This 40-year-old US listed IT company is expanding its business in India putting up new offices in Hyderabad and Bengaluru and is actively hiring DevOps engineers from India for global business.
Indian IT has been transforming the country for decades now and continues to do so in areas like DevOps, cloud, digital transformation. India is expected to have a digital economy of US$1 trillion by 2025, which means digital is expected to have about 20% contribution to the economy.
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This growth is bringing in foreign investment into the country as outside companies are rushing to invest in Indian IT.
Progress, a US listed IT company celebrating its 40th anniversary, recently acquired Chef, a global leader in DevOps and DevSecOps, for US$220 million in cash as part of an effort to advance adoption of best DevOps and DevSecOps practices in the mid-market. The company is expanding its business in India and has new offices in Hyderabad and Bengaluru and is actively hiring DevOps engineers from India for global business.
The Tech Panda spoke to Prasanna Anireddy, Senior Director at Progress about the reasons they’re expanding in India.
Prasanna Anireddy
Owing to India’s unique ecosystem such as academia, startups, service providers, industry bodies, we expect India to continue to offer the skilled talent in new and emerging technologies
“Owing to India’s unique ecosystem such as academia, startups, service providers, industry bodies, we expect India to continue to offer the skilled talent in new and emerging technologies. Progress wants to provide more opportunities to this talent to work with cutting-edge products and help the company’s customers and partners worldwide,” she says.
Progress started its first R&D centre in India in 2005, and now have R&D centres in Hyderabad, Bengaluru, and New Delhi.
“In all these locations, you will find product development, product management, operations, and customer-facing teams. India has a vast and growing technical talent pool, and Progress will continue to leverage this talent to build industry leading innovative products,” she adds.
She further adds that Indian IT, which includes IT services, IT-enabled services (ITES), e-commerce (online business), software and hardware products, will continue to wow.
“It will continue to be the backbone of India’s economic growth, being a key driver and contributor. IT has not only contributed to the economic growth of the country, but it has also made governance more competent and approachable.
“Adoption of digital technologies across sectors such as retail, healthcare, financial services, energy, manufacturing and infrastructure will be fuelling this growth. This will result in employment generation, increased local and regional entrepreneurship and facilitate equitable socio-economic growth.”
Progress Plans in India
Progress’ plans in India include continuing to invest and expand operations in Hyderabad, Bangalore, and New Delhi with a focus on data connectivity, application development and management, Always On Application Experience, and DevOps/DevSecOps.
It (Indian IT) will continue to be the backbone of India’s economic growth, being a key driver and contributor. IT has not only contributed to the economic growth of the country, but it has also made governance more competent and approachable
“With our products, organisations can accelerate the delivery of strategic business applications and automate the application configuration process. There are more than six million users globally who use applications built with Progress’ technologies,” says Anireddy.
This year, Progress is celebrating its 40th anniversary.
“Few are the tech companies that have withstood the challenges of time and continue to innovate, develop their business and technological expertise and help their customers succeed,” she says with pride.
What They Do
Progress (NASDAQ: PRGS) provides products to develop, deploy and manage high-impact business applications. Their comprehensive product stack is designed to make technology teams more productive, and they’re committed to the developer community, both open source and commercial alike.
With Progress, organisations can accelerate the creation and delivery of strategic business applications, automate the process by which apps are configured, deployed, and scaled, and make critical data and content more accessible and secure, leading to competitive differentiation and business success.
Our data connectivity products provide secure and high-performance connectivity to data in BigData, cloud databases, cloud applications (SaaS applications), cloud data warehouses. The data connectivity products power applications hosted in cloud to have seamless connectivity to valuable data living anywhere, in cloud, on-prem or exposed via APIs
Over 1,700 independent software vendors, 100,000+ enterprise customers, and a three-million-strong developer community rely on Progress to power their applications. Its product offerings are well positioned to support organisations both with their digital transformation efforts and adoption of cloud, says Anireddy.
The company’s Digital Experience (DX) offerings empower companies to provide engaging and personalised customer experiences across diverse digital channels. With its Always-On Application Experience (AX) offerings, companies can optimise and secure applications and networks across any cloud or hybrid environment through best-in-class network performance monitoring, application delivery control and anomaly detection.
“Our data connectivity products provide secure and high-performance connectivity to data in BigData, cloud databases, cloud applications (SaaS applications), cloud data warehouses. The data connectivity products power applications hosted in cloud to have seamless connectivity to valuable data living anywhere, in cloud, on-prem or exposed via APIs,” she says.
“Our DevOps/DevSecOps products enable companies to automate and manage infrastructure and applications both in cloud and on-premises or in a hybrid environment. They also make it easy to maintain and enforce compliance across hybrid and multi-cloud environments,” she adds.
R&D Centers Focused on Intrapreneurship & In-House Innovation
Progress’s R&D centers in Hyderabad and Bengaluru are strategic innovation hubs, playing a key role in the company’s global success.
“We have teams developing industry-leading technologies for application development, data connectivity, DevOps and DevSecOps, application experience management leveraged by thousands of enterprises worldwide,” says Anireddy.
Innovation is a part of our culture and the way we build and develop our products. We have many initiatives and incentives to nurture and grow this culture
Their company-wide hackathon events encourage teams to collaborate globally and explore new ideas. Every quarter, they also have innovation sprints to allow for dedicated time for innovation and continuous learning. Moreover, they have a Progress Inventor Recognition program to recognise and reward employees who create patentable inventions for Progress.
“Innovation is a part of our culture and the way we build and develop our products. We have many initiatives and incentives to nurture and grow this culture,” she says proudly.
Supporting Women in Tech
Globally, there continues to be huge gender disparity of Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields. Studies indicate that women make up only 29% of the tech workforce. Presently, girls and women are not encouraged and motivated enough to pursue their dreams in STEM fields.
Anireddy says there is need for more change in policies and practices to increase opportunities in STEM for them. This is why Progress has several initiatives to encourage and empower women in the company as well as supporting Women to pursue STEM Education.
We want to encourage women to choose STEM for their professional development and bring more diversity to the workplace
“We have a company-wide Employee Resource Group (ERG) – Progress for Her, created to empower Women at Progress. It provides leadership and networking opportunities, as well as the tools needed to create substantial influence both in and out of our professional network,” she explains.
The Women in STEM scholarship series was launched in 2019 with the founding of the “Progress Mary Székely Scholarship for Women in STEM” in the US. The initiative has continued to expand, and in 2021 they introduced the Akanksha Scholarship for Women in STEM in India, a US$2,000 four?year renewable scholarship to cover tuition, fees and educational expenses for women pursuing an undergraduate degree in computer science, computer information systems, software engineering and/or IT.
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“We want to encourage women to choose STEM for their professional development and bring more diversity to the workplace,” she adds.
This year, Progress has announced International Women’s Day on March 8 as a company-wide holiday to celebrate the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women and help forge a gender equal world.
