Almost the first act by Lotus Development Corp since it was acquired by IBM Corp has been to cut 80 jobs – but they are leftovers from the restructuring that was under way before IBM’s bid flew in through the window. Lotus said 35 of the new job cuts are from subcontracting to Revelation Technologies Inc, Stamford, Connecticut development of Lotus Nites ViP, which is an applications development aid. IBM has not broken out the company’s figures, but chief financial officer Jerome York did say that Lotus recorded a narrower loss for the second quarter than the $17.5m it lost in the first. Meantime IBM was revealing yesterday that Lotus products will spearhead its groupware efforts and that IBM’s own products in the area will either be integrated with Lotus products or phased out. Lotus’s cc:Mail gets the nod over Ultimail, IBM’s rather clever electronic mail package, and IBM repeats that Notes will remain open, and that there will be no question of confining it to OS/2 on the desktop. It looks as if the protestations that the Lotus deal did not mean curtains for IBM’s rival agreement with Star Division GmbH in Hamburg (CI No 2,707) were hogwash: Lotus’s SmartSuite will be IBM’s main desktop applications suite, seemingly putting Star Office on the back burner, except maybe where Deutsch gesprochen ist.
