Lotus Software (called Lotus Development Corporation before its acquisition by IBM ) was an American software company based in Massachusetts ; it was sold to India's HCL Technologies in 2018.
92-508: Lotus is most commonly known for the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet application, the first feature-heavy, user-friendly, reliable, and WYSIWYG -enabled product to become widely available in the early days of the IBM PC , when there was no graphical user interface . Much later, in conjunction with Ray Ozzie 's Iris Associates , Lotus also released a groupware and email system, Lotus Notes . IBM purchased
184-659: 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. 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 vital marketing and management functions from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to IBM's New York office. Gradually,
276-461: A collaboration agreement whereby VisiCalc was being shipped simultaneously with the PC, Lotus had a superior product. Lotus released Lotus 1-2-3 on January 26, 1983. The name referred to the three ways the product could be used, as a spreadsheet, graphing tool, and database manager . The last two functions were less often used in practice, but 1-2-3 was the most powerful spreadsheet program available. Lotus
368-555: A complete business platform. Lotus Software had their own word processor named Lotus Manuscript , which was to some extent acclaimed in academia , but did not catch the interest of the business, nor the consumer market . With the acceptance of Windows 3.0 in 1990, the market for desktop software grew even more. None of the major spreadsheet developers had seriously considered the graphical user interface (GUI) to supplement their DOS offerings, and so they responded slowly to Microsoft 's own GUI-based products Excel and Word . Lotus
460-723: A decision in favour of Borland by the First Circuit Court of Appeals , the case went to the United States Supreme Court. Because Justice John Paul Stevens had recused himself, only eight justices heard the case, and concluded in a 4–4 tie. As a result, the First Circuit Court decision remained standing but did not bind any other court and set no national precedent. Additionally, Borland's approach towards software piracy and intellectual property (IP) included its "Borland no-nonsense license agreement"; allowing
552-478: A fully-fledged spreadsheet, graph, database and word processor for DOS, but none of the integrated packages ever really succeeded. Lotus 1-2-3 migrated to the Windows platform, as part of Lotus SmartSuite . IBM's continued development and marketing of Lotus SmartSuite and OS/2 during the 1990s placed it in direct competition with Microsoft Office and Microsoft Windows , respectively. As a result, Microsoft "punished
644-633: A good foundation for the shift to web development tools. Philippe Kahn and the Borland board disagreed on how to focus the company, and Kahn resigned as chairman, CEO and president, after 12 years, in January 1995. Kahn remained on the board until November 7, 1996. Borland named Gary Wetsel as CEO, but he resigned in July 1996. William F. Miller was interim CEO until September of that year, when Whitney G. Lynn (the current chairman at mergers & acquisitions company XRP Healthcare) became interim president and CEO (along with other executive changes), followed by
736-455: A highly technical bent. By the mid-1990s, however, companies were beginning to ask what the return was on the investment they had made in this loosely controlled PC software buying spree. Company executives were starting to ask questions that were hard for technically minded staff to answer, and so corporate standards began to be created. This required new kinds of marketing and support materials from software vendors, but Borland remained focused on
828-412: A marketing guru. His ability to develop his product to appeal to non-technical users was one secret to its rapid success. Unlike many technologists, Kapor relied on focus group feedback to make his user instructions more user-friendly. One example: the instructions that came with the floppy disc read: "Remove the protective cover and insert disc into computer." A few focus group participants tried to rip-off
920-451: 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 . 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
1012-470: A succession of CEOs including Dale Fuller and Tod Nielsen. The Delphi 1 rapid application development (RAD) environment was launched in 1995, under the leadership of Anders Hejlsberg . In 1996 Borland acquired Open Environment Corporation, a Cambridge-based company founded by John J. Donovan . On November 25, 1996, Del Yocam was hired as Borland CEO and chairman. In 1997, Borland sold Paradox to Corel , but retained all development rights for
