Iris Associates was a software development company founded in Littleton, Massachusetts on December 7, 1984 by Ray Ozzie to build the software ultimately known as Lotus Notes. Tim Halvorsen and Len Kawell, who joined Iris shortly afterwards in January 1985, met Ray Ozzie years before when all of them were working on the University of Illinois PLATO system. They are widely regarded as the core team behind the creation of Lotus Notes. Len Kawell was...
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Iris Associates was a software development company founded in Littleton, Massachusetts on December 7, 1984 by Ray Ozzie to build the software ultimately known as Lotus Notes. Tim Halvorsen and Len Kawell, who joined Iris shortly afterwards in January 1985, met Ray Ozzie years before when all of them were working on the University of Illinois PLATO system. They are widely regarded as the core team behind the creation of Lotus Notes. Len Kawell was the author of PDP-11 Notes and VAX Notes, which functionally shared similar functionality to Lotus Notes, but pre-dates the graphical interface of the PC.
The company's primary funding came from a contractual relationship with Lotus Development Corp., best known at the time for its Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet software. Lotus funded development of Iris' product (then code-named simply "Notes") in exchange for a future option to purchase exclusive intellectual property, marketing, and sales rights. After this option was ultimately exercised years...
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