Lotus Software
( Named before the acquisition by IBM Lotus Development Corporation) Lotus Software is a division of the U.S. software company IBM, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
- 3.1 origin
History
Lotus Development Corporation
Mitchell Kapor, author of the first business graphics program Tiny Troll for Apple II computer was sold in October 1981, the rights to his programs VisiPlot and VisiTrend / plot and founded in still same month, the Lotus Development Corporation. The first product was the Lotus Executive Briefing System, a presentation software for Apple II In April 1982, invest Sevin -Rosen and investor KPCB set from January 1982 onwards $ 1 million in the company, so were new employees and a new company headquarters are based. In October 1982, the then revolutionary spreadsheet Lotus 1-2-3 is presented for the IBM PC, which was delivered from January 1983 to the distributors.
With the rising popularity of the PC also increased the demand for these programs, and soon dominated the market of Lotus Office applications, not least by other Office products such as Ray Ozzie's Symphony and Jazz office suite for Apple Macintosh computers.
Over time, other software companies were taken over, and with them products such as Freelance Graphics, AmiPro, Approach and Organizer. In the early 1990s, some of these products have been bundled under the name of Lotus SmartSuite. Although SmartSuite was initially popular as Microsoft Office, Lotus lost its dominance in the desktop applications market.
1984 Lotus ventured to the investment in Ray Ozzie's Iris Associates a startup, as it turned out later, important strategic train. Iris Associates developed the Lotus Notes groupware platform, making important experience in the field of network-based communication could be collected, years before competitors even still covered in the PC world to the Internet. Notes was officially introduced in 1989 as a product, and in 1991 its position through the acquisition of cc: Mail strengthened. In 1994, Lotus Iris Associates.
Lotus software
In 1995, IBM Lotus for a purchase price of 3.2 billion U.S. dollars. SmartSuite was delivered with some Compaq and IBM laptops, although the market share since the launch of this product declined steadily. Microsoft's competing product sat Exchange Lotus Notes strongly, but could not until 2004, 20 years after the founding of Iris, Lotus Notes displace.
Products
Encoding
It has been repeatedly claimed that a backdoor has been installed in the export version of Lotus Notes by the NSA. This rumor was confirmed in 1996. At that time, Lotus was due to export restrictions are not in a position to export software, the key lengths greater than 40 bits are used. After negotiations with the U.S. government's Lotus was finally allowed to export 64- bit key, under the condition that 24 bits of each key are traceable at any time through the NSA. So it was the NSA possible encryption with a huge head start to crack. The export of Lotus Notes with (then) strong encryption was legal, and the effective key length of 40 bits thus corresponded to the weak encryption of the previous versions of Lotus Notes.
2001, the American export restrictions have been eased, after which current versions of Lotus products contain longer keys without the influence of the NSA.
Corporate Culture
Lotus always had, all the way to Lotus founder Mitch Kapor, the reputation of a progressive company. Lotus was in 1986, the first major company supported an event to fight AIDS. Opened in 1990, Lotus, a full-time childcare place for its employees. In 1992, Lotus was the first major undertaking equality of gay partnerships in terms of non-monetary benefits a. 1998 Lotus was chosen by Working Mother magazine (working mother ) among the top ten companies.
The acquisition by IBM was looked forward to by the more than 4000 employees worldwide by Lotus with concern because they expected a tough climate change. To the surprise of many, these fears were unfounded. Since IBM itself feared an exodus of Lotus employees, much attention has been paid to treat the newly acquired employees as much as possible.
Origin
Mitch Kapor named his company after the lotus position or Padmasana. Kapor was a teacher of transcendental meditation. The competitor Borland Quattro Pro was its software also known as the " Buddha " to " assume the Lotus position ", thereby to take over the market of Lotus -1 -2-3.