left Visi-Corp, he and Sachs produced an integrated spreadsheet and graphics program. Even though IBM and VisiCorp had a collaboration agreement whereby Visi-Calc was being shipped simultaneously with the PC, Lotus had a clearly superior product. Lotus released

on January 26, 1983. The name referred to the three ways the product could be used, as a spreadsheet, word processor, and

database manager In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases spa ...

. In practice the latter two functions were less often used, but 1-2-3 was the most powerful spreadsheet program available. Lotus was almost immediately successful, becoming the world's third largest microcomputer software company in 1983 with $53 million in sales in its first year, compared to its business plan forecast of $1 million in sales. In 1982

Jim Manzi Jim Manzi (born 1951) is the former chairman, president and CEO of Lotus Development Corporation and is currently a private investor in various technology start-up ventures. Early career Manzi received his B.A. in Classics from Colgate Univers ...

— a graduate of

Colgate University Colgate University is a private liberal arts college in Hamilton, New York. The college was founded in 1819 as the Baptist Education Society of the State of New York and operated under that name until 1823, when it was renamed Hamilton Theologi ...

and

The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy is the graduate school of international affairs of Tufts University, in Medford, Massachusetts. The School is one of America's oldest graduate schools of international relations and is well-ranked in it ...

— came to Lotus as a management consultant with McKinsey & Company, and became an employee four months later. In October 1984 he was named president, and in April 1986 he was appointed CEO, succeeding Kapor. In July of that same year he also became chairman of the board. Manzi remained at the head of Lotus until 1995.

Dominance

As the popularity of the

personal computer A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or tec ...

grew, Lotus quickly came to dominate the spreadsheet market. Lotus introduced other office products such as Ray Ozzie's

Symphony A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, most often for orchestra. Although the term has had many meanings from its origins in the ancient Greek era, by the late 18th century the word had taken on the meaning com ...

in 1984 and the

Jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...

office suite for the

Apple Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...

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 was a software company founded by Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston in 1979 to develop VisiCalc VisiCalc (for "visible calculator") is the first spreadsheet computer program for personal computers, originally released for Apple II by ...

and discontinued its VisiCalc program. In the late 1980s Lotus developed

Lotus Magellan Lotus Magellan is an MS-DOS desktop search package, conceived and developed by Bill T. Gross, Bill Gross and released in 1989 by Lotus Development Corporation, most famous for Lotus 1-2-3. Lotus sold 500,000 copies of Magellan. 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 ...

, an innovative personal information manager (PIM) which flopped, and Improv, a ground-breaking modeling package (and spreadsheet) for the

NeXT Next may refer to: Arts and entertainment Film * ''Next'' (1990 film), an animated short about William Shakespeare * ''Next'' (2007 film), a sci-fi film starring Nicolas Cage * '' Next: A Primer on Urban Painting'', a 2005 documentary film Lit ...

platform, were released. 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 feel In software design, the look and feel of a graphical user interface comprises aspects of its design, including elements such as colors, shapes, layout, and typefaces (the "look"), as well as the behavior of dynamic elements such as buttons, boxe ...

" cases which started in 1987. Lotus sued Paperback Software and Mosaic for copyright infringement, false and misleading advertising, and

unfair competition Unfair may refer to: * Double Taz and Double LeBron James in multiverses ''fair''; unfairness or injustice Injustice is a quality relating to unfairness or undeserved outcomes. The term may be applied in reference to a particular event or situ ...

over their low-cost clones of 1-2-3, VP Planner and Twin, and sued Borland over its Quattro spreadsheet. This led

Richard Stallman Richard Matthew Stallman (; born March 16, 1953), also known by his initials, rms, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to ...

, founder of the

Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)#501(c)(3), 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985, to support the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed ...

, to found the

League for Programming Freedom League for Programming Freedom (LPF) 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. Their logo ...

(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 Brief, briefs, or briefing may refer to: Documents * A letter * A briefing note * Papal brief, a papal letter less formal than a bull, sealed with the pope's signet ring or stamped with the device borne on this ring * Design brief, a type of ed ...

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 Organizer Lotus Organizer is a discontinued personal information manager (PIM). 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 pa ...