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#17328914213611104-737: A word processor, Lotus Agenda , an innovative personal information manager (PIM) which flopped, and Improv , a ground-breaking modeling package (and spreadsheet) for the NeXT 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 sued Paperback Software and Mosaic for copyright infringement, false and misleading advertising, and unfair competition over their low-cost clones of 1-2-3, VP Planner and Twin, and sued Borland over its Quattro spreadsheet. This led Richard Stallman , founder of
1196-467: 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 in the business market. The first spreadsheet, VisiCalc , had helped launch the Apple II as one of the earliest personal computers in business use. With IBM's entry into
1288-607: Is because the lower court's decision that it was not a copyright violation to merely have a compatible command menu or language was upheld, but only via stalemate. In 1995, the First Circuit found that command menus are an uncopyrightable "method of operation" under section 102(b) of the Copyright Act . The 1-2-3 menu structure (example, slash File Erase) was itself an advanced version of single letter menus introduced in VisiCalc . When
1380-525: The Apple Macintosh 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 and discontinued its VisiCalc program. In the late 1980s, Lotus developed Lotus Magellan , a file management and indexing utility. In this period, Manuscript,
1472-703: The CP/M operating system using an off-the-shelf company . However, the response to the company's products at the CP/M-82 show in San Francisco showed that a U.S. company would be needed to reach the American market. They met Philippe Kahn , who had just moved to Silicon Valley and had been a key developer of the Micral . Kahn was chairman, president, and CEO of Borland Inc. at its inception in 1983 and until 1995. The company name "Borland"
1564-706: The Free Software Foundation , to found the League for Programming Freedom (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 in the Borland case. 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 . Several applications (1-2-3, Freelance Graphics, Ami Pro, Approach, and Lotus Organizer ) were bundled together under
1656-558: The OpenDocument format or other file formats. After previewing 1-2-3 on the IBM PC in 1982, BYTE called it "modestly revolutionary" for elegantly combining spreadsheet, database, and graphing functions. It praised the application's speed and ease of use, stating that with the built-in help screens and tutorial, "1-2-3 is one of the few pieces of software that can literally be used by anybody. You can buy 1-2-3 and [an IBM PC] and be running
1748-577: The StarTeam configuration management tool and the CaliberRM requirements management tool (eventually, CaliberRM was renamed as "Caliber" ). The latest releases of JBuilder and Delphi integrate these tools to give developers a broader set of tools for development. Former CEO Dale Fuller quit in July 2005, but remained on the board of directors. Former COO Scott Arnold took the title of interim president and chief executive officer until November 8, 2005, when it
1840-592: The Borland Board, the company was taken public on London's Unlisted Securities Market (USM) in 1986. Schroders was the lead investment banker. According to the London IPO filings, the management team was Philippe Kahn as president, Spencer Ozawa as VP of Operations, Marie Bourget as CFO, and Spencer Leyton as VP of sales and business development. All software development continued to take place in Denmark and later London as
1932-452: The Danish co-founders moved there. A first US IPO followed in 1989 after Ben Rosen joined the Borland board with Goldman Sachs as the lead banker and a second offering in 1991 with Lazard as the lead banker. In 1985, Borland acquired Analytica and its Reflex database product. The engineering team of Analytica, managed by Brad Silverberg and including Reflex co-founder Adam Bosworth , became
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#17328914213612024-574: The IBM PC Company with higher prices, a late license for Windows 95 , and the withholding of technical and marketing support." Microsoft did not grant IBM the OEM rights for Windows 95 until 15 minutes prior to the release of Windows 95 on 24 August 1995. Because of this uncertainty, IBM machines were sold without Windows 95, while Compaq , HP , and other companies sold machines with Windows 95 from day one. On 11 June 2013, IBM announced it would withdraw
