Happy Anniversary to Rational!

It's been five years this week since Rational was acquired by IBM, so we're celebrating!

Of course, Rational has been around a lot longer than that - originally, we were founded way back in 1981, when we built Ada compilers and the hardware to run them on (you can go to wikipedia for a brief overview of Rational's history). We've come a long way since then! Today,

• IBM Rational delivers the industry's most complete, open, standards-based software development environment that helps developers deliver more reliable and precise, error-free code.
• IBM Rational software is the clear leader in Application Development and Project Portfolio Management (as ranked by Gartner analysts for six consecutive years).
• IBM Rational software is used by nine of the Fortune Top 10 companies, 45 of the Fortune Top 50 companies, and 87 out of the top 100 companies.
• Since the acquisition, more than 28,000 customers have purchased Rational software development solutions.
• IBM Rational has a tremendous impact on IBM's middleware portfolio. There are more than 2,000 Rational software developers within IBM focused on helping customers govern the business process of software and systems delivery.

So, let's celebrate! There's a new podcast you can listen to in which Grady Booch, Lee Nackman and Walker Royce chat about the last five years, talk about what it has meant for each company and for the software profession in general. Refinement of Rational's focus, the expansion of IBM's software paradigm, the further embracing of open source and open standards, the investment in growing technical talent, and the Jazz platform are all discussed.

For more information, check out the special anniversary page.