(at) Lotus.

LOTUS DEFINES PRODUCT DIRECTIONS

During its annual shareholders meeting on April 27, Lotus Development Corp.'s CEO and president, Jim P. Manzi, revealed some of the company's future directions. He also announced that Lotus and IBM Corp. will offer a mainframe-based version of 1-2-3. The companies have agreed to develop and market jointly a series of Lotus and IBM products for use on mainframe and personal-computer systems, he said.

Manzi outlined four key product directions: a new line of powerful, multiuser database products code-named Lotus/DBMS; a new graphical-interface spreadsheet code-named 1-2-3/G, which will run under IBM's OS/2 Presentation Manager; 1-2-3 Release 3, a new version of its best-selling character-interface spreadsheet, which will run under DOS 3.X and OS/2; and 1-2-3/M, a new mainframe version of 1-2-3 for IBM's System/370. Finally, Manzi announced the Lotus Extended Applications Facility (LEAF), which will offer powerful programming capabilities to Lotus applications designed for OS/2.

"Our customers expect leadership from Lotus in defining how emerging technologies translate into innovative solutions for their business problems," Manzi said. "We will lead an aggressive but orderly transition …