2116-772: The IBM PC and compatibles, while hurting sales of computers that could not run it. "They're looking for 1-2-3. Boy, are they looking for 1-2-3!" InfoWorld wrote. Noting that computer purchasers did not want PC compatibility as much as compatibility with certain PC software, the magazine suggested "let's tell it like it is. Let's not say 'PC compatible,' or even 'MS-DOS compatible.' Instead, let's say '1-2-3 compatible. ' " PC clones' advertising did often prominently state that they were compatible with 1-2-3. An Apple II software company promised that its spreadsheet had "the power of 1-2-3". Because spreadsheets use large amounts of memory, 1‐2‐3 helped popularize greater RAM capacities in PCs, and especially
2208-563: The Linux platform for the first time. Kylix was launched in 2001. Plans to spin off the InterBase division as a separate company were abandoned after Borland and the people who were to run the new company could not agree on terms for the separation. Borland stopped open-source releases of InterBase and has developed and sold new versions at a fast pace. In 2001, Delphi 6 became the first integrated development environment to support web services. All of
2300-679: The Lotus brand: IBM Lotus 1-2-3 Millennium Edition V9.x, IBM Lotus SmartSuite 9.x V9.8.0, and Organizer V6.1.0. IBM stated, "Customers will no longer be able to receive support for these offerings after 30 September 2014. No service extensions will be offered. There will be no replacement programs." The name "1-2-3" stemmed from the product's integration of three main capabilities: along with its core spreadsheet functionality, 1-2-3 also offered integral charting/graphing and rudimentary database operations. Data features included sorting data in any defined rectangle, by order of information in one or two columns in
2392-496: 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
2484-551: The MDA that allowed bitmap mode. The ability to have high-resolution text and graphics capabilities (at the expense of color) proved extremely popular and Lotus 1-2-3 is credited with popularizing the Hercules graphics card. Subsequent releases of Lotus 1-2-3 supported more video standards as time went on, including EGA, AT&T/Olivetti, and VGA. Significantly, support for the PCjr/Tandy modes
2576-536: The MS-DOS and OS/2 operating systems. The TopSpeed compiler technology still exists as the underlying technology of the Clarion 4GL programming language, a Windows development tool. In September 1987, Borland purchased Ansa-Software, including their Paradox (version 2.0) database management tool. Richard Schwartz, a cofounder of Ansa, became Borland's CTO and Ben Rosen joined the Borland board. The Quattro Pro spreadsheet
2668-662: The Wizard C technology into Turbo C . Bob Jervis, the author of Wizard C became a Borland employee. Turbo C was released on May 18, 1987. This drove a wedge between Borland and Niels Jensen and the other members of his team who had been working on a brand-new series of compilers at their London development centre. They reached an agreement and spun off a company named Jensen & Partners International (JPI), later TopSpeed. JPI first launched an MS-DOS compiler named JPI Modula-2, which later became TopSpeed Modula-2, and followed up with TopSpeed C, TopSpeed C++, and TopSpeed Pascal compilers for both
2760-406: The advent of expanded memory , which allowed greater than 640k to be accessed. Lotus 1-2-3 inspired imitators, the first of which was Mosaic Software's "The Twin", written in the fall of 1985 largely in the C programming language , followed by VP-Planner, which was backed by Adam Osborne . These were able to not only read 1-2-3 files, but also execute many or most macro programs by incorporating
2852-470: The backdrop of the rise in Microsoft's combined Office product marketing. A change in market conditions also contributed to Borland's fall from prominence. In the 1980s, companies had few people who understood the growing personal computer phenomenon and so most technical people were given free rein to purchase whatever software they thought they needed. Borland had done an excellent job marketing to those with
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2944-633: The bug to ensure compatibility with legacy Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets. Borland Borland Software Corporation was a computing technology company founded in 1983 by Niels Jensen, Ole Henriksen, Mogens Glad, and Philippe Kahn . Its main business was developing and selling software development and software deployment products. Borland was first headquartered in Scotts Valley, California , then in Cupertino, California , and then in Austin, Texas . In 2009,
3036-538: The case came before the Supreme Court, the justices would end up deadlocked 4–4. This meant that Borland had emerged victorious, but the extent to which copyright law would be applicable to computer software went unaddressed and undefined. Microsoft's early spreadsheet Multiplan eventually gave way to Excel , which debuted on the Macintosh in 1985. It arrived on PCs with the release of Windows 2.x in 1987, but as Windows
