Analyst Papers
Progress Software Snags IONA And Mindreef For SOA
Within one week, Progress Software announced its intention to acquire enterprise service bus (ESB) rival IONA Technologies and completed the acquisition of service-oriented architecture (SOA) testing startup Mindreef. The addition of Mindreef continues Progress' pattern of acquisitions that has broadened the Progress portfolio of best in breed products, extending its coverage to include a new category. The acquisition of IONA is a different matter; it adds to Progress' portfolio a competing product suite with strengths that complement Progress' own products' functionality. Application development professionals who are customers of either IONA or Mindreef will benefit from the backing of a financially stronger company, and those who are Progress customers will have more options to choose from. Prospective new customers will see a more complete product portfolio, albeit one with remaining gaps in SOA service life-cycle management and business process management (BPM).
Progress Software Company Assessment for Data Management
In this Company Assessment of Progress Software, Current Analysis described Progress' diverse data-integration offerings found within Progress OpenEdge, Sonic, DataXtend SI, DataDirect Technologies offerings, Progress Apama and Progress Easy Ask. The author wrote, "Existing progress users should take comfort in the fact that the vendor has chalked up two decades of continued profitability, growth and diversification. Their investments in Progress products are safe, and the vendor's worldwide sales, marketing, distribution and support organization – and extensive partner ecosystem – will continue to serve enterprise customers' evolving needs. Existing customers of Progress' DM offerings should continue to rely on the vendor primarily to serve point requirements in such diverse areas as DBMSs (embedded, relational, XML, in-memory), data integration (database drivers, data connectors, data replication, data synchronization, data access, data caching, ESP), and natural-language query. Organizations should recognize that the widespread deployment of business intelligence can benefit the entire organization. They should consider the natural language syntax and "google" like search capabilities of Progress EasyAsk as a vehicle for making BI more pervasive."
The 2008 Service-Oriented Architecture Software Market Landscape
This Market Services Report from AMR Research makes the point that "While most of the attention in the SOA market has been on the suites offered by major vendors, none of these are truly complete, and customers have more alternatives than what lies on the surface." The authors note that tools for SOA enabling such existing IT assets as legacy applications, messaging systems, and databases are now available and will play a crucial role for companies that can't afford to rewrite their systems from scratch. Regarding the Progress Software SOA Portfolio, they report, "Progress remains committed to being the independent choice for infrastructure. The company has assembled a portfolio of SOA products to address the most common integration challenges customers and software vendors face." Progress meets its customers' needs with independence, interoperability, and best-of-breed functionality. "Whatever the success of the big SOA suite vendors, there will always be a market for best-of-breed products like Progress."
SOA Adoption: Technology Diversity Accelerators
Although it is no surprise to say that technology diversity drives adoption of service-oriented architecture (SOA), Forrester's survey data shows patterns in the use of development platforms, development languages, and application platform vendors that affect how rapidly certain IT segments adopt SOA. For example, enterprises with four or more application platform vendors have significantly higher SOA adoption than enterprises that use three or fewer. Small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) that use three development platforms have significantly higher SOA penetration than those using only one. By finding the patterns that match their organization's technology environment, architects can bolster their case for SOA with industry adoption numbers that correspond closely with their peer organizations' adoption rates.
Progress Software Offers a Platform and Ecosystem for Aspiring SaaS Providers
Progress Acquires Iona to Strengthen Presence in AIM Market
This Gartner News Analysis states that the acquisition of Iona Technologies will be consistent with Progress’ strategy of building a large portfolio of SOA-enabling technology through internal development and technology acquisitions such as Actional and Apama. Further, “Progress has the potential to almost double its market share in the application infrastructure and middleware (AIM) market.” The analysis also notes that the deal will give Progress well-known and widely adopted open source products, and will allow Progress to offer both bus-centric and smart end-point-centric ESB architectures.
Progress to Add IONA to its SOA Portfolio
This AMR Alert Article notes that “With the IONA acquisition, Progress will enhance its offerings for .NET and Java integration as well as add CORBA to SOA integration and an SOA registry of its own. Thanks to the architectural approach shared by the two product sets, we expect IONA’s SOA customers to be protected.” The article continues, “For Progress, this is another step on its way to building a broad SOA portfolio and a critical mass of revenue in its SOA business. The acquisition creates new opportunities to cross-sell SOA portfolio products to IONA’s customers and strengthens Progress’ hand in competitive SOA evaluations.”
