Progress Software Launches New Responsive Process Management Suite

Progress Software Corporation (NASDAQ: PRGS), a leading independent enterprise software provider that enables companies to be operationally responsive, today announced the launch of the Progress® Responsive Process Management (RPM) suite, a next generation business solution that enables enterprises to achieve a higher level of business performance than previously possible. The Progress RPM^TM suite, which unifies comprehensive visibility, Business Event Processing (BEP) and Business Process Management (BPM) capabilities on a single platform, will be generally available in late April. The market opportunity for this type of solution is expected to be greater than $10 billion [based on IDC Research*] and Progress Software is the only company with the ability to deliver it today.

The Progress RPM suite provides key functionality that enables continuous business improvement in three specific ways:

• First, the Progress RPM suite is a human-centric platform providing business users with real-time visibility into business processes and systems, including legacy processes both inside and outside the business.
• Second, the Progress RPM suite includes comprehensive business process modeling and automation capabilities. This enables business users to continuously improve their existing business processes and rapidly implement new ones, without disrupting existing systems.
• Third, the Progress RPM suite continuously monitors millions of events impacting a business in order to identify patterns as well as anticipate opportunities and threats. The RPM suite is capable of immediately responding, either by triggering an automated response, adjusting a business process that is already running or even launching a new business process. It can also simply alert a business user to take action.

According to Maureen Fleming, program director of IDC's business process management and middleware research service: "Over the past two years, one of the fastest-growing areas of software investment by enterprises has been to improve their situational awareness. Logically, the next step is broadening the focus to not only gain visibility into problems or opportunities but to rapidly respond. Enterprises will increasingly look for vendors that offer a knowledgeable and comprehensive approach to building this next generation of critical business applications."

All of this functionality is managed through the Progress Control Tower^TM product, a unified environment that displays real-time alerts, interactive interfaces and tools. The Control Tower provides business leaders with the ability to view what is happening within their business and to improve it from a single source. This fully configurable, feature-rich, interactive framework delivers a wealth of relevant, key performance indicators (KPIs) and business information. A powerful modeling environment enables new business processes to be rapidly created, modeled, monitored, controlled and improved dynamically.

Richard D. Reidy, president and chief executive officer, Progress Software, said: "We are very excited to be launching the Progress Responsive Process Management suite. Independent research, industry analyst findings, and customer feedback clearly indicate a demand for a solution that helps businesses become more operationally responsive. Equally, operations and line managers have to gain more insight into their business operations and activities than currently exists. They need to increase revenue by becoming more competitive, maximize profits by becoming more efficient, and prevent loss by detecting threats before they cause critical problems. To achieve this, they must be able to anticipate and respond to what will happen, not just react to what has happened. The RPM suite provides every business leader with what they need – total control over their business.”

Dr. John Bates, Progress Software’s chief technology officer and senior vice president of corporate development and strategy said: "Enterprises are moving away from packaged applications because their features are essentially set in stone. This means that they are unable to quickly adapt to changes in the business environment. The Progress RPM suite enables enterprises to have dynamic business applications that adapt based on changing business circumstances. Using the Progress Control Tower, business and IT users can model and improve responsive processes and create customized dashboards and alerts to understand and manage real-time business conditions.”

Examples of industries using dynamic business applications include the financial services industry and specifically high frequency trading, risk surveillance and management, regulatory compliance and fraud prevention; the telecommunications industry with responsive revenue management and location-based services; and, the travel industry with smart airlines and logistics with real-time track-and-trace.

Progress solution accelerators are an integral part of the Progress RPM suite. These solution accelerators are pre-built industry-specific dynamic applications that extend the core Progress RPM suite. They allow business users to define their business processes based on best-in-class industry practices.

Dr. John Bates noted that: "time to market of new services and applications is a key competitive requirement. Progress RPM solution accelerators dramatically reduce time-to-market of key solutions and further enhance an enterprises’ ability to improve their business performance.”

Progress Software Corporation

Progress Software Corporation (NASDAQ: PRGS) is a global software company that enables enterprises to be operationally responsive to changing conditions and customer interactions as they occur – to capitalize on new opportunities, drive greater efficiencies and reduce risk. The company offers a comprehensive portfolio of best-in-class infrastructure software spanning event-driven visibility and real-time response, open integration, data access and integration, and application development and deployment – all supporting on-premises and SaaS/Cloud deployments. Progress maximizes the benefits of operational responsiveness while minimizing IT complexity and total cost of ownership. Progress can be reached at www.progress.com or +1-781-280-4000.

Safe Harbor Statement

Except for the historical information and discussions contained herein, statements contained in this release may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements, which include statements regarding the company’s business outlook, involve a number of risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, including but not limited to the following: the receipt and shipment of new orders; the timely release of enhancements to the company's products; the growth rates of certain market segments; the positioning of the company's products in those market segments; variations in the demand for professional services and technical support; pricing pressures and the competitive environment in the software industry; the weakness in the U.S. and international economies, which could result in fewer sales of our products and may otherwise harm our business; business and consumer use of the Internet; the company’s ability to attract, incent and retain highly skilled managerial, technical and marketing personnel and the success of those personnel in implementing the company’s business plans; the company’s ability to complete and integrate acquisitions; the company’s ability to realize the expected benefits and anticipated synergies from acquired businesses; the company's ability to penetrate international markets and manage its international operations; and changes in exchange rates. The company undertakes no obligation to update information contained in this release. For further information regarding risks and uncertainties associated with the company's business, please refer to the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Progress, Progress RPM, and Progress Control Tower are trademarks or registered trademarks of Progress Software Corporation and/or its subsidiaries or affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. Any other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.

* IDC Research—Economic Crisis Response: Worldwide Application Deployment Software 2008 - 2012 Forecast Update by Maureen Fleming.

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