Lotus Celebrates Over Two Million cc:Mail Users at Interchange ’92

September 28, 1992 — Future Direction Set at Industry’s Largest Gathering of Electronic Mail Users

A record-breaking 1,200 electronic mail enthusiasts, all users of Lotus Development Corp.’s cc:Mail, gathered at Burlingame, Calif., last week to celebrate shipment of more than two million copies of cc:Mail and to hear company officials outline future directions for the market-leading LAN-based electronic mail program.

Lotus’ Interchange ’92 conference, now in its third year, represents the world’s largest gathering of E-mail users and reflects cc:Mail’s longstanding popularity in this rapidly growing software category.

“In the past year, we’ve more than doubled our user base and revenues, and delivered 24 new products,” said Jim Manzi, Lotus president and chief executive officer. “Our future goals are to ensure cc:Mail remains the world’s leading E-mail system through outstanding performance, superior connectivity, and a rich feature set appropriate for small workgroups and for companies with users spanning the globe.”

Lotus announced last week plans to deliver a native X.400 version of cc:Mail that will allow users to migrate to the international standard easily, while maintaining cc:Mail’s extensive feature set. (See release: “Lotus to Support X.400 Standard”). In addition, the company outlined future plans in several critical areas including: new releases of cc:Mail for all of the major operating platforms, including DOS, Windows, OS/2, UNIX and the Macintosh; new technologies, such as rules-based mail and forms capabilities; pen computer-based E-mail and other technology for remote users; advanced technology for calendaring and scheduling; and new gateways and administration tools.

According to Robert DeWitt Jr., data communications specialist with Pizza Hut Inc., “cc:Mail’s success can be attributed to the company’s focus on making the product work with any operating system our network users have installed. We’re extremely pleased with the new directions we’ve learned about, in particular, Lotus’ plans for remote users, gate-ways, forms and rules-based mail. We’re also excited about the potential for new portable, pen-based mail products that will be especially useful for mobile users.”

Forms and Rules Technologies Showcased

Lotus showcased new technology that will allow users to easily create custom forms and automatically route them throughout an organization. Forms can be attached to an E-mail message and sent to remote, as well as local users. Lotus demonstrated, for example, how telephone “while you were out” forms, trouble reports and office supply forms can be shared among Macintosh and Windows users.

Lotus also demonstrated, for the first time, new rules-based capabilities that will enhance workflow by allowing users to custom configure their E-mail environments for automatic searching and filtering of mail messages based on multiple criteria. Rules technology will debut with the upcoming version of cc:Mail for Windows 2.0.

First Public Showing of Calendar and Scheduler, Pen-based cc:Mail

Lotus also demonstrated calendaring and scheduling capabilities designed for individuals and groups of users. A new version of Lotus’ Organizer personal information manager with scheduling capabilities will use cc:Mail’s store and for-ward transport and directories technologies to let cc:Mail users schedule meetings with any other E-mail user.

Users will also be able to perform calendar updates by launching the Organizer from within cc:Mail. The Organizer and cc:Mail will work together using the Vendor-Independent Messaging specification (VIM) for mail enabling applications.

Lotus also provided a preview of technology enabling cc:Mail to take advantage of pen-based computers. cc:Mail was demonstrated running under GO Corp.’s PenPoint and Microsoft’s PenWindows environments, enabling a pen-based cc:Mail user to receive a FAXed document from a DOS-based cc:Mail user, annotate the document using hand-writing recognition technology, and forward the message to users running cc:Mail on other platforms.

cc:Mail Tunneling Ships; Japanese Language Version to Make Debut

Lotus also introduced cc:Mail Tunneling, a free utility for users of cc:Mail Import/Export that allows customers with an existing E-mail backbone such as X.400, MHS, or PROFS to transparently connect to cc:Mail sites, while preserving message fidelity, including highlighting. The new utility works with cc:Mail’s existing Import/Export or Automat-ic Directory Exchange products and with gateways from cc:Mail third-party developers.

Other showcased technologies included a Japanese language version of cc:Mail for DOS and Windows, which will ship later this year. Lotus also discussed several new versions of gateways currently in beta testing for links to OV/VM and PROFS and SMTP and UUCP. cc:Mail is the leading LAN-based electronic mail system with more than 2 million users worldwide. cc:Mail runs on MS-DOS, Macintosh, OS/2, Unix and Windows platforms across all major LANs, providing transparent connectivity to all major private and public electronic mail systems and facsimile machines worldwide. Lotus Development Corp.(NASDAQ:LOTS), founded in 1982, provides software products and support services that meet the business needs of individuals, workgroups and enterprises.

Lotus’ extensive range of products form the foundation for the company’s Working Together strategy, which focuses on integrating applications, platforms and people. The company’s first product, 1-2-3, is the most popular personal computer software application in the world, with more than 20 mil-lion users. Lotus markets its products in more than 80 countries worldwide and provides numerous support services, both from its consulting division and its award-winning 24-hour support center. All prices and terms are for the U.S. only.

Lotus is a registered trademark of Lotus Development Corp. cc:Mail is a trademark of cc:Mail Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Lotus Development Corp. Macintosh is a registered trademark of Apple Computer Inc. OS/2 is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corp. MS-DOS is a registered trademark and Windows is a trademark of Microsoft Corp.

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