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Lotus Software (called Lotus Development Corporation before its acquisition by IBM) is an American software company headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Lotus was founded in 1982 by partners Mitch Kapor and Jonathan Sachs. Lotus' first product was presentation software for the Apple II known as Lotus Executive Briefing System, but the company is more broadly known for its groundbreaking Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet application released in January 1983.As the popularity of the personal computer grew, Lotus quickly came to dominate the office applications suite market. Lotus introduced other office products such as Ray Ozzie's Symphony and the Jazz office suite for the Apple Macintosh computer and acquired many software companies to gain products such as Freelance Graphics, AmiPro, Approach, and Organizer. In the early 1990s, several of the products were bundled together under the name Lotus SmartSuite. Although SmartSuite was initially more popular than Microsoft OfficeMicrosoft Office is a series of suites of productivity programs created by Microsoft and developed for Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh operating systems. As well as the office applications, it includes associated servers and Web-based services., Lotus lost its dominance in the desktop applications market. SmartSuite still ships by default with some CompaqCompaq Computer Corporation was founded in February 1982 by Rod Canion, Jim Harris and Bill Murto, three senior managers from semiconductor manufacturer Texas Instruments. Each invested $1,000 to form the company. Their first venture capital came from Ben and IBM laptops, although it has continued to lose market share since its launch.
Lotus began its diversification from the desktop software business with its 1984 strategic founding investment in Ray Ozzie's Iris AssociatesIris Associates was a software development company founded in Littleton, Massachusetts on December 7th, 1984 by Ray Ozzie, specifically to build the software ultimately known as Lotus Notes. Tim Halvorsen and Len Kawell, who joined Iris shortly thereafter, the creator of its Lotus NotesLotus Notes is a proprietary, client-server collaborative software and email system owned by Lotus Software, of the IBM Software Group. When Lotus Notes was initially released, it was simply called "Notes" (the name having been taken from PLATO Notes, the 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 the InternetThis article is about the Internet the extensive, worldwide computer network available to the public. An internet is a more general term for a set of interconnected computer networks that are connected by internetworking''. WWW information network structu. Lotus initially brought Notes to market in 19891989 is a common year starting on Sunday (click on link for calendar). Events January January 7 Akihito becomes Emperor of Japan following the death of Hirohito. The Heisei period begins January 8 the Kegworth Air Disaster A British Midland Boeing 737 cra, 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 soon faced stiff competition from Microsoft Exchange, but in 2004, twenty years after its groundbreaking agreement with Iris, Lotus Notes continued to lead the market according to some measures.
1 Rumors
It has been repeatedly alleged that in 1997 the 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.)
