<p>IBM has dropped the Lotus brand from its collaboration software products as it prepares to release a new version of Notes and Domino.</p><p>In a move that has been a long time in the making, IBM is dropping the Lotus brand and moving forward with the IBM brand, only to identify products like Notes and Domino.</p><p>IBM plans to deliver a public beta of IBM Notes/Domino 9.0 Social Edition that will not carry the Lotus brand, Ed Brill, director of social business and collaboration solutions at IBM, wrote in a Nov. 13 blog post. "This beta is also the point where Notes/Domino will join other IBM software solutions in sporting only the IBM brandthe second-most-valuable brand in the world," Brill said in his post.</p><p>IBM's dropping the Lotus brand might be viewed as a historic moment for old-timers, but also as a business-as-usual move by an industry giant. Lotus has been around since 1982, initially as the Massachusetts-based Lotus Development Corp., which released its famed Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet in 1983. IBM acquired Lotus in 1995 for $3.5 billion, primarily to get hold of Lotus Notes, then a wildly popular groupware system developed by Ray Ozzie's Iris Associates that was eating into IBM's profits.</p><p><a href="http://www.eweek.com/enterprise-apps/ibm-drops-lotus-brand-takes-notes-and-domino-forward/">Keep reading...</a></p>