Progress’ Pending Acquisition of IONA Improves Middleware Position
This IDC Link report states, “This was a good deal for Progress for the following reasons: 26% growth in (Iona) Artix SOA revenue helps accelerate Progress growth, $32 million maintenance business with high renewal rates, 75 field reps capable of selling a joint SOA portfolio, Complementary products, and increased market presence and share in SOA business, including the addition of a SOA registry and repository.” Noting that the Iona bus provides endpoint connectivity, the report concludes, “Therefore, it isn’t much of a stretch to market and sell this combined portfolio, particularly with the (Iona) Artix registry/repository product and Actional services management.”
Progress Acquires IONA in Play for SOA Leadership
In this report, Current Analysis deems the market impact of Progress’ pending acquisition of Iona Technologies as “Very High” and takes a positive perspective on the news. Current Analysis’ rationale includes, “the deal will create a number of immediate market opportunities and long-term technology advantages for Progress, stemming from strong technology and vertical industry synergies, existing cross-company interoperability, global market expansion, and mid-market options. As a result, this quickly moving acquisition will strengthen Progress’ position as a leading, independent standards-based heterogeneous SOA provider.
Progress Software to Acquire IONA Technologies: “Doubling Down” on the SOA Marketplace
In this INSIGHT report, IDC comments, “By acquiring IONA, Progress adds to its portfolio a host of complementary offerings which in some cases add various dimensions that help extend the company’s reach to address an even more complex and varied landscape. This move should thus allow its customer and prospects additional choices regarding deployment, integration, and messaging mediation patterns for SOA. It also arms the company with more options to cross sell its solutions to gain a deeper footprint within the combined customer base.”
Current Analysis Takes Positive Stance on Progress Software Corporation
Tech Industry-watcher Current Analysis took a positive stance on Progress Software, reflecting its “unstack” approach and full SOA Portfolio of products. The report notes, “Progress refers to these solutions as the “unstack” because although the products are closely integrated, they are not interdependent. In all, Progress has positioned itself as a strong integration vendor with numerous SOA-scale capabilities that will appeal to enterprises focusing on both data and process integration. The company is a solid competitor on price and scalability compared with even larger vendors such as IBM and BEA.”
Breaking up the Stack – The SOA Strategy of Progress Software
This Butler Group White Paper shows the breadth of Progress Software's SOA portfolio and the unique manner by which it delivers these technologies to the marketplace. "Progress takes a refreshingly pragmatic view of the SOA market, recognizing that for most organizations (and certainly for most large and very large enterprises) the SOA infrastructure will itself be heterogeneous, either by design or by evolution and necessity. It provide its solutions in a form that can be readily implemented to enhance an existing SOA implementation, providing missing elements, or potentially replacing elements that are a less than optimal fit with the requirements of the organization."
CEP Adoption Is Broader, Deeper, And More Business-Driven Than IT May Expect
This Forrester Research report on Complex Event Processing (CEP), which lists Progress as an established major CEP vendor, finds that the increasingly real-time nature of business drives requirements for more real-time event processing, especially in financial services, order processing, customer service, and Web-based business. The increasing amount of business-relevant information available from real-time event streams presents new opportunities to serve business with rapid responses to changing conditions.
The SOA Spending Report, 2007-2008: Spending Reaches New Heights
AMR Research's survey of 405 companies in Asia, Europe, and the United States shows SOA adoption expanding rapidly. Companies with active SOA initiatives reported spending an average of $1.4M on SOA software and services in 2007. AMR examines spending patterns and drivers by country, industry, and company size on SOA offerings from major vendors, including Progress Software.
Progress Actional Positioned in Leaders Quadrant in Magic Quadrant
Progress Actional was positioned in the leaders quadrant in Gartner's 2007 Magic Quadrant for Integrated SOA Governance Technology Sets. This recognition from Gartner follows another influential industry analyst report that named Actional the top current offering among standalone SOA and Web services management solutions.
