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HCL Notes

rapid application development platform

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 23, 2026
Entity authorityQ60198
Source-derived summary

HCL Notes (formerly Lotus Notes then IBM Notes) is a proprietary collaborative software platform for Unix (AIX), IBM i, Windows, Linux, and macOS, sold by HCLTech. The client application is called Notes while the server component is branded HCL Domino.

HCL Notes provides business collaboration functions, such as email, calendars, to-do lists, contact management, discussion forums, file sharing, websites, instant messaging, blogs, document libraries, user directories, and custom applications. It can also be used with other HCL Domino applications and databases. IBM Notes 9 Social Edition removed integration with the office software package IBM Lotus Symphony, which had been integrated with the Lotus Notes client in versions 8.x.

Lotus Development Corporation originally developed "Lotus Notes" in 1989. IBM bought Lotus in 1995 and it became known as the Lotus Development division of IBM. On December 6, 2018, IBM announced that it was selling a number of software products to HCLSoftware for $1.8bn, including Notes and Domino. This acquisition was completed in July 2019.

History

Lotus Notes's chief inspiration was PLATO Notes, created by David R. Woolley at the University of Illinois in 1973. In today's terminology, PLATO Notes supported user-created discussion groups, and it was part of the foundation for an online community which thrived for more than 20 years on the PLATO system.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “HCL Notes” as rapid application development platform. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Notes, rapid and application.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1989, 1995, 2018, 2019—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1989. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Notes, rapid and application providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “HCL Notes”, the useful work is to connect “rapid application development platform” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q60198. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1989, 1995, 2018 and 2019.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  2. Expand the search: follow HCL Notes primary sources, HCL Notes archive and Notes research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from HCL Notes” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.