I see tremendous opportunities in the ASP market

In the high-profile world of software dominated by Larry Ellison, Charles

Wang, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, the soft-spoken Joseph W Alsop, president and

CEO, Progress Software, can go almost unnoticed. But, in the thousands of

software development centers around the world where business applications are

churned out to suit the varying needs of businesses, the developers swear by the

tools provided by his company.

Alsop has a significant cult following in the rarefied world of software

programmers. He co-founded Progress when he was still doing his BS degree in

electrical engineering at MIT, Massachusetts. The company is rarely in the

public domain because its 2,000 partners provide the last-mile connectivity to

the public and businesses. Company meets, where software developers and Progress

programmers share their problems and solutions, however, are well attended. The

bookings for these meets, held in many parts of the world, are made almost a

year in advance. It was at one such meet–the Progress Exchange 2000 held in

San Diego, California–that Joseph W Alsop shared with Dataquest’s N Suresh

reasons behind the phenomenal success of his company and his plans for tapping

the opportunities in the Internet dominated world. Excerpts:

What prompted you to start Progress while you were still an MIT student?



As software programmers, we were frustrated with non-productive complexities of
developing applications. So to make it easier to write applications, we started

developing the tools. That’s how it started.

Now we are probably the largest company that works with other software

programmers to build and deploy software applications.

How do you see the future market potential?



I see tremendous opportunities ahead in the ASP segment as well as the
business-to-business (B2B) market space because most companies have so far

automated only some parts of their operations. Several operations need to be

addressed for full-scale automation.

What are your plans to tap the opportunities in the marketplace?



We have just introduced SonicMQ. We see strong growth opportunities. We will
continue to focus on software professionals and their needs, mainly of the

independent software vendors (ISVs). Our mission is to make their jobs easier.

Continued...

What is the reason behind this strong relationship?



Progress is strong on technology. People admire the fact that we have solved
different practical problems. We have moved in to make difficult problems easy

to solve.

Do you foresee any changes in the company’s strategy in the Internet

era?



We have not moved away much from the vision we ourselves set 10 year ago. We
envisioned where we have now ended up. We have done a good job of defining the

opportunities and helping the software professionals. You see this in our market

leadership in the embedded database segment.

Whatever we have done, we have helped to make the software professionals more

productive.

How has been the growth path?



One of the major decisions we took was the international expansion. Today, we
have 25 subsidiaries. Fifteen of them are in Europe, six in Latin America and

four in Asia.

How has been the growth in the last year?



Very hectic. We launched SonicMQ and Aspen. The future lies in making SonicMQ
successful. It should contribute 5-15 per cent of total revenues. We are also

setting up three regional support centers.

When do you intend to start operations in India?



We are considering opening an office in India. We did a market survey last year.
The report says that with the boom. It is as difficult to get good professionals

in India as here in the US. With so much opportunities, they change their jobs

as much there as in the Silicon Valley.

You are an industry veteran. What new interesting development do you

foresee in the near future?



Open source coding is likely to become the norm. The B2B segment will play a
major role. With more and more computers getting connected, networking will

become dominant. So will the relationship, which will bring companies together.

Has the Internet changed Progress’ operations?



The Internet will make the problem of developing applications even more
difficult. More centralization will take place in the future with a lot of

applications running on servers.

Exciting times are ahead. Of course, something will slow down, for example,

PC sales. On the other hand, communication devices will sell faster. All these

need software. And if people develop software, we will be needed to help them

with the tools.

Will software ever become a simple thing?



There is a continuous need to improve all software products. There will be more
and more software written to solve various problems. But I don’t see software

becoming plug-and-play in the near future.

The problem here is that the scale of applications keeps going up. With that,

the nature of user interface also changes and the complexity goes up. Similarly,

the problems that software programmers are expected to solve also become tough.

The networking of computers has increased the complexity. The Internet has

added a new dimension. This mans that all software products have to take into

account these factors and work efficiently in different environments. Making

software simple is not an easy task.

Why is this so?



Because complex problems need simple solutions. So they turn to software. We see
a range of software development platforms. All of them try to make the final

product a bit simple but there is no single cure.

This is like developing a cure for cancer. There is no single solution. In

fact, this is the single big frustration for the software industry. The

inability to solve complex problems in a simple manner is holding back the

growth of the industry.

This article was originally featured in the August 31, 2000, issue of

Dataquest.