Happy Birthday, Lotus Notes

Today is Lotus Notes’ 20th birthday.

Happy Birthday, Lotus Notes.

Lots of folks are applauding Notes’ birthday over on Facebook.  You can be one of them!

I know, it’s kinda weird to go wish an inanimate object like a software product Happy Birthday.

But you have to remember, this is Lotus Notes we’re talkin’ about!

Lotus Notes, one of the first “groupware” products that changed the way people collaborate and work together, first in their own little offices and later, via the Interwebs, around the globe.

Lotus Notes, one of the first products to have a sophisticated, built-in replication engine that allowed for the type of document change management regime that the world was screaming for.

Lotus Notes, developed by now-Microsoft-executive Ray Ozzie and his team at Iris Associates, the Massachusetts-HQed software “think tank” and Lotus Development, which was acquired by IBM in 1995.

I still remember the first day I used Lotus Notes, as IBM made its own transition away from the VM “green monsters” for email.  Talk about a culture change.

I also remember seeing Jim Manzi, the former CEO of Lotus Development, running around the halls of Somers just after the acquisition.

But mostly, I remember a paradigm shift in the way Lotus Notes helped we IBMers communicate, work with, and collaborate with one another…a practice that continues to this day.

I’m not a software developer, nor do I play one on TV…but I have helped program plenty of Lotus Notes databases.

So, happy birthday and here’s to you, inanimate software product Lotus Notes!

It’s been twenty years, you graduated at the top of your class, and you continue to bring value to your customers around this smarter planet of ours.

We’d have gotten you a cake, but figured you couldn’t eat any of it, so just imagine there’s a virtual cake, why don’t ya?