Progress boosts Q2 revenue 10%

Progress Software has reported second-quarter net income of $12.2 million, up 51% from $8 million a year earlier, citing higher sales and software licence profits. Revenue for the quarter was $100.2 million, up 10% from $90.8 million in the second quarter of 2004.

The global application infrastructure provider also reported that software licence revenue increased 1% to $37.2 million from $36.9 million in the same quarter last year.

"The results are excellent, and the really good news is that Progress`s South African office is sustaining similar growth," says Rick Parry, MD of Progress Software South Africa. "We have experienced particularly excellent growth in software licensing, which showed a 35% growth in the second quarter, and a total of 24% growth in the first half of the year as a whole.

"This is a direct result of the ongoing adoption and understanding of Progress technology in the South African marketplace, and an indication of the solid growth of software as a service (SaaS) concept. It demonstrates continued confidence in the Progress environment, and is a testimony to the efforts of our partners in this country."

During the second quarter of 2005 Progress continued to see the benefits of its growth initiatives and significant increases in overall company profitability.

"The Progress Real Time, DataDirect and Sonic Software businesses delivered solid revenue growth, and the OpenEdge Division also delivered growth, with substantial operating improvements," says Parry. "The newer companies now account for over 30% of Progress software licence revenue while revenue from OpenEdge continues to grow and is well positioned to deliver solid results for the balance of 2005."

* Progress acquired privately held Apama, a provider of ground-breaking event stream processing technology with a significant presence in the financial services industry.

* It acquired EasyAsk, a provider of natural language question/answer and e-commerce search solutions.

* DataDirect Technologies announced the availability of DataDirect XQuery, an embeddable XQuery implementation for XML applications that need to process both XML and relational data sources.

* Sonic Software was named the "Most Influential" winner in the Infrastructure Software category of CMP Media`s 2005 Network Magazine Innovation Awards. Sonic was recognised for its enterprise service bus product Sonic ESB, which is the foundation of the Sonic SOA Suite, an infrastructure platform for service-oriented architecture (SOA). The award is given to the technologies and products that "have the greatest and most immediate impact on their markets".

* The ObjectStore Division was renamed the Progress Real Time Division, and now provides event stream processing, data management, data access and synchronisation products to enable the real-time enterprise.

* The Progress Real Time Division announced a competitive software upgrade programme for customers of competing object database management products from Versant, Objectivity and others, who are looking to improve the reliability and responsiveness of their database applications.

* The Progress OpenEdge Division was recognised by VARBusiness magazine as one of North America`s top IT vendors in terms of the breadth and depth of the channel-partner programmes it offers to application providers that sell Progress products to end-users. The Progress OpenEdge Division received a five-star rating, acknowledging the robust features of its programmes for application partners, IT integrators, resellers and consultants.

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