Lotus Development Corporation topic

Lotus Development, an IBM subsidiary that does business as Lotus Software, makes software that helps business people collaborate across corporate networks. Its main offering is communication and collaboration platform Lotus Notes. Other products include messaging applications (Domino), desktop office productivity tools (Organizer), and Web-based learning software (Virtual Classroom). The company also offers consulting, support, and training services. Lotus sells its products directly and through partners and distributors.

Lotus was founded in April 1982 by 32-year-old Mitchell D. Kapor, whose previous experience included writing two business programs for VisiCorp, an early personal computer software company: VisiTrend, which covered statistics, and VisiPlot, a program for creating business charts. Kapor made $500,000 on the spreadsheet before VisiCorp bought him out for $1.7 million. Setting his sights on a spreadsheet that translated numbers into graphs, Kapor joined forces with Jonathan Sachs, a programmer who had already envisioned a new spreadsheet and was looking for someone to help him market it. Sachs spent the next ten months writing Lotus 1-2-3 in assembly language for the IBM personal computer. Aside from the graphics, Kapor and Sachs concentrated on making 1-2-3 a fast recalculator. They took advantage of the new personal computers (PCs) with 256K of memory, which enabled the software to far exceed the spreadsheet capabilities of the similar VisiCalc.