OfficeVision was an

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

proprietary office support application.

History

PROFS, DISOSS and Office/36

OfficeVision started as a product for the VM operating system named PROFS (for PRofessional OFfice System) and was initially made available in 1981. Before that it was just a PRPQ (Programming Request for Price Quotation), an IBM administrative term for non-standard software offerings with unique features, support and pricing. The first release of PROFS was developed by IBM in Endicott, NY in conjunction with Amoco Research, from a prototype named OFS developed earlier in Poughkeepsie, NY by Paul Gardner and others. Subsequent development took place in

Dallas Dallas () is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the most populous city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of Texas metropolitan areas, most populous metropolitan area in Texas and the Metropolitan statistical area, fourth-most ...

. The programmable editor

XEDIT XEDIT is a visual editor for VM (operating system), VM/CMS using block-oriented terminal, block mode IBM 3270 Computer terminal, terminals. (Line-mode terminals are also supported.) XEDIT is much more line-oriented than modern Personal compu ...

was the basis of the word processing function in PROFS, as well as in the PROFS document management functions. PROFS itself had descended from OFS (Office System) developed also on the same laboratory and first installed in October 1974. This was a primitive solution for office automation created between 1970 and 1972, which was replacement for an in-house manual system for tracking inter-office communications. Compared to Poughkeepsie's original in-house system, the distinctive new features added by OFS were a centralised database virtual machine (''data base manager'' or ''DBM'') for shared permanent storage of documents, instead of storing all documents in user's personal virtual machines; and a centralised virtual machine (''mailman master machine'' or ''distribution virtual machine'') to manage mail transfer between individuals, instead of relying on direct communication between the personal virtual machines of individual users. By 1981, IBM's Poughkeepsie site had over 500 PROFS users. In 1983, IBM introduced release 2 of PROFS, along with auxiliary software to enable document interchange between PROFS, DISOSS, Displaywriter, IBM 8100 and IBM 5520 systems. PROFS and its

e-mail Electronic mail (usually shortened to email; alternatively hyphenated e-mail) is a method of transmitting and receiving Digital media, digital messages using electronics, electronic devices over a computer network. It was conceived in the ...

component, known colloquially as PROFS Notes, featured prominently in the investigation of the Iran-Contra scandal.

Oliver North Oliver Laurence North (born October 7, 1943) is an American political commentator, television host, military historian, author, and retired United States Marine Corps lieutenant colonel. A veteran of the Vietnam War, North was a National Sec ...

believed he had deleted his correspondence, but the system archived it anyway. Congress subsequently examined the e-mail archives. Two wholly different systems also shared the OfficeVision name: OfficeVision/MVS originated from IBM DISOSS, and OfficeVision/400 from IBM Office/36. IBM's European Networking Center (ENC) in Heidelberg, Germany, developed prototype extensions to OfficeVision/VM to support

Open Document Architecture The Open Document Architecture (ODA) and interchange format (informally referred to as just ODA) is a free and open international standard document file format maintained by the ITU-T to replace all proprietary document file formats. ODA is det ...

(ODA), in particular a converter between ODA and

Document Content Architecture Document Content Architecture, or DCA for short, is a standard developed by IBM for text documents in the early 1980s. DCA was used on Mainframe computer, mainframe and IBM i systems and formed the basis of DisplayWrite's file format. DCA was late ...

(DCA) document formats.

OfficeVision Family

There were several versions of Office Vision. OfficeVision/VM ran on IBM's VM operating system and its user interface CMS. OfficeVison/MVS (OV/MVS) ran on the IBM MVS Operating System on the

System/370 The IBM System/370 (S/370) is a range of IBM mainframe computers announced as the successors to the IBM System/360, System/360 family on June 30, 1970. The series mostly maintains backward compatibility with the S/360, allowing an easy migrati ...

and System/390 IBM mainframe computers. OfficeVision/400 (OV/400) ran on the IBM

AS/400 The IBM AS/400 (Application System/400) is a family of midrange computers from IBM announced in June 1988 and released in August 1988. It was the successor to the System/36 and System/38 platforms, and ran the OS/400 operating system. Lower-cost ...

midrange (mini) system. As said earlier, all this versions were derived from different systems sharing no common code, only shared a common name. In general an OfficeVision system (which ever the platform) provided

, shared calendars, and shared document storage and management, and it provided the ability to integrate word processing applications such as Displaywrite/370 and/or the Document Composition Facility (DCF/SCRIPT). IBM introduced the OfficeVision name in their May 1989 announcement, followed by several other key releases later.

