Source: MarketMax
Rational will unveil Rose `98 at Software Development
West, starting today. The conference will serve as an
excellent forum to weigh the products' compelling
capabilities and we will report on initial customer reaction.
In addition to an extensive exhibit on the showroom floor,
the company will also host "Rational Developer Day" all
day today (Tuesday), which will provide all the new
products even greater exposure.
ú The release of Rose `98, described below, is not only a
technical achievement, but is significant because it
partitions the former Rose product into three editions -Modeler,
Professional, and Enterprise, priced at $1.6k,
$2.4k and $3.6k. Customers now have a seamless and
scaleable upgrade path as they begin with Rose for small
business projects and expand over time into enterprise wide
applications.
ú We believe the availability of an entry-level Modeler
version is of particular significance as it provides Visual
Modeler users with a clear migration path to the revenue-
generating Rose tools . Visual Modeler is the free version
of Rose which Microsoft offers to developers via the
Internet and due to its popularity, has begun to ship bundled
with its Visual Studio and Visual Basic development
packages.Stock Opinion We reiterate our BUY rating on Rational shares. In recent weeks the company has made a
number of significant product announcement s which illustrate that not only does Rational push the state of the art
with next-generation component-based development tools, but that consistency and management execution are
returning to the company.
While several challenges remain, including complete integration of the salesforce, the continued release of
enhanced NT-based products and the integration of load and functional test tools, we believe that Rational
understands the scope of these challenges and is well positioned to navigate them.Product Announcement Highlights
Rational Rose 1998 - Rose `98 features a number of substantial enhancements including support for Sun's
Java JDK 1.2 and Microsoft Visual J++, a key capability as these two "flavors" of Java are not compatible and
Rose may be used to bridge incompatibilities. Of equal importance, Rose `98 will be tightly integrated with the
soon-to-be-released Microsoft Visual Studio VB 6.0 and supports the Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC), a
set of core application components. Through this relationship, Rational leverages Microsoft's component
management and repository technologies , two key features which we believe will become critical as component-based
development proliferates as a standard.
ERwin/Rose Link - Jointly developed by Rational and Logic Works, we believe this product is an important
addition to Rose Enterprise as it enables interoperability between application models developed in Rose and
relational database models designed with ERwin. This capability is critical to developers who are designing
applications that work with relational databases from vendors like Oracle, Sybase, Informix, IBM or Microsoft.
Clearcase 3. 2 - Providing advanced configuration management capabilities for mixed Unix and NT
environments, Clearcase 3.2 represents an important milestone as Rational seeks to expand beyond its dominance
on the Unix side and penetrate the NT developer market.
ClearQuest - A new Windows-based product from Rational which can readily integrate with Clearcase 3.2 and
provides customers with the ability to manage change requests through the development lifecycle, a key
capability in our opinion as software projects continue to increase in complexity. |
