After Microsoft developed Visual Test, Rational purchased the product rights.
Rose was written to support Ada programming. It currently supports C++ and Java. Unlike many programming artifacts, which are kept and maintained, Rose Models are merely a stage in the development of a program; hence they can be discarded after a few uses, because they can be generated again from the developed program. This is called Round-trip engineering.
One competitor program is Peter Coad's Together/Whiteboard which is available for download. This program also allows Round-trip engineering, but generates mostly Java code.
Rose arose from a few engineers formerly at GE, in Waukesha, Wisconsin. After being acquired by Rational, much of the development was moved to California.
Rational has since been acquired by IBM, which plans to run it as an independent business.