Raymond Ozzie, the key developer of Notes, quit Lotus last fall, along with a handful of other key programmers. But the market has been growing faster, taking Notes' share of the groupware business worldwide down from 64% in 1995 to 41% last year.Ī major exodus of talent occurred during IBM's first year of ownership. To be sure, IBM can claim some sales gains - Lotus has sold more copies of Notes during IBM's tenure than it did in the six preceding years. in an initially hostile takeover - largely to get its hands on Notes.
Apparently agreeing, IBM in 1995 paid $3.2 billion for Lotus Development Corp.
Four years ago Fortune magazine was touting Notes as the Next Big Thing, the product Microsoft couldn't stop. Ford Motor Co., a huge IBM account with 135,000 users, has rejected Notes in favor of Exchange. Johnson, Nike, Shell, Texaco and Unisys now are adopting Microsoft's messaging technology. Former Lotus flagship accounts such as Amoco, Compaq Computer, Dell Computer, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Johnson & Of the 50 biggest companies in the U.S., 30 have chosen Exchange as their companywide E-mail program (although some of them may also make significant use of Notes). The Lotus product, nine years old, still has 17 million installations, according to International Data Corp., but the two-year-old Microsoft rival is gaining fast at 9.5 million. In the first quarter of this year Microsoft Exchange outsold Lotus Notes, 3 million copies to 2.7 million. Score another victory for Microsoft and a costly setback for IBM.