3128-456: The combined company was dBASE with no Windows version ready. Borland had an internal project to clone dBASE which was intended to run on Windows and was part of the strategy of the acquisition, but by late 1992 this was abandoned due to technical flaws and the company had to constitute a replacement team (the ObjectVision team, redeployed) headed by Bill Turpin to redo the job. Borland lacked
3220-446: The company announced it was to be acquired by Micro Focus for $ 75 million. The transaction was approved by Borland shareholders on July 22, 2009, with Micro Focus acquiring the company for $ 1.50 per share. Following Micro Focus shareholder approval and the required corporate filings, the transaction was completed in late July 2009. Borland was estimated to have 750 employees at the time. On April 5, 2015, Micro Focus announced
3312-410: 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
3404-554: The company became a full subsidiary of the British firm Micro Focus International plc. In 2023, Micro Focus (including Borland) was acquired by Canadian firm OpenText , which later absorbed Borland's portfolio into its application delivery management division. Borland Ltd. was founded in August 1981 by three Danish citizens – Niels Jensen, Ole Henriksen, and Mogens Glad – to develop products like Word Index for
3496-414: The company could manage was a Windows adaptation of their existing spreadsheet with no changes except using a graphical interface. Additionally, several versions of 1-2-3 had different features and slightly different interfaces. Lotus 1-2-3's intended successor, Lotus Symphony , was Lotus's entry into the anticipated " integrated software " market. It intended to expand the rudimentary all-in-one 1-2-3 into
3588-476: The company in 1995 for US$ 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 for $ 1.8 billion. Lotus was founded in 1982 by partners Mitch Kapor and Jonathan Sachs with backing from Ben Rosen . Lotus' first product
3680-423: The company would continue to be Inprise Corporation until the completion of the renaming process during the first quarter of 2001. Once the name change was completed, the company would also expect to change its Nasdaq market symbol from "INPR" to "BORL". On January 2, 2001, Borland Software Corporation announced it had completed its name change from Inprise Corporation. Effective at the opening of trading on Nasdaq,
3772-403: The company's Nasdaq market symbol would also be changed from "INPR" to "BORL". Under the Borland name and a new management team headed by president and CEO Dale L. Fuller, a now-smaller and profitable Borland refocused on Delphi and created a version of Delphi and C++Builder for Linux, both under the name Kylix . This brought Borland's expertise in integrated development environments to
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3864-451: The company's development platforms now support web services. C#Builder was released in 2003 as a native C# development tool, competing with Visual Studio .NET . By the 2005 release, C#Builder, Delphi for Win32, and Delphi for .NET were combined into one IDE named "Borland Developer Studio", though it was still popularly known as "Delphi". In late 2002 Borland purchased design tool vendor TogetherSoft and tool publisher Starbase , makers of
3956-516: The completion of integrating the Attachmate Group of companies that was merged on November 20, 2014. During the integration period, the affected companies were merged into one organization. In the announced reorganization, Borland products would be part of the Micro Focus portfolio. The products acquired from Segue Software include Silk Central , Silk Performer , and Silk Test . The Silk line
4048-505: The core BDE . In November 1997, Borland acquired Visigenic, a middleware company that was focused on implementations of CORBA. In April 1998, Borland International, Inc. announced it had become Inprise Corporation. For several years, before and during the Inprise name, Borland suffered from serious financial losses and poor public image. When the name was changed to Inprise, many thought Borland had gone out of business. In March 1999, dBASE
4140-557: The core of Borland's engineering team in the US. Brad Silverberg was VP of engineering until he left in early 1990 to head up the Personal Systems division at Microsoft . Adam Bosworth initiated and headed up the Quattro project until moving to Microsoft later in 1990 to take over the project which eventually became Access . In 1987, Borland purchased Wizard Systems and incorporated portions of
4232-570: 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 the Internet . Lotus initially brought Lotus Notes to market in 1989 and later reinforced its market presence by acquiring cc:Mail in 1991. In 1994, Lotus acquired Iris Associates. Lotus's dominant groupware position attracted IBM, which needed to make
