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- The military was a key early customer and funder of digital computing, with many innovations emerging from university research labs serving military contracts.
- PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations) was an early computer-based education system developed at the University of Illinois with military funding, emphasizing collaboration and user-generated content.
- PLATO's 'notes' system, created by high school students, became a popular public messaging platform that influenced later social networks and online communities.
- Lotus Notes, developed by Ray Ozzie and Iris Associates, was a groupware platform derived from PLATO's notes system, using a replicated database model for collaboration.
- Lotus Notes was a flexible, schema-less platform that could be customized for various business needs, including email, calendars, and workflow automation.
- Despite early dominance, Lotus Notes declined due to competition from Microsoft Exchange, proprietary standards, and its complex multipurpose nature, eventually being sold to HCL in 2018.