Bluebird Wins Progress Partner of the Year Award
Progress Software Awards Partners For Vision, Innovation In Building Powerful Business Applications
Progress Application Partners Bluebird, Epicor, FDM4, INFOR, HII, PCS and Skyward Tapped For Awards
Bedford, Mass. – Progress Software Corporation (NASDAQ: PRGS), a global supplier of application infrastructure software used to develop, deploy, integrate and manage business applications, today announced that Progress Application Partners (APs) Bluebird, Epicor®, FDM4, INFOR, HII, PCS (Precision Computer Systems) and Skyward received awards at the 5th annual Progress Software Application Partner Awards, which took place in Dallas, Texas on January 30, 2007. The Progress Software Application Partner Awards celebrate the work and efforts of the Progress Partner Community by recognizing members for their vision, collaborative spirit and contributions to the Progress community, as well as their achievements in the marketplace. By leveraging Progress partner programs designed to help APs transform their applications, companies are able to take advantage of the latest technologies and capabilities and competitively position themselves for even greater market success and profitability. For more information about Progress, its products or its APs, please visit www.progress.com.
Of the hundreds of Progress partners eligible for these North American awards, seven winners were selected in the following categories:
Progress® Partner of the Year Award-Bluebird Auto Rental Systems – This award goes to the partner that continually engages with Progress to evolve its business and adopt technologies that address the needs of its customers, demonstrating technological innovation and a willingness to exchange ideas in the community. Bluebird Auto Rental Systems demonstrated outstanding growth in the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) category with its NetRent product as they concurrently engaged in transforming and future proofing its RentWorks application. For more information about Bluebird Auto Rental Systems, please visit www.barsnet.com.
Progress® Partner Collaboration Award – INFOR – Given to a partner that exhibits the benefits of partner collaboration and cooperation within the Progress partner community, this award goes to INFOR for working with Progress in planning the implementation of EasyAsk technology in more than five ERP solutions after searching for a way to differentiate its product offerings from competitors. INFOR’s investment in a more effective open source search and navigation solution based demonstrates confidence, engagement and dedication to the Partner program and community, making INFOR an excellent example of successful partner collaboration. For more information about INFOR, please visit www.infor.com.
Progress® Fastest Growing Partner Award –FDM4 – With its ERP software solutions based on the Progress Fourth Generation development environment, FDM4, which focuses on the distribution and catalog industries, has achieved year over year total revenue growth of 43%, and software sales year over year revenue growth of 71%. Its exceptional 100% deployment success rate and unique combination of industry leading functionality, technology and services is an indication of FDM4’s guaranteed success. For more information about FDM4, please visit www.fdm4.com.
Progress® Visionary Award went to two companies – Epicor and Precision Computer Systems (PCS)
Epicor and PCS are co-winners of this award for taking advantage of the flexibility of Progress technology to improve their competitiveness in their marketplaces.
Epicor Software Corporation – Epicor is a leading provider of enterprise business software solutions for the mid-market and divisions of the Global 1000. They were among the first of the Progress partners to transform their global manufacturing and supply chain management solution, Epicor Vantage®, to a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), leveraging both the Progress OpenEdge 10 and Microsoft .NET technologies. In October 2006, Vantage surpassed the 1000th customer mark as further proof of its market success and customer acceptance. This award recognizes Epicor for its technical vision as well as its ability to execute. For more information about Epicor, please visit www.epicor.com.
PCS – In early 2006, PCS identified the need to modernize its banking application to be more competitive and to be more responsive to the needs of its market. This modernization provided advances in several key areas, making the application more modern, flexible and leading to recent recognition by industry analyst, Celent, as offering some of the most advanced technology in the banking sector.. For more information on PCS, please visit pcsbanking.com.
Progress® Business Focus Award – Health Informatics, Inc. (HII) and Skyward, Inc. – HII and Skyward Inc. have both won the Business Focus Award for their foresight in recognizing key market opportunities and leveraging the market’s demand for demonstration of measurable business success.
Health Informatics, Inc. (HII) – HII launched a globalization effort focused on developing an accelerated growth strategy. With the objective of building a scalable, defensible, future-proofed business, this partner identified a growth opportunity through development of a strategic plan, which included a global market research program and a technical evaluation initiative for the “internationalization” of its application. Since completing a strategic plan in Q2, 2006, HII has successfully acquired a European company, proving the value gained from the development of the strategic plan. www.hiiweb.com
Skyward, Inc. – As the “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) Act was passed in 2001, Skyward, Inc., an industry leader in K-12 Education Software, moved into full speed to develop three new applications in anticipation of the recording and reporting needs of the K-12 education market. These applications propelled Skyward even further ahead as an industry leader as the NCLB requirements went into full effect in 2005 and 2006. The applications manage, instruct and record NCLB standards. As the only company within the K-12 market to provide a complete turnkey solution, Skyward has demonstrated vision in predicting and responding to its market’s needs. This focus resulted in key wins in 2006 for the company, as it added several new school districts to its portfolio of customers. For more information about Skyward and its offerings, please visit www.skyward.com.
About Progress Software Corporation
Progress Software Corporation (NASDAQ: PRGS) provides application infrastructure software for the development, deployment, integration and management of business applications. Our goal is to maximize the benefits of information technology while minimizing its complexity and total cost of ownership. Progress can be reached at www.progress.com or +1-781-280-4000.
Progress is a trademark of Progress Software Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. Any other trademarks or service marks contained herein may be the property of their respective owners.
Press Contacts:
John Stewart
Progress Software Corporation
Ian Lipner
LEWIS Public Relations