Thirty-one years ago, Massachusetts-based software developers Mitch Kapor and Jonathan Sachs created a program an electronic spreadsheet that would change the world. A year later, on Jan. 26, 1983, Lotus Development Corp. released Lotus 1-2-3 for the IBM PC and grossed $53 million in sales. The following year, sales tripled to more than $150 million.
Many other Lotus products have come and gone through the years including Symphony, SmartSuite, and Lotus Works. But the greatest and most successful product was Lotus Notes (aka Domino/Notes), a new type of software program labeled "groupware," which was designed for several computer users to collaborate on projects from long-distance locations via a network.