Servoy loves progress

Tomorrow is the EMEA PUG conference in Germany. We were planning to go as we love progress and we happen to offer a great UX platform to modernize existing OpenEdge applications. We sponsored last year’s conferences in both Europe and the USA and were received warmly by the Progress community. We enjoyed it very much and received feedback from the attendees and Board that Servoy was received well as a new player in the PUG arena.

Unfortunately when we subscribed to sponsor this year’s event, we did not receive a response. After a discussion with the board of the EMEA PUG, we learned that Progress Software viewed Servoy as a threat and would retract their sponsorship if they allowed Servoy to sponsor as well. Though disappointing, we fully understand the position EMEA PUG was facing.

To learn more of Progress Software’s decision, we scheduled an appointment at Progress Software’s EMEA headquarters, where we were cordially received by Damian Coyle, Monique Bruins and a pre-sales engineer of Progress Europe.

They shared that Progress Software sees us as competition. When we explained that we believe the opposite, that Servoy extends the lifecycle of a Progress application by allowing ISVs to deliver modern HTML5 front-ends with a superior User Experience, they eventually agreed verbally that Servoy does not compete with Progress. Also, Damian Coyle was going to discuss the matter with Mr. Armstrong, the EMEA director. Unfortunately, Mr. Armstrong still saw Servoy as competition – he does not want Servoy to sponsor the conference AND, in fact, does not want any Servoy employee attending the conference. We regret this but respect the decision of the EMEA PUG board as Progress Software is a key sponsor for their event.

The facts are on our side: more and more companies based on Progress Software’s OpenEdge technology are using Servoy to deliver great User Experiences in record time. We will be hosting a webinar soon where a couple of Progress ISVs will demonstrate their success.

We are confident the EMEA PUG conference is going to be a great conference and we would have loved to join but we fully understand the decision taken by the board of the PUG. We wish everybody a fantastic conference!

At Servoy we love progress and if you are interested in progressing your application to the next level by adding a great UX and UI on top of your existing OpenEdge application contact us to learn more!

note: OpenEdge and Progress Software are registered trademarks of Progress Software. When I use progress in this post I refer to the English word progress and not the software company.