I usually take comments like "what we hear from the field sales reps" with a grain of salt- no offense intended to those field sales reps out there... As for the 88% win rate, I don't believe that. CAYN has not come out with a quantum leap in functionality and doesn't compare in the automated testing, requirements management, CM, VC, Quality and performance arenas. They are less-expensive, so RATL may be selling into larger accounts and losing smaller deals, but at 88%? The variables on that type of question and answer are so vast, it is a pretty stupid indicator for an Analyst to ask for and for CEO to respond too(IMO) Anyway, if people get Visual Modeler for free and have to pay for Object Team, the answer is pretty straight forward.
On a similar note, let's open up the issue of PLAT. I consider this company to be a serious competitor and with their recent acquisition of LBMSY, they open up their second significant competitive advantage against RATL. The first is Repository technology- PLAT collaborates with MSFT on the development of MS Repository and has big advantage. Project and process management is now another area. RATL does not have an active development management tool and doesn't offer true repository technology (I am biased, the integration of the two is special to my heart, by the way...) However, RATL has SQA, Requisite and a big advantage in the UML and PLAT cannot answer. Additionally, PLATs best practices don't compare to Objectory.
Anyway, market seems to like PLAT- has run up the stock recently (volatility is high) even with M&A activities (which caused RATL to crash and burn). In fact, PLAT has acquired something like 35 companies in the past 4 years, so they make RATL look like a stay at home group. RATL and PLAT are the only companies positioning across the entire development life cycle and unless CAYN and Select follow their moves, they don't have a prayer. Unfortunately for these guys, they are capitalized to do so- niche markets are not going to fly in visual modeling- too integrated with other responsibilities.
Hope this helps- don't mean to call bull^$##$ on CAYN, but seems unrealistic. |
