Progress Software


Progress Software Corporation is an American public company that produces software for creating and deploying business applications. Founded in Burlington, Massachusetts, with offices in 16 countries, the company posted revenues of $753 million in 2024.

History

1980s: DLC to Progress Software

Progress Software was co-founded by several MIT graduates, including Joseph W. Alsop, Clyde Kessel, and Chip Ziering in 1981. Originally called Data Language Corporation, the company changed its name to Progress Software in 1987, the same name of its main product, Progress.

1990s: Public company

In 1991, Progress Software joined the NASDAQ.

2000s: Broad expansion

In 2002, Progress Software acquired Stylus Studio developer eXcelon Corporation for approximately $24 million. In 2003, Progress Software acquired DataDirect Technologies for $88 million. In 2004, Progress Software acquired Persistence Software for $16 million. In 2005, Progress acquired complex event processing company Apama. In January 2006, Progress Software acquired Actional Corporation. In 2006, Progress Software acquired Neon Systems, a company specializing in modernizing 3270 applications.
In 2008, Progress Software acquired Xcalia, a data integration company, and Mindreef, which developed SOAPscope products. In September 2008, Progress acquired IONA Technologies, developer of service-oriented architecture platforms Artix and Orbix, for $146 million.

2010s: Focusing and rebranding

In 2010, Progress Software acquired business process management vendor Savvion Inc. In April 2011, Progress Software sold their SWIFT integration product "ADS" to C24 Technologies Ltd. The product was re-branded to its former name "Integration Objects".
In 2012, Progress announced its shift to become a much more narrowly focused specialist vendor, looking to sell or decommission most of their existing products. In June 2012, the company sold its open source division FuseSource, which was spun out from the IONA business in October 2010, to Red Hat. In October 2012, Progress Software sold the brands Sonic, Savvion, Actional and DataXtend to Trilogy which created the company Aurea Software. In December 2012, the Orbix, Orbacus and Artix product lines were sold to Micro Focus International for $15 million.
In 2013, Progress Software acquired Rollbase Inc. and Software AG acquired Apama activities from Progress Software. In 2014, Progress acquired Cincinnati-based Modulus. Also in 2014, Progress acquired Telerik, a provider of application development tools. In 2019, Progress Software acquired Ipswitch, Inc., an IT management vendor known for its MOVEit managed file transfer platform.
In May 2016, Progress Software re-branded as "Progress" in an effort to "shed any doubts it was not living up to its name".

2020s: Targeted expansion

In 2020, Progress Software announced the acquisition of Chef Software Inc., the developers of the Chef configuration management tool. The acquisition was completed by October 2020. In 2021, Progress Software acquired Kemp Technologies, who build load balancing products. The acquisition was completed on November 1, 2021. In 2023, Progress Software acquired database vendor MarkLogic Corporation. In 2024, Progress Software acquired ShareFile from Cloud Software. The acquisition was completed on October 31, 2024. In 2025, Progress Software acquired Nuclia, a provider of agentic Retrieval-Augmented Generation technology.

Products

The Progress portfolio includes solutions for enterprise integration, data interoperability, and application development, including Software as a Service enablement and delivery.

Current products

In 2023, a security vulnerability in Progress-owned file transfer software MOVEit was exploited in a data breach affecting various companies and government organizations. A running total maintained by cybersecurity company Emsisoft showed that more than 2,500 organizations were known to have been impacted as of October 25, 2023 with more than 80 percent of those organizations being US-based. The cybercriminal organization Clop was alleged to have been partially responsible for the attacks, and claimed responsibility for breaches of 1st Source, the BBC, British Airways, the New York City Department of Education, Putnam Investments, and Shell among others.