October 6, 2014Progress Kicks Off Exchange 2014 with Global Partner Awards Names Top Channel Partners for Forward Thinking, Innovative and Unparalleled Applications
BEDFORD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Progress (NASDAQ: PRGS) today announced winners of its annual Global Partner Awards. Now in its 13th year, the Progress Global Partner Awards recognize partners across 15 categories using one or more of Progress core solutions for application development and deployment, including Pacific, OpenEdge, Rollbase, and Corticon. Awards were given out during a special ceremony marking the official start of Progress Exchange 2014, taking place in Orlando, Florida this week.
Nominees were recognized for their efforts to enrich the Progress partner community and serve their customer base with next generation software solutions.
The 2014 Progress Global Partner award winners include:
DMSi - Partner of the Year Award. The Partner of the Year exemplifies the true meaning of partnership, demonstrating the highest levels of technology innovation, driving growth and evangelism within its customers industry as well as enthusiastic participation within the Progress community. DMSi, which offers account software for building material distributors and dealers, won this award for its significant year-over-year growth drive by product innovation. DMSi successfully migrated from Salesforce.com in 2013, using Rollbase, Corticon and OpenEdge to build a homegrown system for their ERP applications. They are a long-standing Progress partner and are also a member of the Progress Partner Advisory Council.
B&L Information Systems - SaaS Excellence Award. The SaaS Excellence Award honors ISVs whose participation in Progress SaaS enablement programs resulted in highly innovative offerings that achieved impressive commercial success within their market. In 2013 B&L, an industry leading ERP provider for metal casters, shifted its focus to SaaS. The company turned to Progress to help push out a new company vision and offering to market. Progress supported the team through its expertise in sales and marketing programs, to create white papers, increase trade show and website traffic and even assisted in the development of more focused ad campaigns. As a result, B&L increased sales by 450% year over year in the first half of 2014. The company also grew bookings by more than 352% for the same time period.
Rollbase Philippines - Partner Collaboration Award. This award recognizes the ISV who participated in the most successfully brokered deals and illustrated the benefit of partner collaboration and cooperation within the Progress partner community. Through hosted workshops and events, Rollbase Philippines played an integral role in educating partners in the region on the benefits of Rollbase for rapid application development in the cloud.
Skyward- Business Focus Award. The Business Focus award distinguishes companies that demonstrate foresight and an understanding of current and future market opportunities. Skyward, an industry leading provider of student, finance, and HR administrative software exclusively for K-12 school districts, has been a Progress Elite Partner for over 20 years. In 2008, the company decided to offer a SaaS-model in an attempt to set itself apart from competition and more effectively compete in small and large school districts. Today, approximately 75% of Skywards new business is SaaS-based. The company now works closely with state education officials to promote the benefits and cost-savings associated with a cloud-based administrative software model.
Akioma - Rising Star. A new category for 2014, the Rising Star award is given to a partner who demonstrates growth and commitment to Progress and its ecosystem. This partner has set themselves apart from all others through their desire to connect, engage, collaborate and innovate. Akiomas impressive architecture and design, unique technical vision and prowess to execute on various technologies earned the company this years honor. The company was also named the best European application developer and the winner of the Progress App Dev Challenge earlier this year.
QAD - Gordon Fleming Spark Award. A new category for 2014, the Gordon Fleming Spark Award is the first ever category for individuals. The winner of this award personifies the ever positive and knowing voice that Gordon Fleming, Chief Marketing Officer at QAD, gave the community. Fleming was a highly respected leader and a Progress champion. He exemplified what it means to be a partner. This year, QAD accepted this award, on behalf of Fleming.
For a full list of winners, including regional recipients, please visit: https://corporateblog.progress.com/2014/10/exchange-2014-kickoff-partner-awards/
Supporting Quotes:
Trent Paben, COO at DMSi, said: DMSi is honored to be awarded 2014 Partner of the Year. This award demonstrates the long-standing partnership that we have with Progress that has seen close collaboration and shared innovation goals. Progress continues to build tools that help us deliver compelling applications and stay ahead of the competition - allowing us to focus on creating powerful and innovative on-premise and cloud-based applications.
Tony Winter, chief information officer at QAD, said, Were honored that Progress has created an award in honor of Gordon. He was an incredible individual both personally and professionally. He made a significant impact on our business and he really personified what it means to be a team player. Were of course happy to accept the first Spark Award on his behalf and look forward to meeting future recipients.
Kimberly King, vice president, global partners & channels at Progress, said, Were proud to have an energized partner community that is innovating every single day. We feel lucky to be able to work with every one of our 2,000 partn