4324-404: The dBASE clone FoxPro in 1992, undercutting Borland's prices. During the early 1990s, Borland's implementation of C and C++ outsold Microsoft's. Borland survived as a company, but no longer dominated the software tools that it once had. It went through a radical transition in products, financing, and staff, and became a very different company from the one which challenged Microsoft and Lotus in
4416-450: The developer/user to utilize its products "just like a book". The user was allowed to make multiple copies of a program, as long as it was the only copy in use at any point in time. In September 1991, Borland purchased Ashton-Tate , bringing the dBASE and InterBase databases to the house, in an all-stock transaction. However, competition with Microsoft was fierce. Microsoft launched the competing database Microsoft Access and bought
4508-512: The early 1990s. The internal problems that arose with the Ashton-Tate merger were a large part of the downfall. Ashton-Tate's product portfolio proved to be weak, with no provision for evolution into the GUI environment of Windows. Almost all product lines were discontinued. The consolidation of duplicate support and development offices was costly and disruptive. Worst of all, the highest revenue earner of
4600-540: 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
4692-453: The financial strength to project its marketing and move internal resources off other products to shore up the dBASE/W effort. Layoffs occurred in 1993 to keep the company afloat, the third instance of this in five years. By the time dBASE for Windows eventually shipped, the developer community had moved on to other products such as Clipper or FoxBase, and dBASE never regained a significant share of Ashton-Tate's former market. This happened against
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#17328914213614784-473: The first six months on the market. There were well-known problems with VisiCalc, and several competitors appeared to address some of these issues. One early example was 1980's SuperCalc , which solved the problem of circular references , while a slightly later example was Microsoft Multiplan from 1981, which offered larger sheets and other improvements. In spite of these, and others, VisiCalc continued to outsell them all. The Lotus Development Corporation
4876-583: The larger code size of compiled C into lower-powered machines forced the company to split its spreadsheet offerings, with 1-2-3 release 3 only for higher-end machines, and a new version 2.2, based on the 2.01 assembler code base, available for PCs without extended memory. By the time these versions were released in 1989, Microsoft had eroded much of Lotus's market share. During the early 1990s, Windows grew in popularity, and along with it, Excel, which gradually displaced Lotus from its leading position. A planned total revamp of 1-2-3 for Windows fell apart, and all that
4968-529: 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, the Watson Research Center on User interface , and IBM DataPower . IBM sponsored the "Lotus Greenhouse", a community web site featuring software from IBM and its business partners. Lotus 1-2-3 Lotus 1-2-3
5060-402: The market, VisiCalc was slow to respond, and when they did, they launched what was essentially a straight port of their existing system despite the greatly expanded hardware capabilities. Lotus's solution was marketed as a three-in-one integrated solution: it handled spreadsheet calculations, database functionality, and graphical charts, hence the name "1-2-3", though how much database capability
5152-592: The memory and speed of the computer. The application was so compelling that there were numerous stories of people buying Apple II machines to run the program (see article Killer application ). VisiCalc's runaway success on the Apple led to direct bug compatible ports to other platforms, including the Atari 8-bit computers , Commodore PET and many others. This included the IBM PC when it launched in 1981, where it quickly became another best-seller, with an estimated 300,000 sales in
5244-478: The name Lotus SmartSuite . Although SmartSuite was bundled cheaply with many PCs and may initially have been more popular than Microsoft Office , Lotus quickly lost its dominance in the desktop applications market with the transition from 16- to 32-bit applications running on Windows 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
5336-464: The number of firms that, in marketing meetings, make plans to become 'the next Borland'". After Turbo Pascal and Sidekick, the company launched other applications such as SuperKey and Lightning, all developed in Denmark. While the Danes remained majority shareholders, board members included Kahn, Tim Berry , John Nash, and David Heller. With the assistance of John Nash and David Heller, both British members of
