20 years ago today...Notes 1.0

December 7 2009

On December 7, 1989, at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cambridge, Massachusetts USA, Lotus Notes 1.0 was officially unveiled.  I wasn't there, and the date wasn't significant to me other than as I was approaching final exams in my penultimate semester of college.  Clearly, though, that event changed history -- and produced one of the most successful and longest-running software products in distributed computing.

As I've previously mentioned, my official reminiscing is planned for a Lotusphere session -- "An oral history of Lotus Notes: The first 20 years".  However, today can't pass without more than a mention of the significance of the two decades since Notes first came to market.  Five years ago, I also wrote a "20 years ago" posting -- celebrating the creation of Iris Associates, the company formed to create Lotus Notes.  Today, we look back 20 years and see nearly 150 million licenses sold, tens of millions of applications created, and hundreds of thousands of IT professionals whose careers have involved, or continue to be involved with, the industry that has grown up around Lotus Notes and Domino.

Over these 20 years, people have come and gone.  Technologies have changed.  The market for collaboration software has, in some ways, just hit its stride.  At times criticized as difficult, ugly, or unusable, while at other times running businesses and providing solutions where nothing else could, in its first 20 years, Lotus Notes has been more than just a software product.  It has, through its use in a diverse set of organizations around the world, helped usher in the modern era of information sharing, and continues to set pace in that capacity today.  Despite bad press that has occurred frequently and regularly in that 20 years, Notes/Domino is a huge business today for IBM and 10,000 business partners worldwide -- many of whom are continuing to grow their business, and others are just starting up.

In the next 20 years, Lotus Notes and Domino will continue to evolve, innovate, and change the market.  Today we see evidence of this in efforts like Alloy, integrating Notes with SAP; OpenNTF.org, a community of Notes/Domino open-source projects that expands daily; and the adoption of new constructs like XPages and the Eclipse.org framework.  Tomorrow, we'll see new ways for people to be more productive, innovations in attention management, and an evolution of the user experience.

The next chapter in the story of Lotus Notes will be just as exciting as the one about Notes 1.0, or when client/server e-mail became the rage, or when the modern collaborative web took shape.  All of you in the Lotus community will play a part in shaping that future.  Please join me in saluting those who brought Notes forth to where it is today, and who are planning its future.  And let's get ready for that next step in the history of Notes/Domino -- whatever it may be -- the one that will solidify its prominence in the market 20 years from now.  If history is any indicator, it's going to be an exciting ride.

Ed Brill Highland Park, IL USA Category: Add/View Comments [28]

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  1. 1  Kevin Pettitt http://www.lotusguru.com | 12/6/2009 10:34:40 PM

    December 7th is my mother's birthday as well. In a strange, perhaps superstitious way, the coincidence makes me feel...reassured. It's like a kind of cosmic validation of my career choice.

  1. 2  Mike Kinder http://www.acadiasolutions.com | 12/6/2009 10:58:34 PM

    Though not superstitious at all, it is also unfortunately Pearl Harbor was bombed and thousands died. Either way, that has nothing do with Lotus Notes (just remembered it was "a day in infamy").

    I think Notes/Domino is definitely re-entering the spot light, for the good this time and we are on the up trend.

    Let's enjoy the ride.

  1. 3  Mike Kinder http://www.acadiasolutions.com | 12/6/2009 10:59:59 PM

    @2, missed the words "the day" between "unfortunately" and "Pearl Harbor". Sorry.

  1. 4  Kevin Pettitt http://www.lotusguru.com | 12/6/2009 11:34:34 PM

    @2 Mike my mother was born in 1941 so you didn't need to remind me that that day was, for most everyone not serving in the Japanese military at the time, a pretty awful one. I'm just happy that I can now give her something meaningful and positive to say instead of "Thanks for reminding me" next time that happens. :-)

  1. 5  Ian Randall  | 12/6/2009 11:36:16 PM

    December 7th was also the day in 2001 that the Taliban surrendered Kandahar (their last Afganistan stronghold), Apollo 17 was launched (the last manned lunar landing), The Galileo spacecraft arrived at Jupiter and the date of the first US television commercial.

    All in all, the birth of Lotus Notes is a worthy addition to this day in history.

    Ian

  1. 6  Rishi  | 12/7/2009 2:30:23 AM

    Happy B'day Notes ! May God ( Companies :) ) grant you thousand years.

  1. 7  Paul Mooney http://www.pmooney.net | 12/7/2009 3:10:46 AM

    For any application to survive the fastest paced 20 years in history with technology changing on a monthly/weekly/daily rate, is a testament to the product and the people that made it possible.

    Congratulations to all in Iris/Lotus.

  1. 8  Jim Casale http://www.jimcasale.net | 12/7/2009 3:24:33 AM

    @Paul Makes a good point which got me thinking - what other software/technology has been around for 20 years and is still going strong? I can't think of any off the top of my head (but I am sure someone will :-)

  1. 9  Bill Malchisky http://www.EffectiveSoftware.com | 12/7/2009 4:23:56 AM

    Congratulations for a well-deserved anniversary on the date of your 20th. And I look forward to celebrating Lotus Notes 40th. Keep up the great work.

  1. 10  Richard Schwartz http://www.poweroftheschwartz.com | 12/7/2009 5:45:34 AM

    @8 Unix is much older { Link } and officially, Microsoft Windows is older { Link } too. None of which takes away from what Iris, Lotus and IBM have done. In fact, that Lotus Notes has kept up with the all major evolutionary changes in the OS platforms that it runs on is at least as remarkable the fact that the operating systems have kept up with the evolutionary changes in the hardware platforms that they run on.