OfficeVision/VM for Asian countries

OfficeVision/VM for the Far Eastern languages of Japanese, Korean and Chinese, had a different evolution. It originated from IBM Office and Document Control System (ODPS), a DBCS-enabled

porting In software engineering, porting is the process of adapting software for the purpose of achieving some form of execution in a computing environment that is different from the one that a given program (meant for such execution) was originally desig ...

from PROFS, plus document edit, store and search functions, similar to Displaywrite/370. It was an integrated office system for the Asian languages, that ran on IBM's

mainframe computers A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterpris ...

under VM, offering such functions as

email Electronic mail (usually shortened to email; alternatively hyphenated e-mail) is a method of transmitting and receiving Digital media, digital messages using electronics, electronic devices over a computer network. It was conceived in the ...

calendar A calendar is a system of organizing days. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months and years. A calendar date, date is the designation of a single and specific day within such a system. A calendar is ...

, and document processing and storing. IBM ODPS was later renamed as IBM OfficeVision/VM and its MVS version (using DISOSS) was not offered. After IBM's buyout of

Lotus Development Lotus Software (called Lotus Development Corporation before its acquisition by IBM) was an American software company based in Massachusetts; it was sold to India's HCL Technologies in 2018. Lotus is most commonly known for the Lotus 1-2-3 sprea ...

in 1995, the ODPS users were recommended to migrate to

Lotus Notes 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 ...

. IBM ODPS was developed in IBM Tokyo Programming Center, located in Kawasaki, Japan, later absorbed into IBM Yamato Development Laboratory, in conjunction with IBM Dallas Programming Center in Westlake, Texas, U.S., where PROFS was developed, and other programming centers. It first became available in 1986 for Japanese, and then was translated into Korean by IBM Korea and into

Traditional Chinese A tradition is a system of beliefs or behaviors (folk custom) passed down within a group of people or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examp ...

by IBM Taiwan. It was not translated into

Simplified Chinese Simplification, Simplify, or Simplified may refer to: Mathematics Simplification is the process of replacing a mathematical expression by an equivalent one that is simpler (usually shorter), according to a well-founded ordering. Examples include: ...

for mainland China. IBM ODPS consisted of four software components: * The Office Support Program, or OFSP, was PROFS enabled to process the Double Byte Character Set of the Asian languages and added some more functions. It could handle email, address, scheduling, storing/search/distribution of documents, and switch to PROFS in English. * The Document Composition Program, or DCP, was a porting from Document Composition Facility, enabled for processing the Double Byte Character Sets with additional functions. It allowed preparation and printing of documents, with a

SCRIPT Script may refer to: Writing systems * Script, a distinctive writing system, based on a repertoire of specific elements or symbols, or that repertoire * Script (styles of handwriting) ** Script typeface, a typeface with characteristics of handw ...

-type editing method. * The Document Composition Program/Workstation allowed preparation of documents on IBM 5550, PS/55 and other "workstations" (

personal computers A personal computer, commonly referred to as PC or computer, is a computer designed for individual use. It is typically used for tasks such as Word processor, word processing, web browser, internet browsing, email, multimedia playback, and PC ...

), that offered IBM Kanji System functions. * The Facsimile Program offered sending/receiving of facsimile data.

