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

To: Roger Mory who wrote (2559)	7/11/1998 1:18:00 AM
From: ratlong	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3115

Greetings everyone... Been following this thread for a long time. Thought it time to speak up. By the way, I keep hearing about some self-deprecating woman who works this thread, taunting men, while trading from home... she sends inquiring emails to active and former participants? ... anyone seen her lately? Anyway, I believe that the optimism on this thread, while not without risk, is warranted. An interesting point was made today that the competition is shrinking. Cayenne is dead in the water. In fact, if Rational wanted to try to match up with the LGWX acquisition by PLAT, they might look at Cayenne right now. They fill a data modeling need. Select is a dwindling threat. I have seen Select beat Rose and it appears to be as good a tool, if not better, in some ways. However, Select did not make the moves that Rational made in Q1, 1997 in acquiring the products to support Rose. Select dies. PLAT worries me. Have to admit, they seem to be amassing quite a stable of products. However, the articles about the UML and the emergence of OO process lead me to think that RATL has the edge. PLAT is a huge company and alot of PLAT employees don't know and don't care about Paradigm Plus and their other modeling tools. This is a data management company that saw their market drying up and decided to acquire their way into a new space. The RATL thought leadership leads the way. So, I think RATL is increasing their stranglehold. A couple of concerns and "weekend assignments for the thread"... For all the hype, I still have not heard or seen tremendous enterprise success from Rose. My gut is that people still don't know who to use it. I think ReqPro is the hottest tool in the stable and SQA is right behind and the ClearCase user base has so much invested, they can't switch... so a question to the thread- Can people find examples of organizations that have bought a "project" license of Rose and gained success to the point that the organization decides to use it with floating licenses? That will tell us whether they are getting repeat sales in the same client site. Services concern me- Someone wrote that we should expect significant revenue growth in services. RATL has been running newspaper adds to hire. They seem to be somewhat desperate in SF to get people so it appears that they do not have the bandwidth to support the growth in services. Limited internal consulting with small organizations filling out most of their partner organizations. Can they provide the level or expertise to support their growth? Talk to people you know who are using RATL tools and identify their source of consulting and training services. That will give us an indication of whether they can support rapid product proliferation. I think that without service capabilies- internally or through partners, RATL products don't have long term success. Anyway, I am looking for good things. Market leadership, a growth market, thought leadership, partnership with Microsoft, dwindling competition and comprehensive product line- I'm holding.