  1. 11  Ian Scott  | 12/7/2009 6:10:46 AM

    @8 - Oracle was thirty this year. We bought birthday cakes for the team today whereas our Oracle dudes didn't mark their milestone.

    When you think about PC software that hasn't continued to flourish such as WordPerfect, dBase, and even 1-2-3, the 20 years reached today is a remarkable and notable achievement.

    Congratulations to everyone involved throughout the twenty years.

    I still think Notes is genius!

  1. 12  Mike Kinder http://www.acadiasolutions.com | 12/7/2009 7:39:16 AM

    @2, @4, @All. I am officially banned from making comments on blogs after 8pm. I realize now that this was suppose to be a celebratory moment, I should not have brought up the event of Pearl Harbor. In my head my reasoning and discussion sounded fine, but looking back - not so good. Apologies.

    Congratulations Lotus!

  1. 13  Neil Wainwright http://www.nexonia.com | 12/7/2009 7:45:24 AM

    Too bad the database icons are the same, 20 years later. ;) On the serious side, it is an amazing product and with the changes to the plumbing and UI that you've been doing it can easily go another 20 and more.

    ...Neil

  1. 14  Kevin Pettitt http://www.lotusguru.com | 12/7/2009 9:20:45 AM

    @12 No worries Michael.

    Resume Next ;-)

  1. 15  Paul Davies  | 12/7/2009 10:09:30 AM

    20 years - wow. I've been developing with it for 16 of those!

  1. 16  Kurt Binnie  | 12/7/2009 1:03:34 PM

    I went and bought donuts for the team to celebrate.

  1. 17  Perry Rosenboom  | 12/7/2009 1:27:53 PM

    Makes me feel old. I started working with Notes in version 2.0 and have been involved ever since.

    Notes has kept me in a job for many years, hopefully there's plenty more to come ( as long as we can fight this lemming like mentality to migrate to other products. )

  1. 18  Philip Storry http://www.not-so-rapid.com | 12/7/2009 5:13:15 PM

    Well, I wasn't going to do anything online today. Not a sausage.

    Mostly because I wanted to completely relax and enjoy my first day of some time off work.

    But I guess if I'm going to break radio silence for anything, then this is a mighty fine reason.

    Happy Birthday Notes.

    Time to crack open a fine dram and toast the next twenty years! :-)

  1. 19  Vincent Yeung http://onelotusdeveloper.blogspot.com/ | 12/7/2009 7:16:47 PM

    The last 10 years I have been with Notes, I never regret a bit. Happy birthday Notes, and may you continue to grow strong and wise!

    Vincent

  1. 20  Brian Benz http://www.softwaresoapbox.com | 12/7/2009 7:21:13 PM

    Wow - didn't realize! I remember seeing Notes first in 1990 or 91, at a computer conference at Vancouver's Westin Bayshore...I was looking for something like it to augment a client's claim processing system and "got it" right away....Unfortunately the client's CTO didn't, and went with a package called Watermark, which nobody was ever able to get working. There is no trace of Watermark, or that client, anymore. Found a great client and a Notes opportunity in 1994, and had a good run with Notes, until 2003. Still keep up and use it for my own purposes....Wish I could still make a living with it!

  1. 21  Nick Halliwell http://www.comware.net | 12/7/2009 8:46:20 PM

    Many happy returns to Notes and to many more birthdays to come.

    Ed, are you starting to lay out a 20 year road map for Notes? (:>)

  1. 22  Chris Gleeson  | 12/7/2009 9:54:30 PM

    20 more years! A long shot, but I'd love to see what Notes 1.0 looked like. Any chance of releasing it, posting it for people (ok probably just me..) to kick around and play with it? I think it'd be cool to see how far Notes has come!

  1. 23  Pavel Severov http://severov.net/ | 12/8/2009 4:58:02 AM

    Thanks Ed!

    Greeting card for cuch case - { Link }

  1. 24  David Vasta http://www.davidandkelly.com | 12/8/2009 8:00:22 AM

    Good post Ed. I was a senior in High School when Lotus was first dropped. Using Pascal & Basic to build things.

    Lotus has stood the test of time. While there are older named technologies, I think Lotus is one of the few with the same vision and focus it had over 20 years ago.

    It's an amazing product that still is undiscovered and misunderstood by users and IT people alike. I am sure the next 20 years will be just as exciting.

    @23 - Hello Pavel!

    Happy Birthday Lotus.

  1. 25  Shankar Iyer  | 12/8/2009 8:02:49 AM

    hi ed. Any chance to post the codes (server and clients) on a public site of all releases so that users can see how we progressed over the years. Would be just great. Congrats to Iris, Lotus and IBM

  1. 26  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 12/8/2009 9:41:56 AM

    @22/25 - I did post the V1/V2/V3 code when we hit the last anniversary five years ago. No plans to repeat the effort this time around, it was a one-shot deal which I worked with legal, marketing, etc.

  1. 27  Volker Weber http://vowe.net/about | 12/8/2009 12:46:43 PM

    Jim Casale, Microsoft Excel predates Notes by two years.

  1. 28  Monisha Menon http://momorocks.wordpress.com | 12/9/2009 11:48:53 PM

    Hear ! Hear!

    I have been working on notes for close to 9 years now and i would not change my area of skill!

    Notes has kind of been the underdog, a sort of last minute solution to enterprise problems, but time and again these last minute solutions we built have gone on to become role models for other development :-)

    Very excited about the next generation and for 8.5 ...