Talk:Lotus Software/Archives/2013

Prose
I have a problem with this clause:

SmartSuite still ships by default with some Compaq and IBM laptops,

As a person who has owned a (horrid!) Compaq machine, I can say with 99% certainty that Compaq has never shipped Lotus SmartSuite with their PC's. I can say this for 1998 and later. In fact, the majority of the time I have used a computer it has came with Microsoft Works (the only execptions are my Dell XP box which has MS Office and my iBook which has AppleWorks).

hoshie 08:22, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)

The content of this article is not acurate. Lotus software is not a company. Instead it is only a brand name of the IBM software group.

Sorry I did not find the right words to change the article

Reason for lost dominance
The statements in Diversification: "Lotus quickly lost its dominance in the desktop applications market with the transition to 32 bit applications running on Windows 95. Lotus was late in delivering its suite of 32 bit products and failed to capitalize on the transition to the new version of Windows." suggest the slow transition to 32 bit was the primary cause of market loss, while other factors were probably more important including that many US government agencies had standardized to MS brand Office products. I don't know of any studies of the impact of government brand name promotion or the extent of standardization. Until a study is done or found, I don't suggest any changes. The "failed to capitalize ..." statement could account for many dominance loss issues.

Dougleon 09:34, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Product not mentioned in document
A new product has just been released by IBM called Lotus Symphony. I did not get to read about what it does, but do read on it.

Also, remove my comment once this task has been completed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.76.188.9 (talk) 05:24, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Is it accurate to call Wang OFFICE host-based instead of client/server?
Wang OIS systems used the Z80 processor in the workstation for an early form of client/server computing, but I don't know for sure whether the OFFICE code was purely executed on the VS server side. Anyone know?


 * I worked at Wang Labs, on Wang VS OFFICE. We had a family of products, which did in fact include OIS/Alliance OFFICE and PC OFFICE in addition to VS OFFICE.  And around 1989, Wang started working on a product called Open OFFICE, which was a true client-server solution, but was delayed by several years and significantly impacted by Wang's declining position in the industry, so it never made much market impact.  Anyhow, it is certainly arguable that OIS/Alliance OFFICE and PC OFFICE had some client/server characteristics -- but like cc:Mail, I think they basically used file-sharing architectures.  At the time of the IBM acquisition, I recall that the industry drew a pretty strong distinction between file-share architectures and true client-server.


 * Perhaps the more accurate statement would be "rapidly making host-based and file-sharing products like.... obsolete", with the addition of cc:Mail to the list. A bit ironic, since by then cc:Mail was already owned by Lotus, but it was the leading file-share mail system.  For now, I'm just going to wikify the mention of client-server, since there is an article on it.

cuatro/Quattro "fact"
This explanation seems overly complicated and nonsensical in its employment of Spanish as an intermediary. Quattro means "four" on its own, and this is widely known. I don't know if it's Italian or Latin or what, but its association with Spanish "cuatro" is consanguinity at best.

Also, since it's not even cited, I think it's an unreasonable stretch.

--63.166.226.83 17:29, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Bias/Weasel words?
Here is an excerpt from the beginning of the article:


 * by far the first feature-rich, user friendly, highly reliable and WYSIWYG-enabled product to become widely available in the early days of the IBM PC, when there was no Graphical user interface. Such a useful tool certainly helped to spread the adoption of the PC, both for administrative and scientific applications. Daniel Christensen (talk) 21:42, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Jeff Papows not mentioned at all
What kind of marketing BS is this? I worked at Lotus from 1997 to 2001; I am one of those who jumped ship after IBM bought us and Al Zollar started cracking the whip. Yes, Papows has a bit of a flaky rep, but its a historical fact that he was the President of Lotus before Zollar. Why is he oddly missing from this page?

Response: IBM bought Lotus in 1995 so it sounds like you joined the sinking ship after IBM was towing it to profitability with Captain Zollar? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.30.174.45 (talk) 14:51, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

By the way, regarding lost dominance, blame IBM's lack of commitment to go after the cc:Mail market after it went EOL. At its height when cc:Mail 8.5 came out in 2000, it has over 21,000,000 seats. 21-million user licenses that IBM was unwilling to fight for by making conversion to Notes attractive with pricing. So Microsoft just came in, gave away free Exchange and Outlook licenses, and nobody at IBM or Lotus plead the case that Notes does a hell of alot more than Exchange/Outlook. To replace Domino R5 took the entire MS Back Office framework: IIS, Index Server, Exchange, SQL Server... the whole shebangabang! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 157.127.239.146 (talk) 19:09, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Defunct?
Why does the infobox state that this company is defunct, especially as of 2013? There is nothing in the article referring to anything that happened in 2013. If it is considered defunct because it has been acquired, then the date should be 1995. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.130.239.48 (talk) 17:53, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
 * See the lede paragraph of IBM notes. IBM announced in 2012 that they would be dropping the Lotus brand, and did so in 2013. This arguably constitutes the final end of Lotus. It's been a slow process. They're not considered defunct as of 1995 because they continued as an independent division and brand. They were slowly assimilated by the IBM Hive Mind. It could be argued that "IBM Collaboration Solutions" (the new name for the former Lotus division) is still a continuation of Lotus and they're still not really defunct. But the end of the brand name probably represents a fair point to call it a game. FWIW The website still says "IBM Collaboration Solutions software (Lotus) delivers..." so a ghost of the name still lingers. Herostratus (talk) 18:37, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Defunct?
Why does the infobox state that this company is defunct, especially as of 2013? There is nothing in the article referring to anything that happened in 2013. If it is considered defunct because it has been acquired, then the date should be 1995. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.130.239.48 (talk) 17:53, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
 * See the lede paragraph of IBM notes. IBM announced in 2012 that they would be dropping the Lotus brand, and did so in 2013. This arguably constitutes the final end of Lotus. It's been a slow process. They're not considered defunct as of 1995 because they continued as an independent division and brand. They were slowly assimilated by the IBM Hive Mind. It could be argued that "IBM Collaboration Solutions" (the new name for the former Lotus division) is still a continuation of Lotus and they're still not really defunct. But the end of the brand name probably represents a fair point to call it a game. FWIW The website still says "IBM Collaboration Solutions software (Lotus) delivers..." so a ghost of the name still lingers. Herostratus (talk) 18:37, 8 October 2013 (UTC)