Rational Software Corp, Santa Clara, walks away with the Microsoft Corp Visual Test software quality automation tool as part of a deal in which Rational’s products for analysis and design will be tightly integrated with and included in future versions of Microsoft’s enterprise development tools. Microsoft has also licensed its Developer Studio software to Rational to make it part of the framework for that company’s products for component-based development. And Rational will add software for change management and process automation to Microsoft’s Visual SourceSafe application. The deals follow Microsoft deciding that the software products fell outside its chosen spheres of activity. Rational will make a single cash payment of $23m for it, about three quarters of which will have to be taken as a research and development write-off. Microsoft says it wants to focus on development environments such as the Visual Basic programming system, the Visual C++ development system and the Visual J++ development tool, leaving Rational to take care of life-cycle tools business for analysis and design, testing, documentation and change management. Visual Test is designed to make it easier for organizations to deploy mission-critical applicatio ns under Windows95 and Windows NT and on the World Wide Web. It is conceived to help developers to create tests for applications of virtually any size, created with any development tool, and do it quickly. The product is available now from Rational worldwide; Microsoft will look after the current customers for the next six months. The first upgrade from Rational is planned for early 1997. Rational reckons combining the Rational Rose visual modeling tool and Visual Test will represent a significant advance in software specification and verification. Rational Visual Test 4.0 costs $600.