Data Services Platforms: Searching for their Place in the Markets
This Burton Group report analyzes how data services promise easy access to enterprise data strewn across redundant databases, trapped inside commercial software applications, and scattered in semi-structured and unstructured formats. Explaining how Progress DataXtend Semantic Integrator helps answer the increasing demands for data services tooling, the authors note that, "Although the synergies between DSP and semantic integration are obvious, only one DSP vendor, Progress Software, provides semantic integration capabilities as part of its product."
The Progress OpenEdge business application development platform was recognized for worldwide leadership in the pure-play embedded database management systems market by IDC in the firm's Worldwide Embedded DBMS 2007-2011 Forecast and 2006 Vendor Shares Report. The report also cited Progress Software's strong ISV channel relationships and continuous product development as key contributing factors for its leading market share.
Progress Software's Depth And Extensibility Lead In Stand alone SOA Management Solutions
In our Forrester Wave™ analysis of standalone service-oriented architecture (SOA) and Web service management solutions, Progress Software's solution rated within our Leader category, with broad and deep visibility into SOA implementations, strong active management of services, and a strong architecture for extensibility.
QAD: A Software Vendor That Has Survived (if Not Thrived) in the ERP Market
"Progress's recent focus on its well-defined SOA framework indicates that the vendor has listened to its some 2,000 ISVs (or Progress application partners, as it calls them) requesting the platform provider to broaden the technology stack so that applications like QAD's will be complemented by cuttingedgeSOA technologies."
Progress Software: Enterprise Products Bolster 3Q Results,On-Demand Could Mean Big Lift
Progress Software (PRGS; $29.73) has 60,000 customers on its OpenEdge platform, including 90% of the Fortune 500. The company is making considerable inroads with its partners to create on-demand products. Its partnership with OpSource provides Progress-ready hosting and call-center services. Now Progress’ 2,000-plus software partners can combine the technology of its newest OpenEdge platform and OpSource’s Optimal OnDemand services to provide their software on demand, at a lower cost, and with less risk than doing it themselves.
Worldwide Embedded DBMS Software 2005 Vendor Shares
"The perennial leader in the embedded DBMS space, Progress Software Corp. practically defines this segment. Prior to the company's acquisitions and diversification of its product portfolio and business model, Progress has based its entire business on the sales of technology through ISV partners. In so doing, the company established the basic practices of embedded software generally, and of embedded DBMS in particular."
Software as a Service in Asia Pacific: Expanding the Reach & Appeal of Software
"Progress Software's SaaS partnership program has resulted in the development of one of the most successful SaaS ecosystems, attracting more than 200 ISVs. The vendor provides technology, business planning, marketing, selling and application transformation support for ISVs delivering or planning to deliver on-demand applications. In addition, partners can also access Progress' best practices framework and access training and workshops."
Progress Software, headquartered in Bedford, MA, provides a broad range of service-oriented architecture (SOA) infrastructure products focusing on developing, deploying, integrating, and managing business applications. Founded in 1981, the company trades on the NASDAQ under the symbol PRGS. Progress reported that for the twelve months ending November 30, 2006, revenue increased 10 percent to $447 million from $405 million in fiscal 2005. Headquartered in Bedford Massachusetts, the company has more than 1,600 employees with worldwide headquarters in The Netherlands, Florida (in support of Central America) and Australia.
New Forrester Report: The Total Economic Impact™ of the Progress® OpenEdge® Platform
This independent study concludes that the Progress OpenEdge platform can be 40% less expensive than alternative platforms for Partners transforming business applications from initial design through development, deployment and ongoing lifecycle management. The unique and supportive approach Progress takes to partnering helps Partners update or add new features to their applications and bring their application to market faster.
Finding the right technology solution involves evaluating the technical merits of the solution, but also assessing how that technology fits with the organization's way of doing business. Conducting an ROI analysis that evaluates the full costs and benefits of a solution is the best way to determine the real value the technology will deliver to the organization.
Choosing Application Software That Fits Your Growing Retail Business: MARTEC International
Mid-market retailers are facing increasingly tough competition as larger players enter their local markets. In order to meet these challenges, retail companies are exploring ways to differentiate their current businesses and expand into new markets. In this Executive Guide, you will find five key steps for "Choosing Application Software That Fits Your Growing Retail Business". These steps are the foundation for an organized approach to dealing with the business challenges mid-market retailers are experiencing today.