IBM sees the acquisition of Rational as a way to complete its "on demand" e-business offering. "We see this acquisition as allowing us to focus on the kind of end-to-end application development and process integration capabilities we hear customers saying they want," says Mills. Rational has a reputation for providing a strong set of development tools for every aspect of the application development lifecycle. "We're known in the industry as the company you turn to for best practices and intellectual property around enterprise architecture," shares Eric Schurr, Rational chief marketing officer.

IBM plans to integrate Rational's strengths into the core IBM products. "Our relationship with Rational has been very complementary over the years. We've focused on language-based tools for Java, Cobol, C, and C++ environments. Rational has always provided the surrounding capabilities for us in analysis, design, test, deployment, team infrastructure, repository services, and library services. It's a powerful environment that rounds out the total workbench when you combine our language-based tools and the Rational environment," says Mills.

Few can deny that IBM and Rational make a powerful combination. "Certainly given that IBM is becoming more developer-friendly, it will now be able to provide one-stop shopping for companies looking to set up the people, process, and technology for their enterprise application strategy," comments WebSphere Advisor Technical Editor Tony Higham, chief solution officer at FatWire Software. "Great tools, great server software, and support for open source -- it all adds up to good things to come," adds Jason Gibson, technical architect at Rare Medium Atlanta.

The Microsoft question

Rational's products include tools for both the J2EE and .NET platforms. The pending acquisition by IBM raises questions about the fate of Rational's .NET products. Steve Mills cites IBM's support for the Windows operating system. "We deliver a large portfolio of products on Windows. In fact, we have more products on Windows than Microsoft does. Our approach to the market is very much heterogeneous and cross-platform." Rational shares IBM's commitment to the .NET products. "Rational has a significant value proposition in the .NET space, and that's one of the attractive elements of Rational to IBM," adds Schurr. "IBM is all about heterogeneity and supporting complex customer environments. IBM has had a leadership role in Web services, which is based on interoperability. It's about mixed execution and operating systems working together. That's part of the IBM strategy and culture. The addition of Rational's .NET offerings to IBM makes all the sense in the world."

IT analysts seem convinced IBM is moving in the right direction. Will IBM maintain Rational's .NET tools? Forrester group director and analyst Ted Schadler says the likelihood is "very high." "There's going to be a share of wallet between IBM and Microsoft," explains Schadler. "The battle will be for that share of wallet in the data, Web, application, integration, security, and network management tiers . . . both players have to participate in a heterogeneous world."

As of this writing, the deal wasn't closed, giving rise to speculation that Microsoft might outbid IBM for Rational. "I've heard the rumors, and I've also heard they aren't true," comments Schadler. "Why would it want to divert from Visual Studio.NET? I don't think Microsoft thinks it's missing anything outside its core product." At the time of publication, IBM, Microsoft, and Rational declined to comment.

What about price?

Rational products are priced higher than most development tools. "From my experience, the Rational products are powerful, but complex. They are also expensive, which was a barrier for many of our customers," comments WebSphere Advisor Technical Editor Cory Isaacson, president and chief technology officer, Compuflex International. Higham agrees, "Rational offers great products with lots of features, but can I afford them? Rational is the Ferrari of development toolsets."

IBM hasn't commented on its pricing plans for Rational products, although it will leverage the existing Rational sales force as a part of its integration efforts.
Integration: Will it be like Lotus?

When IBM completes the acquisition, many wonder what the integration timetable will look like. IBM acquired Lotus in 1995, then pretty much left it alone. Only in the last two years has Lotus been prominently pulled into the IBM world. Higham seems to think IBM did the right thing with Lotus, "If IBM can do with Rational what it did with Lotus -- embrace and not mess with it too much -- I think we could see some great solutions from them."

However, Schadler doesn't foresee the integration happening that way. "Steve Mills is going to aggressively integrate Rational. It isn't going to happen like Lotus," predicts Schadler. "[Rational] has to become part of the portfolio. Mills is going to get his own staff in there and realign the sales organization and compensation. Lotus now has WebSphere all over the place, with Tivoli SecureWay now providing some security. Those are all the right things to do for customers. He'll do the same with Rational."

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