Only last month Computergram asked what acquisitive Rational Software Inc would be buying next (CI No 3,075), and the object- oriented application design software company has obliged with an answer, Requisite Technology Inc. Rational paid $8.5m cash for Requisite, all of which will be written off as in-process research and development in the March quarter. Boulder, Colorado-based Requisite develops requirements management tools that enable developers to capture application requirements directly into Microsoft Corp Word documents and automatically create a project management database. The company also developed Re:Quest, a procurement automation system. Funded initially by seed venture capital fund Boulder Technology Incubator, Requisite received a further $3m in venture capital back in November from Mohr, Davidow Ventures of San Francisco. Rational says it will integrate Requisite’s Baseline and RequisitePro tools as an entry point to its Rational Rose visual modeling tool. It will also integrate RequisitePro with its Rational Apex development environment and its Rational Summit project-managment tools. RequisitePro is already integrated with SQA Suite, an automated software quality product from SQA Inc, which Rational is in the process of buying (CI No 3,043). As a result of the Requisite and SQA acquisitions, Rational expects to make a loss for this quarter.