5428-458: The printing routines by Paul Funk (founder of Funk Software ). These editions of 1-2-3 for DOS were primarily written in x86 assembly language . These editions of 1-2-3 for DOS were primarily written in C . Lotus 1-2-3 file formats use various filename extensions including 123, wks, wk1, wk2, wk3, wk4, some of these may open in the desktop applications of Collabora Online , LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice , these can then be saved into
5520-437: The product actually had was debatable, given the sparse memory left over after launching 1-2-3. It quickly overtook VisiCalc, as well as Multiplan and SuperCalc , the two VisiCalc competitors. Lotus 1-2-3 was the state-of-the-art spreadsheet and the standard throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s, part of an unofficial set of three stand-alone office automation products that included dBase and WordPerfect , to build
5612-559: The product which was sold in Scandinavia under the name Compas Pascal . In 1984, Borland launched Sidekick , a time organization, notebook, and calculator utility that was an early terminate-and-stay-resident program (TSR) for MS-DOS compatible operating systems. By the mid-1980s, the company had an exhibit at the 1985 West Coast Computer Faire along with IBM and AT&T . Bruce Webster reported that "the legend of Turbo Pascal has by now reached mythic proportions, as evidenced by
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#17328914213615704-633: The rectangular area. Justifying text in a range into paragraphs allowed it to be used as a primitive word processor. It had keyboard-driven pop-up menus as well as one-key commands, making it fast to operate. It was also user-friendly, introducing an early instance of context-sensitive help accessed by the F1 key. Macros in version one and add-ins (introduced in version 2.0) contributed much to 1-2-3's popularity, allowing dozens of outside vendors to sell macro packages and add-ins ranging from dedicated financial worksheets like F9 to full-fledged word processors . In
5796-403: The same command structure. Copyright law had first been understood to only cover the source code of a program. After the success of lawsuits which claimed that the very " look and feel " of a program were covered, Lotus sought to ban any program which had a compatible command and menu structure. Program commands had not been considered to be covered before, but the commands of 1-2-3 were embedded in
5888-517: The selling of Lotus Software/Domino to HCL for $ 1.8 billion. 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
5980-745: The single-tasking MS-DOS , 1-2-3 was sometimes used as a complete office suite. All major graphics standards were supported; initially CGA and Hercules, and later EGA, AT&T, and VGA. Early versions used the filename extension "WKS". In version 2.0, the extension changed first to "WK1", then "WK2". This later became "WK3" for version 3.0 and "WK4" for version 4.0. Version 2 introduced macros with syntax and commands similar in complexity to an advanced BASIC interpreter, as well as string variable expressions. Later versions supported multiple worksheets and were written in C . The charting/graphing routines were written in Forth by Jeremy Sagan (son of Carl Sagan ) and
6072-442: The stiff plastic envelope of disc carrier. Kapor's recognition that techno-speak instructions needed to be translated to normative English was a strong contributor to the product's popularity. Lotus 1-2-3 was released on 26 January 1983, and immediately overtook Visicalc in sales. Unlike Microsoft Multiplan , it stayed very close to the model of VisiCalc, including the "A1" letter and number cell notation, and slash-menu structure. It
6164-484: The technical side of its products. In 1993 Borland explored ties with WordPerfect as a possible way to form a suite of programs to rival Microsoft's nascent integration strategy. WordPerfect itself was struggling with a late and troubled transition to Windows. The eventual joint company effort, named Borland Office for Windows (a combination of the WordPerfect word processor, Quattro Pro spreadsheet, and Paradox database)
6256-744: The transition to IBM's culture—IBM's employee benefits programs, in particular, were singled out as inferior to Lotus's very progressive programs. Lotus's headquarters in Cambridge were initially divided into two buildings, the Lotus Development Building (LDB) on the banks of the Charles River and the Rogers Street building, adjacent to the CambridgeSide Galleria. However, in 2001, President and General Manager Al Zollar decided to keep
