Big change for Progress?

One of the benefits us "old timers" get as Progress Software buys more mainstream and less embedded technologies is some exposure in the press. OpenEdge (read as Progress 4GL) rarely comes up on the radar and we rarely see industry, much less analyst, coverage of the business software building tools we love so much. One shining example did emerge last week that gives me hope at the same time it causes me no small amount of concern.

Neil Ward-Dutton posted a entry about Progress in the Software Infrastructure for Business Value blog over at ebiz. He was covering the SOA offerings and ended up chatting with PSC execs via Twitter. That conversation fueled his blog post and he made a very interesting point about Progress Software.

The most interesting bit, however, was a comment on Neil's blog from Mark Palmer. His response shone some much-needed light into what Progress Software is thinking and what choices Rick Reidy is facing.

Neil observed that Progress Software is like Unilever: a conglomerate of technologies, not always aligned, but most definitely not unified under a single brand or moniker. The effect of which is the individual technologies gain no benefit from being part of the Progress Software umbrella. Well put.

Mark, a former GM at Apama, chimed in and pointed out that Joe Alsop's strategy was, indeed, that of balkanization and Rick now has to choose how to move forward. Those choices will very much so affect Application Partners and I encourage each of you to join the conversation either at Neil's blog on in the forums at the Application Partner Business Council.

Regardless of whether or not the Progress APs can sway Rick one way or another in his decision, we do need to give him candid input, now, and he needs to hear from us what we need the final result to do for our OpenEdge-based software development businesses. Where PSC is headed, the benefits that move gives to the OpenEdge partners, and the effects on us in the meantime are all significant.