BANGALORE, INDIA: Progress Software Corporation, the Nasdaq-listed company, is in the process of setting up direct operations in India by opening its Sales & Marketing Center at Bangalore. The office will mainly cater to the domestic Indian market and also source the expertise for its global market.

Progress Software is also planning to expand the Hyderabad centre, its largest development center outside of the US from the present 120 to 150 employees by the end of 2008.

Talking to CIOL, Peter Sliwkowski, Vice-president, Products Enterprise, Infrastructure Division of Progress Software Corporation said, ``Presently we are doing a six city road show to highlight the serious plans that Progress has in India, especially in deploying SOA at the enterprise level."

Springboard Research, a leading innovator in the IT Market Research industry in its recent report said that its research on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) market in India is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 49 percent from 2006-2009, making it the fastest growing market in the region.

As per the study, Indian companies have one of the highest awareness levels of SOA and its benefits in the region and so have set up a office here, Sliwkowski said adding that what is driving the adoption of SOA especially among larger enterprises is the benefits of reusability, agility and reduced costs.

The company has been doing business in India for over a decade through its distributors as well as application partners such as QAD, Epicor and Infor. Progress Software is a provider of application infrastructure software to develop, deploy, integrate and manage business applications. It also used to primarily promote their products through vendors in India and have entered into partnerships with some of large enterprises including TCS, Wipro, Satyam, Infosys and HCL and are now moving to Tier II partnership with about 20-30 companies.

"The marketing team in Bangalore would handle different segments like System Integration partners and the domestic market. We will cater mainly to the Manufacturing, Telecommunication, Financial Service verticals and already have large customers like Federal Bank of India, NSE, HLL,'' said Sliwkowski.

The company is also focusing on SME segment in India and the office will serves as both an important domestic market and centre of excellence from a development perspective for Progress Software.

"The R&D center that employees about 120 till date will grow to 150 by the end of the year," said Ramesh Loganathan, VP & MD of Progress iLabs in Hyderabad.

Progress Software, through its around 2,000 application partners worldwide, provides over 5,000 applications to a broad range of verticals. It is active in finance, manufacturing and service sectors in Asia.