Acquisitions
The momentum generated by Rose and the UML enabled Rational to establish a partnership with developers to the Windows platform; Rational's aim was to secure Microsoft's public support for Catapulse—an independent company aimed at providing hosted software development services using products from Rational and elsewhere. Catapulse was later acquired by Rational.
Rational peaked at $850M in revenues and ~4000 employees. After the dot-com crash, its revenues declined to $650M, but it was dominant, profitable, and cash-rich (~$600M) when its founders chose to sell the company to IBM for $2.1B. The acquisition was announced on 6 December 2002 and was completed before the market opened 21 February 2003.
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