The company is changing its course and redefining its strategy. Jasmine Desai reports from the Progress Partner Summit 2012, Macau
“Every company goes through change, but not every company goes through a transformation,” said Jay Bhatt, President and CEO, Progress Software Corporation.
Progress Software announced its decision to divest from ten of its product lines including Progress Savvion, although its BPM components will still be integrated into its OpenEdge product line, which represents 50% of its revenue. Application development and real-time analytics will be the focus areas going forward.
Having divested from 10 of 14 products to grow is expected to help the company achieve a two phase execution plan. Phase one will be to focus and strength its core business. Phase two will be to strengthen Cloud application platform products. It will focus on OpenEdge, Data direct connect and Apama. 
According to Keith Budge, VP & MD APJ, Progress Software, “There is a major opportunity in the APJ region. Presently, we get 7-8% of our business from this region. The plan requires divestment but it allows us to invest in areas wherein we want to grow into. Progress Software will be successful in the APJ based on how we are doing in the partnering ecosystem.”
Progress Software gets more user cases from existing customers. E.g. The Crown in Macau uses OpenEdge to track its gambling business. Its other customers include PepsiCo, Subway and QAD. Twinings runs an ERP system from a Progress partner. Presently, it has development centers in Mumbai, Hyderabad and Singapore. It also has extensive partnerships with major SIs and an extensive reseller partner ecosystem, with over 30 open edge application development partners in Australia alone. The major partnerships in the APJ region are Capgemini, Huawei, Tata, NCS, Avnet, Qualicom and Unisys. Amongst its Indian customers are Reliance Capital, ING Vysya, DHL and Reliance Life Insurance.
According to Forrester, OpenEdge yields 40% more productivity and 30% more delivery. On the application development platform, it is focusing on partnering with ISVs or application partners. On the decision analytics front, it has partnered with system integrators and resellers. On the data connectivity front, it has partnered with resellers and distributors.
Sanchit Vir Gogia, Senior Analyst. Forrester Inc, said, “Building the strategy focusing chiefly around the core area of application development is a good strategy but a risky one. It is critical for the management to articulate the company’s pruned focus and long term objectives to stakeholders. Along with the fresh focus on emerging markets like China and India, the company has to invest in support partners to fill up existing gaps and further adoption for its core products like OpenEdge and Apama.”
Presently, the company’s focus is primarily on the Cloud. According to a TCS study, the APJ region is adopting the Cloud more quickly than the US or Europe. In 2014, 50% of applications will be on the Cloud. Currently, Progress Software has the third largest Cloud-based ISV ecosystem. Dr. Giles Nelson, Dy. CTO, Progress Software, said, “Next gen application development will be where the Cloud, Big Data and real-time analytics meet. The nature of business applications is changing and customers need to be engaged in new ways.”
The five imperatives for the next generation of business applications will be the Cloud, mobile, Big Data wherein data volumes and analysis complexity will be pressured by a smaller time window of analysis, social media and partner ecosystem.
Another trend that was talked about was that of decision analytics. Although, data warehouses are moving towards real time analytics, it hasn’t got to the point wherein it can do analytics within microseconds.
Organizations can combine Corticon with Apama for Complex Event Processing (CEP). E.g. Dell utilizes it for threat detection and automated action for improving customer care. It can detect when an SLA is in danger of being violated and visualize SLA levels. Standalone Apama is utilized for real time analytics and standalone Corticon to externalize business logic for agility and business control.
One of the most interesting sessions was a Panel Discussion wherein thoughts were exchanged about the markets in India and China. Partners spoke the latest things they have been hearing from customers like BYOD and Big Data. The major challenge that customers were having and are still facing is around security. Retaining talent was another major issue for most partners. Another timely question that was raised was about the impact of the global economy on their business.
