For larger warehouses the competition comes from Oracle's 9i database and IBM's DB2, and these have the advantage of running on machines from IBM, Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard that are familiar to big businesses.
It was well liked by its customers, who needed software and training to help them run IBM's DB2 database system, but it could not seem to turn a consistent profit.
When the acquisition closes in the first quarter, Rational will be the fifth division within IBM software, along with Websphere, DB2 database, Tivoli management products and Lotus collaborative software.