Progress, a US-based software company, sees more opportunities in the Philippines where it aims to make a difference in businesses in 2016.
“Our goal is to help customers and partners develop, deploy, market and sell applications that make a difference to their businesses, customers and partners,” says Progress Software Corp. chief operating officer Jerry Rulli.
Progress delivers software, services and solutions to help customers solve the complex digital business challenges, he says. Its tools enable customers around the world to rapidly develop and deploy business applications to address a variety of business needs.
“Our success is fueled by a wide array of solutions companies can use to outpace their market and get a step ahead. In fact, Progress solutions power more than 140,000 enterprises, a pool of more than 1.8 million developers and a population of over 4 million application users worldwide,” says Rulli, a 30-year veteran in the software and technology industry, in explaining what the company does.
Rulli says the Philippines is an important market for Progress in Asia Pacific. “We see great potential in the region as we witness significant growth in cloud computing, big data and mobility, referred to by IDC as third platform technologies,” he says.
IDC, a market research company, describes third platform as the next evolution of hardware and software technologies that now focus on the needs and demands of consumers first, instead of enterprises.
Rulli explains that ‘3rd platform’ has cloud as its core, and the solutions will offer anyplace, anytime access to application functionality. He says “rather than thinking ‘mobile first,’ think ‘user first,’ where an application experience is designed for the user based on his or her environment.”
Rulli says in the Philippines, a young and engaged population is driving a rise in smartphone usage and Internet penetration. “This, in turn, fuels a greater need for improved digital solutions. The consumerization of IT is also a factor, but it goes beyond employees bringing their tablets and smartphones into work and expecting IT to support and enable corporate access. Employees now expect each application to deliver a seamless experience, just like a consumer app would,” he says.
Rulli says a study by market research company IDC estimates that IT spending in the Philippines reached $7.2 billion in 2015, making it a very lucrative market.
He says third platform computing offers many benefits to businesses, both large corporations and SMEs. “We see that more businesses are migrating their day-to-day operations into more accessible and efficient platforms. Cloud based solutions are playing a major role in terms of enabling SMEs to integrate and automate in a short period of time. As SMEs account for 99.6 percent of total registered enterprises in the Philippines, we project these enterprises will look at cloud-based services and applications to further grow their businesses and adjust to customer needs,” he says.
“Another area where we see a great potential is the strong developer community in the Philippines. At Progress, we are helping 1.8 million developers across the globe to build applications in and for the cloud, as well as modernize core business applications for a mobile, social world. We aim to further expand this number, and the Filipino developer community is an important audience for us,” he says.
Rulli says in short, “with the growing economy, large developer community and the growth of third platform technologies such as cloud, big data and analytics and mobile, the Philippines presents great opportunities for us to help businesses thrive in the constantly shifting landscape of digital evolution.”
ADC’s annual continuum survey shows that the majority of Filipino companies are looking at increasing their ICT spending. Organizations realize that they have to rapidly adapt to address changing customer needs. “This makes it imperative to adopt disruptive technologies in the third platform that can help organizations stay ahead of the competition,” says Rulli.
“The market is seeing growth propelled by an increasing demand for a multi-channel user experience; it’s not about mobile or web anymore. Users are increasingly using different devices to access their applications, so developers need to look at how to deliver a seamless experience across all devices and platforms,” he explains.
“We are also witnessing a growing need for low-code development tools that enable end-users to create and manage their applications independently. This empowers both IT and business stakeholders to collaborate strategically and focus on innovation, rather than having IT spend time rewriting hard code.
This is where Progress solutions come into play to really enable and support the digital transformation journey for enterprises in the region,” he says.
Progress delivers an end-to-end application development portfolio of solutions and tools customers in the Philippines. Its products include application development and deployment platforms such as Progress OpenEdge, Progress Rollbase, Telerik Platform and Progress Corticon.
“Recent acquisitions, including that of Telerik in 2014, have strengthened and broadened our portfolio and positioned us to compete and win in our space. The comprehensive suite of solutions we now offer meet a variety of customer needs and provide the agility organizations require amidst the changing face of technology,” Rulli says.
He says the adoption of ‘digital everything’ in Asia-Pacific and the fast-growing mass of young, urban, middle-class consumers make the region a key market for Progress. “The Asia Pacific region is a critical piece of our growth strategy for the next three years. The Philippines is and will continue to be a key focus area for us,” he says.
“We have an energized partner community that is innovating every single day. Our 2,000 global partners, and all of our strategic partners in the Philippines inspire us to create innovative solutions so they can better serve their customers,” he says.
Rulli says one of the company’s key partners—Rollbase Philippines—won the Progress Partner Collaboration Award in 2014 for its successful brokered deals.
“At the core of Progress is a single-minded determination to help businesses modernize and exceed the expectations of their own customers. We don’t just focus on IT, we drive the entire business. As the digital transformation landscape is constantly changing, we understand that our clients rely on us to be ready for tomorrow,” says Rulli.