While most discussions about the Software as a Service (SaaS) market revolve around the likes of Salesforce.com, NetSuite, Google, IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, OpSource, etc., the name Progress Software Corporation (NASDAQ: PRGS) rarely comes to mind, unjustifiably.

While Progress itself is to blame in part for a less aggressive marketing effort (and for the-best-kept-secret-in-the-market status), it is still puzzling that the Bedford, Massachusetts (US)-based provider of application infrastructure software for the development, deployment, integration, and management of business applications is not more regularly mentioned within the press and analyst circles.

A company that was founded in 1981 and with about US$500 million in revenues in 2007, with over 110,000 customer sites and over 2,000 employees in 90 offices worldwide certainly deserves due attention. This is especially the case given the company’s long espoused goal to maximize the benefits of information technology (IT) while minimizing its complexity and total cost of ownership (TCO). Read the rest of this entry »