Progress Software, long known and respected for software solutions development, has rolled out  a new PaaS capability based on their recent acquisition of Rollbase, Inc., a privately held independent software vendor based in Saratoga, CA. Progress® Pacific™ will facilitate Cloud and mobile applications development with integrated access to data from disparate SaaS, relational database, Big Data, social, CRM and ERP systems.

One highly attractive feature of Progress® Pacific™ is its agnostic stance regarding source and target platforms and offers ISVs and other Cloud developers wide choice of data sources, deployment environments and business logic tools. Progress Software will release Progress® Pacific™ in the third quarter and touts the following key advantages:

On November 9, 2012, Saugatuck held its 2^nd annual Cloud Business Summit at the Westin Times Square in New York City. As with our inaugural event, this year’s conference brought together large-enterprise CIOs, CTOs and senior business leaders to explore what is possible, what is real, and what is not in the Cloud today.

In this Featured panel, entitled “Cloud Business Applications and Platforms: A New Paradigm”, Saugatuck founder and CEO Bill McNee leads a discussion focused on where SaaS application demand is headed, the changing role of ISVs and enterprise architecture, and what the platform of the future will look like. The panel also explores the blurring of the lines between the business and IT, and how SaaS is helping to accelerate time to market for many user organizations. Joining McNee on the panel are Colleen Smith, VP at Progress Software, Scott Skellenger, Sr. Director at Illumina, Joe McKendrick, Blogger at Forbes and ZDNet, Ali Shadman, SVP at Infor.

Last week, Saugatuck was briefed by Colleen Smith, VP at Progress Software (NASDAQ: PRGS), concerning the firm’s recently announced strategy to refocus around its core OpenEdge product line (see April 25, 2012 Progress Software press release).

Over the past half dozen or so years, Progress had been successfully diversifying the company beyond its historical 4GL and app dev roots, primarily through the acquisition of a number of high-profile BPM, event-processing, middleware and integration-focused assets. This strategy apparently had been working until recently, when top line revenue and operating income began to fall. In response, the firm’s former CEO Richard Reidy stepped down last August – and after a five month BOD search, the firm hired Jay Bhatt as its new President and CEO (formerly of Autodesk) in December 2011.