. Several applications (1-2-3, Freelance Graphics, Ami Pro, Approach, and

) were bundled together under the name

Lotus SmartSuite Lotus may refer to: Plants *Lotus (plant), various botanical taxa commonly known as lotus, particularly: ** ''Lotus'' (genus), a genus of terrestrial plants in the family Fabaceae **Lotus flower, a symbolically important aquatic Asian plant also ...

. Although SmartSuite was bundled cheaply with many PCs and may initially have been more popular than

Microsoft Office Microsoft Office, or simply Office, is the former name of a family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. It was first announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at COMDEX in Las Vegas. Initially a marketin ...

, Lotus quickly lost its dominance in the desktop applications market with the transition from 16- to

32-bit In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in 32-bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform large calculation ...

applications running on

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturi ...

. In large part due to its focusing much of its development resources on a suite of applications for IBM's new (and eventually commercially unsuccessful)

OS/2 OS/2 (Operating System/2) is a series of computer operating systems, initially created by Microsoft and IBM under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci. As a result of a feud between the two companies over how to position 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. 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 moved overseas. The last update release was 2014. 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 The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

. 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 Microsoft Exchange Server is a mail server and calendaring server developed by Microsoft. It runs exclusively on Windows Server operating systems. The first version was called Exchange Server 4.0, to position it as the successor to the related ...

. 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 what had become the Lotus Development division of IBM; he left with stock worth $78 million.

Assimilation of name, web site, and branding

While IBM allowed Lotus to develop, market and sell its products under its own brand name, a restructuring in January 2001 brought it more in line with its parent company, IBM. Also, IBM moved key marketing and management functions from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to IBM's New York office. 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" by 2002 the "About us" section was removed from its site menu, and the Lotus logo was replaced with the IBM logo. 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". By 2008 the Lotus.com domain name stopped showing a standalone site, instead redirecting to www.ibm.com/software/lotus, and in 2012 the site discontinued all reference to Lotus Software in favor of IBM Collaboration Solutions. IBM discontinued development of IBM Lotus Symphony in 2012 with the final release of version 3.0.1, moving future development effort to Apache OpenOffice, and donating the source code to the Apache Software Foundation. Later that year, IBM announced it was discontinuing the Lotus brand and on March 13, 2013, IBM announced the availability of IBM Notes and Domino 9.0 Social Edition, replacing prior versions of IBM Lotus Notes and IBM Lotus Domino and marking the end of Lotus as an active brand. On December 6, 2018, IBM announced the selling of Lotus Software/Domino to HCL for $1.8 billion.

Corporate culture

Lotus's first employee was Janet Axelrod who created the Human Resources organization and was the central figure in creating the Lotus culture. As she continued to build her organization and play a central role with senior management, she eventually hired Freada Klein as the first director of employee relations. In 1995 Lotus had over 4,000 employees worldwide; 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 initially adopted a very hands-off, laissez-faire attitude towards its new acquisition. However, by 2000 the assimilation of Lotus was well underway. 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 benefit Employment is a relationship between two parties regulating the provision of paid labour services. Usually based on a contract, one party, the employer, which might be a corporation, a not-for-profit organization, a co-operative, or any oth ...

s programs, in particular, were singled out as inferior to Lotus's very progressive programs. Lotus's headquarters in Cambridge were originally divided into two buildings, the Lotus Development Building (LDB) on the banks of the

Charles River The Charles River ( Massachusett: ''Quinobequin)'' (sometimes called the River Charles or simply the Charles) is an river in eastern Massachusetts. It flows northeast from Hopkinton to Boston along a highly meandering route, that doubles b ...

, and the Rogers Street building, 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. Later, IBM's offices at 1 Rogers St supported mobile employees, the Watson Research Center on

User interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...

, and IBM DataPower.

Products

IBM sponsored the "Lotus Greenhouse", a community web site featuring software from IBM and its business partners.

Discontinued products

Lotus Connections HCL Connections is a Web 2.0 enterprise social software application developed originally by IBM and acquired by HCL Technologies in July 2019. Connections is an enterprise-collaboration platform which helps teams work more efficiently. Connectio ...

Lotus Domino HCL Notes (formerly IBM Notes and Lotus Notes; see Branding below) and HCL Domino (formerly IBM Domino and Lotus Domino) are the client and server, respectively, of a collaborative client-server software platform formerly sold by IBM, now by ...

