Progress, the noun, is the movement towards a refined, improved, or otherwise desired state. Progressivism refers to the proposition that advancements in technology, science, and social organisation have resulted in the betterment of the human condition. It's no surprise that Progress chose this name for its company, setting itself the goal of being the trusted provider of the best products to develop, deploy, and manage high-impact applications using the right architecture that delivers an engaging experience with connected data.

Progress has been doing it for a long time, and its results speak for themselves. For fiscal 2023, Progress expects over $US 680M in total revenues, with operating margins of at least 39%, free cash flow of about $180M, and earnings per share of more than $US 4.09. The company has more than 2,300 employees in over 20 countries. That's a lot of numbers but ultimately, Ainsworth says, it means the company has a high degree of customer loyalty and the business is continually investing in its product development. "When people partner with Progress they tend to stick," he said.

As in every country, organisations in Australia are under growing pressure to modernise their digital systems quickly. Ainsworth has been in Australia meeting Progress’ clients and prospective clients and says this is a common thread across discussions he's had.

"When you talk about modernisation, many different perspectives come up about what that means to an organisation," he said. "The question I ask back is what is the business driver for an initiative you're calling modernisation? Is it creating a headless environment so you can iterate faster with new user experiences like chat? Leverage APIs for supply chain transformation? Moving from Windows apps to mobile or web delivery? Is it a security and compliance issue, with pressure to better govern data managed by the applications? Transition from in-house app to SaaS? All these things come into the realm when talking about modernisation."

Modernisation comes down to what people are trying to do, and the primary driver, Ainsworth said. "It's hard to justify changing with no intrinsic business value."

Ainsworth notes technology is evolving phenomenally, and the expectations of usability and user experience are evolving. "Those application experiences are changing at a rate of probably 18 to 24 months," he said. "Whereas the layer behind that, business logic and so on, are evolving but at a slower pace."

Progress provides software tools for each layer, of course, with Telerik and Kendo on the top line, its OpenEdge database at the bottom, and Sitefinity in the middle, among others. Sitefinity had a stellar time in the spotlight as the platform used by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and stood up to its enormous uptake in traffic during COVID.

Yet, it doesn't begin with the tech. If your business is seeking to prioritise where modernisation is most needed, "it goes back to the business imperative," Ainsworth says. Technology leaders who "align with business goals are more likely to get support and success."

Ainsworth says he thinks of application modernisation and digital transformation as a journey, and an application evolution. "It's an ongoing journey as the tech evolves," he says. And what's key to not seeing yourself in the same conundrum year after year is "if you approach it the right way you create a baseline for future projects to help you adapt to future trends, rather than simply rewrite and end up in a box again. So I think of it as evolution more than modernisation per se."

This doesn't only come in the form of your product output but how you run your projects too. "Very few organisations are going to be successful if they remain thinking about projects the old way - start, do, finish - vs. more modern practices like continuous delivery, continuous integration, agile, and the approaches that go along with that. It allows you to build, test, and iterate faster on a continuum of evolution."

So here's where Progress really comes in. Sure, it can provide you with a whole heap of tools, but the crux of John Ainsworth's message is app modernisation isn't simply an IT project - it's about the business imperative and outcome, and about your organisation embracing it from a practices and approach perspective. This is what then drives the tech you are going to use to achieve the outcome, instead of starting with the tech.

And Progress is here to help you; "we engage with customers to assess their current state of tech and the state of their skills. Maybe they have the skills they need to build the original app but if they're going to move forward in, say, container/cloud, micro-service, event-driven applications, do they have the skills they are going to need and can we make a recommendation around the ecosystem to bring it forward? Agile practices, cloud, migration from older operating systems like AIX to Linux, and so on - whatever it happens to be," he said.

In short, if you want to modernise, Progress can help you progress your app progression. You identify the business case, and they'll work with you to build the process, the skills, and the platform to make it happen. They can also supply supplemental developers to assist.

In other news, Progress recently acquired MarkLogic and is in the process of integrating its capabilities into the portfolio. The acquisition brings two pieces, Ainsworth says. Firstly, is the multi-model database itself. "What's interesting is it brings a NoSQL database," he said, "but in this case that means 'not only SQL'. Unlike other document or graph databases, MarkLogic fully supports SQL and is fully ACID compliant, while many multi-model databases follow a practice of 'eventually consistent'. It also natively supports graphs, tuples, and so on."

Progress says MarkLogic is complementary to OpenEdge; the traditional Progress database is suited to be the lowest cost database behind transactional databases, while MarkLogic is suited to analytical, search-based data lake and data lakehouse models.

The second piece that MarkLogic brings to Progress is Semaphore; this tech "allows you to define a knowledge model for your enterprise so different terms and taxonomies for different things are well understood, so you can search using many terms and languages and link it back to an item in the MarkLogic layer," he said. That is, Semaphore helps make sense of unstructured content by applying AI and knowledge models to the data, to aid in making informed decisions.

For example, if you search for "Hamilton", do you mean the racing car driver? The locality? Even the musical? "Context matters," Ainsworth said.

"It's an exciting time for Progress. An exciting time to be engaged with our customers," he said.

"It is a time for evolution."