Software company celebrates 25 years

In 1982, Cambridge entrepreneurs Mitch Kapor and Jonathan Sachs founded a fledgling software development company. They called it Lotus.

The name was a nod to Kapor’s interests in transcendental meditation. It was an early indication of the founders’ path-breaking approach – and hinted at the innovative software that would soon be flowing from Lotus’s Cambridge offices. 

Now, a quarter century later, Lotus software has become a household name, and despite wild successes, near-collapse and a 1995 takeover by IBM, Lotus’s offices on the banks of the Charles River are still churning out new ideas and products. The company celebrated its 25th anniversary over the weekend with a huge party at Cambridge’s Hyatt Regency Hotel.

“We were all there together to celebrate and to reminisce,” said Cathleen Finn, a member of the IBM Lotus community relations team who has been with the company for 15 years. “It was really fun. I saw people I haven’t seen in years.”

Finn and more than 600 current and former colleagues gathered to reunite, reminisce and savor old and new accomplishments, such as the company’s first product, Lotus 1-2-3, which revolutionized spreadsheet software in the early 1980s and helped secure a place for desktop computers in American offices. And then there’s Lotus’s best-known application, Lotus Notes, which introduced the concept of “groupware” in 1989. More recently, Lotus has developed instant messaging, Web conferencing and social networking applications for the workplace.

Although the products have evolved over the decades, Lotus’ creative approach to technology hasn’t changed. “Lotus has always been about connecting people to information,” said Alan Lepofsky, a member of the IBM Lotus strategy team. “Figuring out a way to turn that into business value — that’s what we’re really good at, and that hasn’t changed.”

Early on, Kapor and his successor, Jim Manzi, instituted progressive, worker-friendly benefits at Lotus, such as a day care center for working mothers. Twenty-five years later, that humane approach remains firmly in place. Lotus was one of the first U.S. companies to provide benefits to employees in same-sex relationships, and their flexible “commuter” policies help employees maintain a healthy balance between obligations at work and at home.

“We are one of the more cutting-edge companies I know — as far as work-life balance and allowing people o work at home or in different cities,” Lepofsky said.

His team includes people living in Cambridge, British Columbia and France. “There’s a tremendous amount of value in being together and sharing ideas,” he said, “but to be able to mix that with the freedom of allowing people to be home with their children is a monumental strength.”

Despite being taken over by an international mega-company like IBM, Lotus has managed to stay true to its Cambridge roots. Ninety percent of Lotus’s operations are still in Massachusetts, and the innovative team of researchers that drives the future of Lotus software is still housed in the company’s Cambridge offices.

“[People within other divisions of IBM] still associate the Lotus brand with Cambridge,” Lepofsky said. “Each branch has a home base, and I moved from Toronto to here because this was Lotus headquarters.”

The company also works to maintain its ties to the Cambridge community. Lotus developers frequently collaborate with scientists at local universities, and the company’s internship programs bring in students from those schools as well.

“Here we are, just a block from MIT and just across the water from MGH — that breeds a culture of thinkers,” Lepofsky said. “We leverage that Cambridge base in a huge way.”

Finn agreed. “Innovation is so central to Cambridge” — and to Lotus, she added. “The company constantly reinvents itself. There are always new things to learn, new people to collaborate with. That draws people and keeps people here.”

1982: Mitch Kapor and Jonathan Sachs co-found the Lotus Development corporation in Cambridge.

1983: Lotus 1-2-3, a groundbreaking spreadsheet program, is released (1-2-3 introduced the widespread use of desktop computers in offices around the world).

1986: Jim Manzi takes over as CEO of Lotus from Mitch Kapor.

1989: Lotus introduces the market’s first collaborative software, Lotus Notes, and again redefines the way corporations work.

1998: IBM Lotus introduces Lotus Sametime software — the first platform to offer corporate instant messaging with Web conferencing.

2007: Lotus Software Division of IBM celebrates 25 years.