subject: IBM Lotus - Lotus 1-2-3 Spreadsheet Software [print this page] IBM Lotus - Lotus 1-2-3 Spreadsheet Software
IBM, as it is best known, is the accronym for "International Business Machines" which is the 4th largest technology company in the world. It is also the 2nd most valuable brand in the world, second only to Coca Cola. IBM is a corporate leader in IT consulting, business consulting, computer and technonogy. It was first started in 1896 as the Tabulating Machine Company and was located in Broome County, NY where IBM continues to maintain a select few of it's operations. IBM purchased Lotus Development Corporation for $3.5 billion dollars in the year 1995 for the main goal of acquiring Lotus Notes, a computer software program that can be used for internal communication collaborative applications such as calendaring, Web browsing, email, instant messaging, PIM and a variety of other custom applications. Lotus, the company, was founded by Jonathan Sachs and Mitch Kapor in 1982 with the financial help of Ben Rosen. It's first software was a product for presentations. It was exclusively made for the Apple II and was called Lotus Executive Briefing System. Shortly after leaving his position as head of development at a company called VisiCorp, Mitch and Jonathan founded Lotus and developed an integrated spreadsheet, graphics, and database management program called Lotus 1-2-3 which was released to the public in January of 1983. The huge popularity of Lotus 1-2-3 in the mid-1980s was a signigicant contributer to the success of the IBM PC in the corporate world. In 1983 the Lotus program was outselling the most popular comparable software of the time which was VisiCalc. VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet program available for personal computers. Lotus 1-2-3 continued to be the leading spreadsheet for a number of years and stayed very close to the VisiCalc model, unlike a similar program by Microsoft called Multiplan. IBM Lotus continues to be a rival to other leading software manufacturers and is continually upgrading their line of products.