Lotus Domino Web Access HCL iNotes (formerly IBM Lotus iNotes and IBM iNotes) offers a full-featured web-based version of HCL Technologies's HCL Notes client. Formerly known as IBM Lotus Domino Web Access, HCL iNotes provides HCL Notes users with browser-based access to ...

Lotus Expeditor IBM Lotus Expeditor is a software framework by IBM's Lotus Software division for the construction, integration, and deployment of "managed client applications", which are client applications that are deployed from, configured, and managed onto a ...

Lotus Forms IBM Forms is a suite of products by IBM's Lotus Software division that interact to develop and deliver data-driven, XML-based electronic forms (e-forms) to end-users. IBM Forms consists of a server, designer, and client viewer that enable creation, ...

Lotus Foundations Lotus 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. History The product's r ...

LotusLive IBM SmartCloud for Social Business is a suite of business networking and collaboration cloud-based services hosted by the IBM Collaboration Solutions division of IBM. The integrated services include social networking for businesses, online meeti ...

Lotus Mashups Lotus 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. Features Interface Lotu ...

* Lotus Notes Traveler *IBM Lotus Quickr, which replaces

Lotus QuickPlace IBM Lotus QuickPlace is a proprietary Web-based collaborative software application distributed by the Lotus Software division of IBM. Lotus QuickPlace is a self-service Web tool that provides non-technical professionals the ability to easily creat ...

Lotus Sametime HCL Sametime Premium (formerly IBM Sametime and IBM Lotus Sametime) is a client–server application and middleware platform that provides real-time, unified communications and collaboration for enterprises. Those capabilities include presence i ...

IBM Lotus Web Content Management IBM Web Content Manager (or WCM) 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: * Author and maintain the organizatio ...

including

Lotus Word Pro Lotus Word Pro is a word processor 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. Word Pro was based upon Ami ...

Lotus Freelance Graphics Lotus Freelance Graphics is an information graphics and presentation program developed by Lotus Software (formerly Lotus Development Corp.) following its acquisition of Graphic Communications Inc in 1986. It was first released for DOS and OS/2 op ...

Lotus Approach Lotus Approach is a relational database management system included in IBM's Lotus SmartSuite for Microsoft Windows. As a start-up company, Approach was formed in 1991 and won over 30 awards the first year, including "best of show" at Comdex. Th ...

(discontinued on 30-Sep-2014) *Lotus Domino Document Manage
(discontinued on 30-Sep-2012)
*

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 ...

* Lotus cc:Mail *Lotus HAL * Lotus Impress *

Lotus Improv Lotus Improv is a discontinued spreadsheet program from Lotus Development released in 1991 for the NeXTSTEP platform and then for Windows 3.1 in 1993. Development was put on hiatus in 1994 after slow sales on the Windows platform, and officially ...

Lotus Jazz Lotus Jazz is an integrated suite of word processor, spreadsheet, database, graphics, and communication software designed for the Macintosh 512K. The name evokes a group of musicians who together create something larger than each of the individua ...

Lotus Marketplace __NOTOC__ Lotus Marketplace was a database computer program, program developed jointly by Lotus Development Corporation (as the software developer) and Equifax (as the information provider), announced on April 10, 1990, but cancelled shortly after o ...

* Lotus Symphony (DOS version) *

IBM Lotus Symphony IBM Lotus Symphony is a discontinued suite of applications for creating, editing, and sharing text, spreadsheet, presentations, and other documents and browsing the World Wide Web. It was first distributed as commercial proprietary software, t ...

*LotusWorks (formerly AlphaWorks, bought from Alpha Software in May 1990)

References

External links

Official website

Lotus.com Official website
(Archive)
Oral history interview with Jonathan Sachs
discusses the development of Lotus 1-2-3,

Charles Babbage Institute The IT History Society (ITHS) is an organization that supports the history and scholarship of information technology by encouraging, fostering, and facilitating archival and historical research. Formerly known as the Charles Babbage Foundation, ...

, University of Minnesota {{Authority control Software companies established in 1982 American companies established in 1982 Lotus Software software IBM acquisitions Companies based in Cambridge, Massachusetts Software companies based in Massachusetts 1982 establishments in Massachusetts 1995 mergers and acquisitions Software companies of the United States