Cause of Death
Outcompeted
A superior competitor captured the market. Signal scores typically decline for 12–24 months before the shutdown announcement.
What Happened
Lotus Notes defined enterprise collaboration before anyone used that term. IBM acquired Lotus for $3.5B in 1995 and the product dominated corporate IT through the 1990s. Microsoft Exchange and Outlook eroded its position; Slack and Teams finished the job. IBM finally killed the Notes client in 2024.