Why Buy a Progress-based Solution?

Join the ranks of industry leaders.
By trusting your critical operations to Progress Software-based applications, you join the ranks of such industry leaders as Mercedes Benz, Fidelity Investments, Heineken, Cadbury-Schweppes, Mazda, McDonnell Douglas, Krupp, Bell South, Royal Cruise Lines, Marriott, Johnson & Johnson, Mobil Oil, CITICORP, and Pepsico. These pace setters -- plus tens of thousands more around the world -- ensure their success with Progress Software-based applications. Progress's partners and customers are capitalizing on the demand for applications that are accessible anytime, from any device, and with features that reduce costs, increase revenue, and create clear competitive advantages. You are in good company selecting a Progress-based solution.

Leverage the power of Progress.
Organizations worldwide look to Progress Software for technology and services that simplify and accelerate the creation, deployment, and enhancement of complex, business-critical applications. There are over 2,300-industry expert Application Partners, who provide packaged software applications utilizing Progress Software technology. These Partners deliver more than $1.5 billion in applications annually to customers in manufacturing, finance, distribution, health care, retail, and a host of other industries. More than 5,000 applications are currently powered by Progress in over 60 countries worldwide.

Top five reasons why PROGRESS is the first choice for application development:

• Price/performance leadership
• Flexibility and scalability
• Future Proof programming environment
• High availability and data integrity
• Hardware and operating system portability

PROGRESS is widely recognized as a robust and fully integrated development and deployment environment for on-line transaction-based business applications. Whether your environment dictates Internet, client/server, or host, a Progress-based solution is your first choice.

Progress Software products lower development and maintenance costs by streamlining the entire application development and deployment process. Leading industry analysts' studies have consistently identified the PROGRESS application development environment and RDBMS as one of the most cost-effective solutions on the market today.

Flexible deployment options.
Applications built in PROGRESS have the flexibility to meet your needs from host-based and client/server to HTML and Java. PROGRESS applications often require 90% less code than the same program written in third-generation languages, such as COBOL or C. As a result, Progress application partners build business applications that are fast, reliable, simply-to-maintain, and easy to modify.

Handle 1000s of transactions simultaneously.
Progress Software products are unsurpassed in handling the user and transaction demands of business. Progress's multi-threaded; multi-tier architecture lets you add 50, 100, or even thousands of users to your application without fear of system overload. Moreover, with Progress's automatic multi-user record locking, all users can view on-line data simultaneously without having to worry about update conflicts. Simply stated, when you choose a PROGRESS-based application, you're positioned for growth!

Choose a Future Proof application.
At Progress Software, tomorrow is today. We are delivering an enterprise-class database and an integrated, component-based visual development environment. That's not all. For the Internet, intranets, and extranets, we currently offer a variety of Web-oriented tools: WebSpeed, the first commercially available product for creating Internet Transaction Processing (ITP) applications; Apptivity, for developing 100% Java business applications; and ProtoSpeed, an innovative Internet error detection and debugging tool.

In 1998, Progress Software will deliver Future Proof software for its entire product family. Universal Application Architecture (UAA) is the foundation for building Future Proof applications. The UAA model is based on Progress Software's vision of how business applications work together within a standards-based architecture. This model offers developers and users several options for constructing business solutions from application components, and for deploying these solutions across heterogeneous, networked computing environments. For example, the new PROGRESS Application Development Methodology (ADM) will enable developers to create business logic and rules that are completely separate from the user interface. Combined with new technologies developed within the UAA, Progress provides application partners the flexibility to deliver solutions using the most appropriate technology, PROGRESS 4GL, Visual Basic, C, C++, or Java. The result is tremendous flexibility, excellent modular reuse, and platform independence.

Whatever your business application needs are, Progress Software solutions are a good bet.

Rest easy with Progress if and when disaster strikes.
We dare you to pull the plug! It's an inverse relationship: when a system goes down, anxiety levels go up. How much data was lost? How much was corrupted? How many days will it take to restore lost data?

Rollback, recovery, plug and play. With a Progress application, you can rest easy. The PROGRESS database creates "before images" that store unmodified copies of all records being actively updated. In case of a power failure or system crash, PROGRESS automatically backs up any incomplete transactions.

The PROGRESS "before image" support helps you and your applications recover from systemic failure. What happens when a disk drive fails and you need to "forward" recover from your last off-line backup? PROGRESS also provides a roll-forward recovery capability. To be specific, a log file on a separate disk is used to maintain an "after image" of all transactions completed since your most recent database backup.

Result: Your data is intact, your systems are up, and you're back in business!

Take it with you Anywhere, Anytime.
When evaluation software applications for your business, you need to draft a plan for the future. Will the application be able to handle a growing number of users? What if you need to move the application onto other hardware platforms, new operating systems, or run it on the Internet? Will you need to split your applications to multiple servers?

You can feel confident that your Progress-based solution will run seamlessly. These applications offer you true portability and connectivity across hundreds of hardware and software platforms including, Digital, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, SUN, SCO, UNIX, Windows, Windows NT, and IBM-AS/400. Progress Software enjoys top-tier status with many of the major hardware and operating system vendors. This allows Progress Software access to extensive resources and support in order to conduct comprehensive testing and benchmarking. Whether you deploy your application in a host-based, client/server, or browser-based Java environment, you won't have to worry about compatibility issues.

Consider Professional Services.
Your application provider will provide an outstanding solution, based on Progress Software's latest technologies, to meet your business needs. To complement this implementation and to support your future objectives, you may need to develop Progress product skills within your organization. Professional Services, either from Progress Software or our partners, is the answer. Everyday, hundreds of Progress consultants, trainers, and technical support personnel actively support users through classroom training, onsite programming/consultation, contract design/delivery, and dependable technical services such as remote diagnostics, problem isolation, and more.

Progress consultants and educators are available worldwide. These professionals are uniquely positioned to meet customer needs by helping to efficiently implement PROGRESS-, WebSpeed-, and Apptivity-based applications, to Web-enable existing applications or to take advantage of the capabilities of new product release.

Look No Further.
Powered by Progress applications are designed to accommodate your needs whether you require a custom application or a turnkey result. Your application developer can supply you with tools your organization requires, offering you the most cost-effective solution. In choosing Progress, you're in good company. Over 2,300 developers of business applications sell $1.5 billion of solutions Powered by Progress. The numbers speak for themselves. Progress-based products and services insulate your business from changes in technology leaving you in firm control of your business.