A Parting Word

Early last Novem­ber I sat with Chris Larsen over break­fast as he explained his per­spec­tive on Progress’ mar­ket pres­ence. Chris had been fol­low­ing Progress for years and had recently joined Progress as Exec­u­tive VP of Sales. He summed up the chal­lenges faced by the com­pany with a story of a recent cus­tomer visit.

This big bank he vis­ited had no idea who Progress was. They were a cus­tomer of OpenEdge, DataDi­rect and Sonic, and there was a big Apama deal on the table. We were late to the deal, and didn’t have the strate­gic rela­tion­ship with the bank that we should have had as a long term tech­nol­ogy provider. A rela­tion­ship, I might add that was crit­i­cal to beat­ing some of the smaller star­tups com­pet­ing against Apama for the busi­ness. Chris was frus­trated that there were four sales teams in at the bank, none of which showed a whit of inter­est in work­ing with the other.

Tons of rea­sons, obvi­ous to any­one at Progress, as to why that was the case.

Just 8 months later, I’d like to share an expe­ri­ence. The expe­ri­ence was fit­tingly my final Progress performance.

I vis­ited a cus­tomer in Dal­las who is a long-time OpenEdge cus­tomer. I went with the account man­ager and his sales engi­neer. The account man­ager is a long time Progress employee from the Sonic/Actional busi­ness. The sales engi­neer, an old hand at OpenEdge devel­op­ment is now work­ing sell­ing the com­po­nents of RPM and DXSI. I’ve seen him in accounts and had no idea he had an OpenEdge back­ground until he told me. He com­pe­tently posi­tions and leads POCs around Actional, Savvion, and DXSI.

The infor­mal dis­cus­sion before the meet­ing started briefly cov­ered Sonic, and the customer’s inter­est and expe­ri­ence with ESB’s. Then, we had the OpenEdge prod­uct team join on a Webex, share some new tech­nol­ogy and roadmap… Actively show­ing this prospect that OpenEdge tech­nol­ogy is alive and well. Based on the num­ber of peo­ple that joined from the team, it was clear it’s also impor­tant to us.

Inter­est­ingly, there was a gen­tle­man from the DataDi­rect side of Progress who has taken on a larger role in OpenEdge prod­uct man­age­ment. Able to give some per­spec­tive on Progress from that per­spec­tive. Then, we were joined by some­one from our indi­rect team, along with an OpenEdge part­ner whose prod­uct this cus­tomer used. Progress are tak­ing an active role in par­tic­i­pat­ing in this rela­tion­ship between part­ner and cus­tomer to get closer to the busi­ness prob­lems and help exe­cute. It was great to see the Progress direct and indi­rect account team mem­bers col­lab­o­rat­ing this way.

The cus­tomer now has a sin­gle account man­ager across all these prod­ucts and aspects of our rela­tion­ship, a feat that would have been unheard of 8 months ago!

The cus­tomer had joked ear­lier that no one has ever heard of Progress, but that recently a ven­dor who they selected for com­pli­ance had com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing the Progress data­base. Would we like an intro­duc­tion? You bet! Could this be a sign that change is in the air regard­ing their mar­ket presence?

Finally, I deliv­ered the Actional mes­sage. Inter­est­ingly, the cus­tomer started me off by say­ing “Actional’s been around a while, hasn’t it?” I gave the whole 20+ year his­tory of the VisualEdge and adapter tech­nolo­gies, the evo­lu­tion to web ser­vices / SOA, the West­bridge merger that added a deep secu­rity core to Actional’s SOA Gov­er­nance suite, fol­lowed by the Progress acqui­si­tion and all the fun that entailed (You’re part of Sonic. You’re not part of Sonic. Wait, you’re part of Sonic. No, wait…), end­ing with the evo­lu­tion to RPM both as impor­tant to the mar­ket, and to the evo­lu­tion of Progress.

It was amaz­ing to give this story one last time. And, to give it in a con­text that so demon­strates the changes that have occurred at Progress under Chris’ leadership.

The changes that are occur­ring are excit­ing. I wish my friends the best of luck with the new Progress. It’s a small world. I say that with great author­ity hav­ing worked in 26 coun­tries, includ­ing deliv­er­ing the first Actional deal in about 8 new coun­tries. (I swear this is true… I once got on a plane, and the stew­ardess said “hi David, oh, you got a hair­cut. Looks nice.”)

Thanks for the expe­ri­ences, the friend­ship, and the inspi­ra­tion. It was my great­est pleasure.

Peace.