Celebrating 40 Years of Progress (2024)

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Progress Through the Years

Four decades ago, four visionaries came together to create a better way to build applications. Many companies have come and gone since then, but we’re still here with an unwavering commitment to bring you the best products to develop, deploy and manage high-impact business applications in an ever-changing digital world.

1980sFour Visionaries Bring an Idea—and a Company—to Life

In 1981, four software visionaries—Joseph Alsop, Clyde Kessel, Mary Székely and Chip Ziering—came together to create a better way to build applications. Seeing microcomputers as the wave of the future, they worked to have a UNIX-based application development system ready for market in 18 short months. Much of the initial development was done on Mary’s dining room table using a PC-AT with a 256K floppy drive and no hard disk. Shortly thereafter, Data Language Corporation (DLC) was born. By the mid-80s, DLC was thriving with its first round of funding and first major customers, including Bell South. We also hosted our first user conference in Holland. By the end of the decade, DLC was renamed to Progress Software, the company had expanded operations into Europe and quadrupled sales to over $25 million.

1990s A Decade of Growth

As we entered a new decade, Progress showed no signs of slowing. In 1991, we went public on the NASDAQ, with our initial IPO netting $18.1 million after expenses ($23.25 per share). The following year, we hit $100M in revenue, delivering a compound annual growth rate of 54.7%. We also introduced an industry game changer: our first GUI-based product written completely in 4GL. At the time 4GL was leading-edge, programmer-friendly, powerful and versatile and was considered by many to be the first form of low-code development. By the middle of the decade, we had expanded into 60 countries and employed 1,000 people.

2000s Into the 21st Century

The first year of the new century saw Progress’ third stock split. Meanwhile, the technology landscape was evolving faster than ever. Service Oriented Architecture Services were on everyone’s lips and Progress stood tall with industry-leading technologies including the Sonic Enterprise Service Bus and Actional Web Services. At the same time, enterprise data was exploding and customers needed a better way for their applications to harness it. To meet that need, we acquired DataDirect, which to this day is the de facto data-connectivity standard with some of the most forward-thinking data connectivity tools available today, including Hybrid Data Pipeline and Autonomous REST Connector.

2010 to Today Forging Ahead with a Customer-First Focus

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Committed to the Community and Our World

In addition to our customer-first focus, Progress and its employees have always been actively involved in giving back to our communities through a diverse array of cultural, philanthropic and environmental initiatives. Whether through the creation of our Women in STEM scholarship series, our commitment to social justice initiatives, or our charitable donation and volunteerism programs, we strive to be an inclusive community that celebrates the diverse backgrounds and experiences of all people.

Learn more about our community commitment, embodied in our corporate social responsibility program: Progress for Tomorrow.

Thank You!

Forty years in business wouldn’t have been possible without you and we’re looking forward to being your trusted provider for many more years to come!