Thursday, November 27, 2008

A little bit of Symphony and Notes history

Interesting article in the latest Wired Magazine on Ray Ozzie.  One part I specifically enjoyed was reading how an agreement with Lotus' Mitch Kapor on the development of Lotus Symphony (not the one we all know today) later led on to the development of Iris Associates funded by Lotus, which released Lotus Notes on December 8, 1989.  Iris was bought by Lotus for US$94 million, and one year later, Lotus was bought by IBM for US$3.5 billion.  Ray Ozzie stayed on for another 2 years: 

"I was cynical of IBM, but they took over Notes when we had 2 million users, and now there are 150 million. With Lotus that never would have happened."
Link: Ray Ozzie Wants to Push Microsoft Back Into Startup Mode

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