The key to successfully deploying IT services is working with a company to provide a tailored package of software and hardware that suits their needs.
Whilst some small offices will only need a set of appropriately secured and networked laptops with Microsoft Windows, Outlook and Office, other companies will have a more complex set of requirements, and a hard-working IT team will endeavour to provide solutions that fit into any workflow or type of business activity.
A fascinating shift in how IT setups work in the modern age is a focus on software rather than hardware. Whilst most modern productivity tools are platform-agnostic and are designed to work on computers, smartphones, tablets and anything that can run a web browser, this was not always the case.
In fact, it was not uncommon for an office to consist of different computers depending on a person’s role in the office, each based on which particular computer had a given killer application.
However, one particular piece of software was the killer application for computers as a business tool entirely and inspired the invention of the computer as we know it today.
Fittingly enough, it was a spreadsheet.
The Visible Calculator
In the late 1970s, the development of the microcomputer meant that businesses did not have to dedicate an entire room to a computer, nor did they necessarily have to rely on programmers adept in complex programming languages or punch cards to complete tasks that an accountant could more efficiently do with training and an abacus.
However, using paper spreadsheets and ledgers was arduous, long-running work, and a mistake or additional line that needed adding could lead to additional hours of erasing, rewriting and recalculating.
Programmer Dan Bricklin wondered if it would be possible to replicate a paper spreadsheet digitally, using a keyboard to input values and allow the system to be easily amended or updated in real time.
Whilst other financial tools existed, they operated as programming processes; you coded a series of steps to update, read or amend a financial model and then refreshed the results. They were also designed for minicomputers and mainframes, which meant that they were far too expensive for small businesses.
Mr Bricklin’s VisiCalc was different and was therefore far more accessible. It sold for less than $100 in 1979 and was initially developed for the Apple II, which was not only an affordable computer but also made it compatible with very cheap storage mediums such as floppy disks or cassette tapes.
A Reason For PC
To call it an overnight success was an understatement; businesses bought VisiCalc and the Apple II computer needed to run it in droves.
This was something that took Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak completely by surprise; they expected microcomputers to largely be bought by hobbyists or in the education sector, but instead, small businesses would rely on them for their accounting.
It would also inspire IBM, who were primarily known as a business mainframe company at the time, to create the IBM PC, which not only became the standard for business users in the 1980s, but provided the architecture that is the fundamental basis of nearly all computers today.
It is believed that over a million copies were sold in total, 300,000 of which were for the PC. It was the definition of a killer application not only for the Apple II and IBM PC, but for computing as a whole.
However, this success could not last, and there is a reason why VisiCalc is not the standard name everyone uses for spreadsheets today.
Counting The Costs
One weakness of VisiCalc was that it was designed for the specific strengths and weaknesses of the Apple II, even when ported to more powerful machines.
This meant that the features it could include were relatively limited by spreadsheet standards, and this increasingly mattered as more people were used to using spreadsheets for accounting rather than handwritten ledgers or executive-level modelling software.
Whilst software such as SuperCalc and especially Microsoft Excel progenitor Multiplan were successful, the familiarity, intuitiveness and ease of use meant that VisiCalc remained successful from 1979 up until around 1983.
The only software that could stop its success was another killer application, and that is exactly what Lotus 1-2-3 was.
Aided by one of the first-ever television advertising campaigns for a software application, Lotus 1-2-3 was designed to be used with the IBM PC whilst still being highly compatible and familiar to VisiCalc users. It was better in every way that mattered.
Just as VisiCalc had been the first piece of software to be a killer application that sold computers by itself, it had also been the first major software success to die off entirely, with parent company VisiCorp ultimately going out of business by 1985.
Lotus 1-2-3 would remain the standard for spreadsheets until Microsoft Excel (and Office more broadly) took over in the late 1980s and early 1990s.