6348-505: The two stress test applications, along with Microsoft Flight Simulator , for true 100% compatibility when PC clones appeared in the early 1980s. 1-2-3 required two disk drives and at least 192K of memory, which made it incompatible with the IBM PCjr ; Lotus produced a version for the PCjr that was on two cartridges but otherwise identical. By early 1984 the software was a killer app for
6440-503: The two together the same day". PC Magazine in 1983 called 1-2-3 "a powerful and impressive program ... as a spreadsheet, it's excellent", and attributed its very fast performance to being written in assembly language . Lotus 1-2-3 assumes that 1900 is a leap year . This is incorrect as while 1900 is a year that is divisible by four, years divisible by 100 are not counted as leap years unless divisible by 400. This bug persists today as its competitor, Microsoft Excel, still incorporates
6532-448: The user could display the worksheet portion of 1-2-3 on the sharper monochrome video and the graphics on the CGA display . The initial release of 1-2-3 supported only three video setups: CGA, MDA (in which case the graph maker was not available) or dual-monitor mode. However, a few months later support was added for Hercules Computer Technology's Hercules Graphics Adapter which was a clone of
6624-420: The user to have a graphics card. At this early stage, the only video boards available for the PC were IBM's Color Graphics Adapter and Monochrome Display and Printer Adapter , the latter not supporting any graphics. However, because the two video boards used different RAM and port addresses, both could be installed in the same machine and so Lotus took advantage of this by supporting a "split" screen mode whereby
6716-462: The words of the menu displayed on the screen. 1-2-3 won its three-year long court battle against Paperback Software International and Mosaic Software Inc. in 1990. However, when it sued Borland over its Quattro Pro spreadsheet in Lotus v. Borland , a six-year battle that ended at the Supreme Court in 1996, the final ruling appeared to support narrowing the applicability of copyright law to software; this
6808-512: Was a creation of Kahn's, taking inspiration from the name of an American Astronaut and then- Eastern Air Lines chairperson Frank Borman . The main shareholders at the incorporation of Borland were Niels Jensen (250,000 shares), Ole Henriksen (160,000), Mogens Glad (100,000), and Kahn (80,000). Borland developed various software development tools. Its first product was Turbo Pascal in 1983, developed by Anders Hejlsberg (who later developed .NET and C# for Microsoft) and before Borland acquired
6900-456: 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 — a graduate of Colgate University and The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy — came to Lotus as a management consultant with McKinsey & Company and became an employee four months later. In October 1984, he
6992-455: Was announced in February 2000, aimed at producing Linux -based products. The plan was abandoned when Corel's shares fell and it became clear that there was no strategic fit. InterBase 6.0 was made available as open-source software in July 2000. In November 2000, Inprise Corporation announced the company intended to officially change its name to Borland Software Corporation. The legal name of
7084-660: Was announced that Tod Nielsen would take over as CEO effective November 9, 2005. Nielsen remained with the company until January 2009, when he accepted the position of chief operating officer at VMware ; CFO Erik Prusch then took over as acting president and CEO. In early 2007 Borland announced new branding for its focus around open application life-cycle management. In April 2007 Borland announced that it would relocate its headquarters and development facilities to Austin, Texas . It also had development centers in Singapore , Santa Ana, California , and Linz , Austria. On May 6, 2009,
7176-475: Was cleanly programmed, relatively bug-free, gained speed from being written completely in x86 assembly language (this remained the case for all DOS versions until 3.0, when Lotus switched to C ) and wrote directly to video memory rather than use the slow DOS and/or BIOS text output functions. Among other novelties that Lotus introduced was a graph maker that could display several forms of graphs (including pie charts, bar graphics, or line charts) but required
7268-409: Was first announced in 1997. Other programs are: Along with renaming from Borland International, Inc. to Inprise Corporation, the company refocused its efforts on targeting enterprise applications development. Borland hired a marketing firm Lexicon Branding to come up with a new name for the company. Yocam explained that the new name, Inprise, was meant to evoke "integrating the enterprise". The idea