OfficeVision/2

With the advent of the

personal computer A personal computer, commonly referred to as PC or computer, is a computer designed for individual use. It is typically used for tasks such as Word processor, word processing, web browser, internet browsing, email, multimedia playback, and PC ...

and the client–server paradigm changed the way organizations looked at office automation. In particular, office users wanted

graphical user interfaces A graphical user interface, or GUI, is a form of user interface that allows user (computing), users to human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through Graphics, graphical icon (computing), icons and visual indicators such ...

. Thus e-mail applications with PC clients became more popular. IBM's initial answer was OfficeVision/2, which was released along side its new generation of computers including PS/2, AS/400 and ES/390, which was a server-requestor system designed to be the strategic implementation of IBM's Systems Application Architecture. The server, as said could run on the

OS/2 OS/2 is a Proprietary software, proprietary computer operating system for x86 and PowerPC based personal computers. It was created and initially developed jointly by IBM and Microsoft, under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci, ...

, VM, MVS (XA or ESA), or

OS/400 IBM i (the ''i'' standing for ''integrated'') is an operating system developed by IBM for IBM Power Systems. It was originally released in 1988 as OS/400, as the sole operating system of the IBM AS/400 line of systems. It was renamed to i5/OS in 2 ...

operating systems, while the requester required OS/2 Extended Edition running on

IBM PS/2 The Personal System/2 or PS/2 is IBM's second generation of personal computers. Released in 1987, it officially replaced the IBM Personal Computer, IBM PC, IBM Personal Computer XT, XT, IBM Personal Computer/AT, AT, and IBM PC Convertible, PC Co ...

personal computers, or DOS. IBM also developed OfficeVision/2 LAN for workgroups, which failed to find market acceptance and was withdrawn in 1992. IBM originally intended to deliver the Workplace Shell as part of the OfficeVision/2 LAN product, but in 1991 announced plans to release it as part of OS/2 2.0 instead:

IBM last week said some features originally scheduled to ship in OfficeVision/2 LAN will be bundled into the current release of the product, while others will be either integrated into OS/2 or delayed indefinitely... IBM's Workplace Shell, an enhanced graphical user interface, is being lifted from OfficeVision/2 LAN to be included in OS/2 2.0... The shell offers the capability to trigger processes by dragging and dropping icons on the desktop, such as dropping a file into an electronic wastebasket. Porting that feature to the operating system will let any application take advantage of the interface.

Migration to Lotus Notes

With the advent of

and Lotus cc:Mail as an OfficeVision/2 replacement, IBM began to resell it. Ultimately, IBM solved its OfficeVision problems through the

hostile takeover In business, a takeover is the purchase of one company (law), company (the ''target'') by another (the ''acquirer'' or ''bidder''). In the UK, the term refers to the acquisition of a public company whose shares are publicly listed, in contrast t ...

Lotus Software Lotus Software (called Lotus Development Corporation before its acquisition by IBM) was an American software company based in Massachusetts; it was sold to India's HCL Technologies in 2018. Lotus is most commonly known for the Lotus 1-2-3 sprea ...

for its

product, one of the two most popular products for business e-mail and calendaring. Users of IBM OfficeVision included the

New York State Legislature The New York State Legislature consists of the Bicameralism, two houses that act as the State legislature (United States), state legislature of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York: the New York State Senate and the New York State Assem ...

and the

European Patent Office The European Patent Office (EPO) is one of the two organs of the European Patent Organisation (EPOrg), the other being the Administrative Council. The EPO acts as executive body for the organisation

. IBM discontinued support of OfficeVision/VM as of October 6, 2003. IBM recommended that its OfficeVision/VM customers migrate to

and Lotus Domino environments, and IBM offered migration tools and services to assist. Guy Dehond, one of the beta-testers of the

, developed the first migration tool. However, OfficeVision/MVS remained available for sale until March 2014, and was still supported until May 2015, and thus for a time was another migration option for OfficeVision/VM users. OfficeVision/MVS runs on IBM's

z/OS z/OS is a 64-bit operating system for IBM z/Architecture mainframes, introduced by IBM in October 2000. It derives from and is the successor to OS/390, which in turn was preceded by a string of MVS versions.Starting with the earliest: ...

operating system.