MORE: How Windows XP became the operating system that just won’t die »īut even with IBM attempting to breathe new life into Lotus Development’s products, Lotus 1-2-3, once the backbone for businesses’ office productivity, couldn’t be resuscitated. Lotus 1-2-3’s cousin, Lotus Notes-which offered companies integrated messaging, business applications and social collaboration in one workspace-was the program that caught IBM’s eye Lotus 1-2-3 simply tagged along because it was family. in July 1995 for $3.5 billion, Lotus 1-2-3 was on life support. By the early 1990s, Lotus 1-2-3’s position at the head of the class was usurped definitively by Microsoft Excel.īy the time IBM bought Lotus Development Corp. It was around this time that Bill Gates was creating his own version of a desktop spreadsheet program, and slowly Excel and Microsoft’s Office encroached on Lotus 1-2-3’s turf. Manzi was focusing his attention and resources away from the company’s first success and looking for its next up-and-comer. That same year, Lotus bought VisiCalc, discontinued it, and offered its customers Lotus 1-2-3 upgrades instead.īut by 1986, Lotus 1-2-3 was getting neglected when Kapor stepped down as president and CEO of the company and handed the mantle to Jim Manzi. started adding new products under its belt.in 1985, but none performed as well as the popular shining star Lotus 1-2-3. Under Kapor’s leadership Lotus Development Corp. By October 1983, Lotus 1-2-3 was reportedly outselling VisiCalc. The launch of Lotus 1-2-3 had disrupted the monopoly VisiCorp’s spreadsheet program was enjoying, and had set the standard for productivity applications on personal computers. They started purchasing IBM computers in droves just to get their hands on the software that combined spreadsheets, a graphics package and an early-stage database manager into one. But IBM started running Kapor’s and Sachs’s spreadsheet program on its computers, and companies couldn’t get enough of it. The two weren’t new to computer spreadsheets: Kapor was the head of development at VisiCorp, which marketed the first desktop spreadsheet program, VisiCalc, and Sachs was a computer programmer who had been transferring VisiCalc to some of the world’s first minicomputers.īefore Lotus 1-2-3, VisiCalc, which was designed for Apple II computers in 1979, dominated the desktop spreadsheet market. It was the brainchild of Mitch Kapor and Jonathan Sachs who had formed Lotus Development Corp. Lotus 1-2-3, the computer software program that was the spreadsheet of choice for businesses in the 1980s, was born in the Boston area on January 26, 1983.
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