Hi all,
finally some insider buying reported. Four officers are buying
150,000 shares, all options related. Mike Devlin has purchased
110,000 shares through options. Maybe this will cool off the
worries about the recent insider selling.
On another note, RATL has a new policy for checking licenses.
If you buy a RATL product now, you get a CD with ALL of the
RATL products on it. You then need a license key to install
each product, and you get what is called a 'startup key' with
your purchase. This installs your product and makes it runnable
for about 3 months. However, to continue using it you need a
'permanent key' which you request through a special program,
a License Manager. This program finds out specifics about your
machine such as things about the BIOS and the serial number of
your hard disk, returns this information to Rational, which then
produces a permanent license key which makes your product
indefinately runnable on that specific computer ONLY.
Not sure what to make of this (It took me a while to understand
how it works). It could mean increased revenue for Rational,
because you can't buy a Rational product and install it on many
machines (which is illegal but I'm sure it happens). It could
however also annoy many customers, e.g. if they want to transfer
the software onto another, newer, computer. I do training on
RATL technology (e.g. UML) and products, and can't now for
instance when training at the customer site simply install
Rational Rose on a computer and demonstrate it for them.
Having all the products on the CD is definitely a good idea,
because that will make customers interested in other products
and all RATL will need to do when the customer wants to buy
a product is to send the license key (and the bill...).
Best,
/Hans-Erik |
