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Technology Stocks : RATIONAL SOFTWARE- BUY OR HOLD -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hans-Erik Eriksson who wrote (2320)	4/16/1998 4:15:00 PM
From: Cesare J Marini	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3115

Visio Professional is not a CASE tool such as Rational Rose, it is a advanced and very good drawing tool. However, it only costs a couple of hundred dollars and the UML templates it has in it's latest version is very good. I definitely think that the low-end market for those wanting to start to do visual modeling will be very competitive and I'm a bit worried what Rational can do to avoid loosing that market completely. Well, partnering with Visio might be a good start. But really, I don't think that this is very much to worry about. Visio's focus is not on software development -- it's more on informational diagramming, which includes their huge market of business-related drawing software and "smart" templates. Visio probably developed their UML capabilities because it wasn't much work for them to do so and they gained visibility in a new segment as a result. Joe

To: Hans-Erik Eriksson who wrote (2320)	9/2/1998 3:08:00 PM
From: Hans-Erik Eriksson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3115

Latest news about Rational competitors for those of you who don't know: Select has achieved some new financing so they can implement their "turnaround" plan, and they have also signed an agreement to cooperate with BEA Systems (which sells transaction monitors and CORBA broker). Cayenne has been bought by Sterling Software for a few pennies per stock. Both of these companies will have trouble to compete with Rational (though I must say Select has some really good software). On a more worrysome note, here is an announcement where a new player is entering into the "modeling arena" (I actually predicted Visio to do exactly this in an message on this board in April :-)): ---- "Highly Anticipated New Product to Offer Logical, Component-Based Design And Modeling Capabilities SEATTLE, Sept. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Visio Corp. (Nasdaq: VSIO) today announced that its new product, code-named "Venice," will feature capabilities to complement and extend the functionality of the Microsoft(R) Visual Studio(TM) development system version 6.0. "Venice," scheduled to ship in the fourth quarter of this year, will comprise a complete graphical design and modeling tool for IT professionals who manage team-based development and maintenance of enterprise information systems. Its support for Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 will facilitate reverse engineering of existing Microsoft Visual Basic(R)- and Visual C++(R)-based code into UML diagrams, as well as extend UML modeling functionality in Visual Studio 6.0." ----- Visio has released some excellent products and when they now are seriously entering into the "CASE tools" market, they shouldn't be ignored. This product will be priced higher than their drawing tools (it will be around $1000), but still a lot cheaper than Rose and I believe Visio can deliver a high quality product (I have used Visio Professional for a lot of "UML drawing" before and will surely buy this product). The integration with Visual Studio 6.0 is also very smart. Rational still has a large advantage in their complete development suite, but I hope they don't take their position for granted -- Visio will be followed by others that want to get into this marketplace. Still long on Rational though, think the next earning releases will be very positive. Hopefully a couple of exciting product announcements shortly also! /Hans-Erik