Featured in this episode of Chaos Lever
If I say Lotus, you might think of a car or a flower. If I say Domino, you might think of sugar or a series of tiles collapsing. What you almost certainly did not think of was productivity software.
However, there was in fact a time before Microsoft Office and Exchange, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, schools were located uphill in both directions, and IBM ruled the productivity roost with software developed by acquired company Lotus Software.
Most famous is Lotus 123, the Excel of its time, which was eventually supplanted by the actual Excel. Slightly less famous, but much longer lived was the messaging platform composed of the Lotus Notes client and Lotus Domino server.
Despite Microsoft’s best attempts to embrace, extend, and extinguish with Outlook and Exchange; Domino and Notes have tenaciously hung in there. Even after IBM sold the software off to Indian company HCL in 2017.
Last week HCL announced the forthcoming version 14 of Domino, bringing welcome additions of a new admin portal and a JVM upgrade, as well as more flexible licensing of additional features. Congrats to Notes for being nigh unkillable, despite the best efforts and billions of dollars from Microsoft.