Rational Finds Place Within IBM

A pioneer in application-development life-cycle tools, particularly those used for modeling, Rational has added more depth to Big Blue's vast software portfolio. In particular, it bolstered the company's standing with a developer constituency doggedly pursued by every platform player from Microsoft to BEA.

IBM's digestion of Rational has been markedly swift by most standards. What typically takes three years to complete took a little over a year, according to Mike Devlin, general manager of IBM Rational and founder of the tools company. However, the breakneck pace, while desired, had downsides in the form of strain.

"We said we wanted to move quickly after the acquisition closed, and, as a result, last year was painful for our team because we compressed the integration," Devlin revealed at last month's IBM Rational Software Development conference in Texas. "We did accomplish it, though. The IBM/Rational integration is history, in our point of view."

Rational will roll out the first major revamp of its life-cycle desktop product line, anchored by its Rational Rose modeling tool, since becoming one with IBM. Code-named Atlantic and due out by the end of the year, the integrated suite sports an array of enhancements, such as support for UML 2.0, the next version of the modeling standard, and a common meta-model across its individual tools. Most notable, however, is the work Rational has done to tie all of the tools into one offering and integrate them into the open-source Eclipse development environment, other IBM software tools and interfaces. That painstaking task should have the dual effect of simplifying life for developers and stealing their attention from Microsoft's near-worshipped tools arsenal.

Looking ahead, IBM still needs to figure out how Rational fits into its broader channel strategy. Historically, Rational has sold its products directly and currently still derives more than three-quarters of its business that way. Those partners it does count tend to be global systems integrators. What's tricky is that ISVs--which IBM courts heavily as go-to-market partners--are more customers than partners in the Rational world.

Going forward, Devlin says he is taking a cautious approach to the channel, wanting to make certain that partners who resell its sophisticated life-cycle solution are adequately trained and certified. Meanwhile, Rational is being integrated into many of IBM's existing PartnerWorld programs.

The other task with which Rational is charged is bringing some order to IBM's broader tool chest. Devlin says his team is working to reduce the number of development tools and better integrate what remains. But that's not so simple, he contends.