 | |
| Company type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Industry | Computer software |
| Founded | 1982; 43 years ago (1982) (as Lotus Development Corporation) |
| Defunct | 2018; 7 years ago (2018) |
| Fate | Sold toHCL Technologies |
| Headquarters | Cambridge,Massachusetts,U.S. |
| Products | Lotus 1-2-3 Lotus Agenda Lotus Connections Lotus Domino Lotus Domino Web Access Lotus Expeditor Lotus Forms Lotus Freelance Graphics Lotus Improv Lotus Magellan Lotus Manuscript Lotus Notes Lotus Notes Traveler Lotus Quickplace Lotus Quickr Lotus Sametime Lotus SmartSuite Lotus Symphony Lotus Word Pro LotusWorks[1] Lotus Foundations IBM Lotus Web Content Management |
| Parent | HCL |
| Website | Official website |
Lotus Software (calledLotus Development Corporation before its acquisition byIBM)[2] was an Americansoftware company based inMassachusetts; it was sold to India'sHCL Technologies in 2018.
Lotus is most commonly known for theLotus 1-2-3spreadsheet application, the first feature-heavy, user-friendly, reliable, andWYSIWYG-enabled product to become widely available in the early days of theIBM PC, when there was nographical user interface. Much later, in conjunction withRay Ozzie'sIris Associates, Lotus also released agroupware andemail system,Lotus Notes. IBM purchased the company in 1995 forUS$3.5 billion, primarily to acquire Lotus Notes and to establish a presence in the increasingly importantclient–server computing segment, which was rapidly making host-based products such asIBM's OfficeVision obsolete.[3]
On December 6, 2018, IBM announced the sale of Lotus Software/Domino toHCL for $1.8 billion.[4]
Lotus was founded in 1982 by partnersMitch Kapor andJonathan Sachs with backing fromBen Rosen.[5] By the end of that year the company offered Executive Briefing System,presentation software for theApple II.[6] Kapor founded Lotus after leaving his post as head of development atVisiCorp, the distributors of theVisiCalcspreadsheet, and selling all his rights to VisiPlot and VisiTrend 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 superior product. Lotus releasedLotus 1-2-3 on January 26, 1983.[7] The name referred to the three ways the product could be used, as a spreadsheet, graphing tool, anddatabase manager. The last two functions were less often used in practice, 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,[8] compared to its business plan forecast of $1 million in sales. In 1982,Jim Manzi — a graduate ofColgate University andThe Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy — came to Lotus as a management consultant withMcKinsey & Company and became an employee four months later. In October 1984, he was named president, and in April 1986, he was appointedCEO, succeeding Kapor. In July of that same year, he also became chairman of the board. Manzi remained at the head of Lotus until 1995.[citation needed]
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As the popularity of thepersonal computer grew, Lotus quickly came to dominate the spreadsheet market. Lotus introduced other office products such asRay Ozzie'sSymphony in 1984 and theJazz office suite for theApple Macintosh computer in 1985. Jazz did very poorly in the market (in Guy Kawasaki's bookThe Macintosh Way, Lotus Jazz was described as being so bad, "even the people who pirated it returned it").[9] Also in 1985, Lotus boughtSoftware Arts and discontinued its VisiCalc program.[10][11] By that yearForrester Research considered Lotus,Ashton-Tate, Microsoft, andBorland the "Big Four" of personal computer software.[12]
In the late 1980s, Lotus developedLotus Magellan, a file management and indexing utility.[13] In this period, Manuscript, a word processor,Lotus Agenda, an innovative personal information manager (PIM) which flopped, andImprov, a ground-breaking modeling package (and spreadsheet) for theNeXT platform, were released. Improv also flopped, and none of these products significantly impacted the market.
Lotus was involved in several lawsuits, of which the most significant was the "look and feel" cases which started in 1987. Lotus suedPaperback Software and Mosaic for copyright infringement, false and misleading advertising, andunfair competition over their low-cost clones of 1-2-3, VP Planner and Twin, and suedBorland over its Quattro spreadsheet. This ledRichard Stallman, founder of theFree Software Foundation, to found theLeague for Programming Freedom (LPF) and hold protests outside Lotus Development offices.[14] Paperback and Mosaic lost and went out of business; Borland won and survived. The LPF filed anamicus curiaebrief in the Borland case.[15]
In the 1990s, to compete with Microsoft's Windows applications, Lotus had to buy in products such as Ami Pro (word processor),[16][17] Approach (database), and Threadz, which becameLotus Organizer. Several applications (1-2-3, Freelance Graphics, Ami Pro, Approach, andLotus Organizer) were bundled together under the nameLotus SmartSuite. Although SmartSuite was bundled cheaply with many PCs and may initially have been more popular thanMicrosoft Office, Lotus quickly lost its dominance in the desktop applications market with the transition from 16- to32-bit applications running onWindows 95. 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 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.[18][19]
All new development of the suite was ended in 2000, with ongoing maintenance being moved overseas. The last update release was in 2014.[20]
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 gained significant experience in network-based communications years before other competitors in the PC world had even started thinking about networked computing or theInternet. Lotus initially brought Lotus Notes to market in 1989 and later reinforced its market presence by acquiringcc:Mail in 1991.[21] 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 fromMicrosoft Exchange Server.[citation needed]
In the second quarter of 1995, IBM launched a hostile bid for Lotus[2] 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.[22] 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.
While IBM allowed Lotus to develop, market, and sell its products under its own brand name, a restructuring in January 2001[23] brought it more in line with its parent company, IBM. Also, IBM moved vital marketing and management functions from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to IBM's New York office.
Gradually, the Lotus.com website changed its "About us" section 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.[24] Later that year, IBM announced it was discontinuing the Lotus brand[25] and on March 13, 2013, IBM announced the availability of IBM Notes and Domino 9.0 Social Edition,[26] 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.[4]
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 hiredFreada Klein as the first director of employee relations.[citation needed]
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 toward its new acquisition.[27]
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'semployee benefits programs, in particular, were singled out as inferior to Lotus's very progressive programs.[citation needed]
Lotus's headquarters in Cambridge were initially divided into two buildings, the Lotus Development Building (LDB) on the banks of theCharles River and the Rogers Street building, adjacent to the CambridgeSide Galleria. However, in 2001, President and General Manager Al Zollar decided to keep the lease of LDB. The subsequent migration of employees across the street (and into home offices) generally coincided with the final departure of employees from the company. Later, IBM's offices at 1 Rogers St supported mobile employees, theWatson Research Center onUser interface, andIBM DataPower.
IBM sponsored the "Lotus Greenhouse", a community web site featuring software from IBM and its business partners.
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