|
I worked at Rational for several years in sales, left last year for a web commerce company. Thought I might join in and give you the differences between Mercury and Rational. Mercury has always focused on the testing marketplace from day one. Therefore, they have had a very long history and by focusing on one thing, they have made a name for themselves. They had recently added a requirements analysis tool, called Calibre (?) right when I had left. Rational acquired it's testing technology from several vendors, including the old SQA, Inc. which had functional testing tools and some load, along with Pure/Atria. Rational had traditionally focused only on the modeling of applications, but when the acquired those other companies, they had a much broader reach and could cover a prospect much deeper than most software companies. So, in a pure testing only play, Mercury usually was tough to beat. They are great "marketers" and really exploited their load testing experience by focusing on "ecommerce" testing. Their tools were not always better, but they "spun" things better from their marketing department. I beat them by expanding the sale, getting the prospect to look beyond just testing and in to the entire software lifecycle. In my mind, Rational has the much longer term winning strategy. |
