A summary of the major releases of Lotus Notes and Domino over the past summary broken down by release.

1. The History Of Lotus Notes
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2. PLATO Group Notes
Ray Ozzie
Tim Halvorsen
The origins of Notes can be traced back to some of
the first computer programs written at the
Computer-based Education Research Laboratory
(CERL) at the University of Illinois. In 1973, CERL
released a product called PLATO Notes. The sole
function of PLATO Notes was to tag a bug report with
the user's ID and the date and to make the file
secure so that other users couldn't delete it.
Ray Ozzie, Tim Halvorsen, and Len Kawell worked on
the PLATO system in the late 1970s. All were
impressed with its real-time communication.
Halvorsen and Kawell later took what they learned at
CERL and created a PLATO Notes-like product at
Digital Equipment Corporation.
At the same time, Ray Ozzie worked independently
on a proposal for developing a PC-based Notes
product. Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus Development
Corporation, saw potential in Ozzie's work and
decided to invest Lotus's money for its development
Len Kawell
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3. Iris Associates
In 1984, Ray Ozzie founded Iris Associates, under
contract and funded by Lotus, to develop the first
release of Lotus Notes. He was soon joined by Tim
Halvorsen and Len Kawell. They modeled Lotus
Notes after PLATO Notes, but expanded it to
include many more powerful features.
The original vision for Notes included on-line
discussion, email, phone books, and document
databases. Because networking at the time was
rudimentary the developers decided to position
Lotus Notes as a personal information manager
(PIM) with some sharing capability. Eventually, as
networking became more capable, Iris began to
speak of Notes as groupware.
The product took three years to complete with
Lotus acquiring the rights to Notes in 1987. The
head of Price Waterhouse viewed a pre-release
demo of Lotus Notes and was so impressed he
bought 10,000 copies before its release.
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4. Release 1.0 December 7 1989
Groupware is born
Should we build applications in the
product or should we allow it to be
flexible and let users do it because we
don't know what they will want?
Tim Halverson
35,000 copies sold
Application workspace
On-line Help
Replication
Dial-up functionality
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Email system
Access Control Lists
Non-SQL database
Encryption & signing
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Forms/Views
Macros (Formula language)
Keywords (checkbox radio etc.)
Doclinks

5. Release 2.0 1991
Scaled to support 10,000 users
200-license
minimum
$62,000
12
Developers
Rich Text
Column Totals
Tables
Paragraph Styles
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Return receipt for mail
Forwarding documents
Address lookup
Multiple NABs
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C API
Additional @functions
Larger databases
ODBC

6. Release 3.0 May 1993
A new UI and cross platform support
25
Developers
May 1994:
Lotus
acquires Iris
Associates
July 1995:
IBM
acquires
Lotus
2,000 companies - 500,000 users
Mac client
Threading
Document Hierarchy
Windows Server
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Hierarchical names
Full-text search
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Notes VIP adds LotusScript
NIF subsystem developed
Nifty Fifty
Notes F/X OLE support

7. Release 4.0 January 1996
Redesigned UI and enhanced programmability
Price of
Notes drops
from $270
to $70 per
user
8,000 companies – 2.2 million users
3-Pane UI
Locations
Stacked icons
Web browser access
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Pass-thru servers
Admin client
SOCKS
HTTP & RPC proxy
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LotusScript
Action bars
Navigators
InterNotes Web Publisher

8. Release 4.5 December 1996
The Internet
Server
renamed
from Notes
to Domino
October 1997
Ray Ozzie
departs
12,000 companies – 20 million users
Web access
Internet server
Server clustering
Multi-database searching
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Notes calendaring/scheduling
Cc:Mail integration
Directory assistance
Single Sign-on
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LotusScript libraries
Java
Hide design for Notes/web clients

9. Release 5.0 March 1999
Extended programmability
29,000 companies – 56 million users
Browser-like interface
Toolbar
Customizable welcome page
iNotes Web access
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Internet messaging/directories
Native SMTP/MIME
LDAP
Transaction logging
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Java
Javascript
CORBA
Pages, Outlines

10. Release 6.0 October 2002
Reduced total cost of ownership
Jan 2003
IBM
announces
Workplace
40,000 companies – 89 million users
Redesigned welcome page
iNotes Web access
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Improved calendar/scheduling
Policies
Network compression
Domino Server Monitor
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Shared actions
Agent enhancements
Stylesheets
Java Servlets

11. Release 6.5 September 2003
Sametime integration
59,000 companies – 114 million users
Lotus Sametime Integration
Mozilla browser support
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Drag/drop support for calendar
Email flags
Mail Rules
DAMO
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Sametime awareness

12. Release 7.0 August 2005
The DB2 distraction
Dec 2006
IBM
discontinues
IBM Workplace
Messaging
61,000 companies – 118 million users
DB2 Integration
Domino Web Access
Notes on USB stick
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Domino Domain Monitor
Activity Trends
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Web Service Provider
Shared columns

13. Release 8.0 August 2007
Eclipse
73,000 companies – 140 million users
Eclipse Clients
Open button
Context sensitive toolbars
Sidebar
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Threaded email
Lotus Productivity Tools
Activities
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Composite Applications
Web Services Consumer

14. Release 8.5 January 2009
XPages
November
2012
IBM announce
plans to drop
Lotus branding
84,000 companies – 145 million users
Right click context menus
Livetext
Auto-compressed images
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DAOS
Calendar federation
ID Vault
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Domino Designer Eclipse
XPages
New LotusScript Editor
Mobile Controls

15. Release 9.0 March 2013
Pivot to social
Jan 2014
IBM
Announces
IBM Mail
Next
90,000 companies – 160 million users
Embedded experience
Social business card
Notes browser plugin
Connections Integration
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Categorized inbox
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Social business toolkit
Java design element
REST API
SSJS debugger

16. Acknowledgements
Good coders copy, great coders steal
This presentation has drawn from a lot of
information previously published in the public
domain. The following are some of the resources
used:The History of Notes and Domino – developerWorks
IBM Notes – wikipedia
Lotus Software – wikipedia
Lotus Museum
An Oral History of IBM Lotus Notes – Ed Brill, 2010
When Plato Left The Cave – Ulrich Krause, 2011
History of Lotus Notes Through 2002, YouTube
Note: Sales numbers are based on public statements made. In
some cases numbers have been extrapolated. Numbers quoted are
cumulative total sales and do not represent current active users of
Notes at any time.
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