7360-444: Was founded by Mitchell Kapor , a friend of the developers of VisiCalc . 1-2-3 was originally written by Jonathan Sachs , who had written two spreadsheet programs previously while working at Concentric Data Systems , Inc. To aid its growth both in the UK and possibly elsewhere, Lotus 1-2-3 became the very first computer software to use television consumer advertising. Kapor was primarily
7452-466: 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. 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
7544-532: Was introduced at the 1993 Comdex computer show. Borland Office never made significant inroads against Microsoft Office. WordPerfect was then bought by Novell . In October 1994, Borland sold Quattro Pro and rights to sell up to a million copies of Paradox to Novell for $ 140 million in cash, repositioning the company on its core software development tools and the Interbase database engine and shifting toward client-server scenarios in corporate applications. This later proved
7636-622: 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 in 2014. Lotus began its diversification from the desktop software business with its 1984 strategic founding investment in Ray Ozzie's Iris Associates,
7728-464: Was launched in 1989. Lotus Development, under the leadership of Jim Manzi , sued Borland for copyright infringement (see Look and feel ). The litigation, Lotus Dev. Corp. v. Borland Int'l, Inc. , brought forward Borland's open standards position as opposed to Lotus' closed approach. Borland, under Kahn's leadership, took a position of principle and announced that they would defend against Lotus' legal position and "fight for programmer's rights". After
7820-508: 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. As the popularity of the personal computer grew, Lotus quickly came to dominate the spreadsheet market. Lotus introduced other office products such as Ray Ozzie 's Symphony in 1984 and the Jazz office suite for
7912-470: Was never added and users of those machines were limited to CGA graphics. The early versions of 1-2-3 also had a key disk copy protection. While the program was hard disk installable, the user had to insert the original floppy disk when starting 1-2-3 up. This protection scheme was easily cracked and a minor inconvenience for home users, but proved a serious nuisance in an office setting. Starting with Release 3.0, Lotus no longer used copy protection. However, it
8004-446: Was not yet popular, it posed no serious threat to Lotus's stranglehold on spreadsheet sales. However, Lotus suffered technical setbacks in this period. Version 3 of Lotus 1-2-3, fully converted from its original macro assembler to the more portable C language , was delayed by more than a year as the totally new 1-2-3 had to be made portable across platforms and fully compatible with existing macro sets and file formats. The inability to fit
8096-423: Was presentation software for the Apple II known as Lotus Executive Briefing System. Kapor founded Lotus after leaving his post as head of development at VisiCorp , the distributors of the VisiCalc spreadsheet , 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
8188-458: Was sold to KSoft, Inc. which was soon renamed dBASE Inc. (In 2004 dBASE Inc. was renamed to DataBased Intelligence, Inc.). In 1999, Dale L. Fuller replaced Yocam. At this time Fuller's title was "interim president and CEO". The "interim" was dropped in December 2000. Keith Gottfried served in senior executive positions with the company from 2000 to 2004. A proposed merger between Inprise and Corel
8280-438: Was surpassed by Microsoft in the early 1990s, and never recovered. IBM purchased Lotus in 1995, and continued to sell Lotus offerings, only officially ending sales in 2013. VisiCalc was launched in 1979 on the Apple II and immediately became a best-seller. Compared to earlier programs, VisiCalc allowed one to easily construct free-form calculation systems for practically any purpose, the limitations being primarily related to
8372-475: Was then necessary to "initialize" the System disk with one's name and company name so as to customize the copy of the program. Release 2.2 and higher had this requirement. This was an irreversible process unless one had made an exact copy of the original disk so as to be able to change names to transfer the program to someone else. The reliance on the specific hardware of the IBM PC led to 1-2-3 being utilized as one of
8464-419: Was to integrate Borland's tools, Delphi , C++Builder , and JBuilder with enterprise environment software, including Visigenic's implementations of CORBA, Visibroker for C++ and Java, and the new product, Application Server . Frank Borland is a mascot character for Borland products. According to Philippe Kahn, the mascot first appeared in advertisements and the cover of Borland Sidekick 1.0 manual, which
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