Acquiring Chef, a market leader in DevOps and DevSecOps, will further strengthen our position as a trusted provider of the best products to develop, deploy and manage high-impact applications.
After months of hard work by dozens of people in both companies, today, we signed the definitive agreement to acquire Chef, with the deal expected to close in early to mid-October. This is exciting in and of itself, of course, but the promise of what lies ahead is what gets me really enthused.
An acquisition is a step function. It has the potential of making a meaningful positive impact for our customers, our employees—including those who will join when the deal closes—and our investors. When looking for businesses to acquire, we look for companies with mission-critical products that solve real customer challenges, and then, by dedicating substantive resources and a tireless focus on customer success, we make those customers even more successful. The success of an acquisition depends on executing a sound go-forward plan—one that ensures greater value for customers, greater opportunities for employees , and greater sustained value for shareholders. Chef checks all these boxes and then some.
Progress products are integral to the offerings of more than 1,700 tech companies and are used in-house at tens of thousands of enterprises. Products built on Progress technology are used by millions of business users in more than 100,000 companies, and benefit hundreds of millions of consumers. We support developer communities with over 2 million developers by supplying them with innovative products such as Fiddler and Telerik developer tools.
The acquisition of Chef, a market leader in DevOps and DevSecOps, with the best products for multi-cloud, hybrid and on-prem infrastructure automation, will broaden our offerings and enable us to deliver greater value to our customers. By providing continuous application delivery, dependable compliance and remediation automation, Chef will further strengthen our position as a trusted provider of the best products to build, deploy and manage high-impact business applications.
We have a long history of supporting open source communities so I am proud to say that we will continue to nurture the vibrant and thriving Chef open source community. We also have over 40 years of product innovation, and we will invest in accelerating innovation in DevOps and DevSecOps. We will also increase the focus on customer success, something that Chef is already well known for.
Our companies have very similar cultures. Both companies have relentlessly focused on customer satisfaction and success. Chef has built a culture that values equity, fairness, inclusion and diversity in its workplace and with whom it does business, and I am incredibly proud of Progress’ track record in these areas as well. We put the health, well-being and success of our employees first, and we see tremendous opportunities for our employees, both those with Progress today, as well as those Chef employees who join us when the deal closes.
Progress has an aggressive goal to double our company in five years by acquiring businesses that complement our portfolio, provide long term, sustained value to customers and can benefit from our scale and strength for greater success. Chef is the next step in that journey.
I’m a developer and technologist at heart and the anticipation of having another extraordinary set of technologies in our portfolio is nothing short of exhilarating. We eagerly look forward to when Chef is on board and we can get cooking.
Yogesh Gupta
A technologist at heart, Progress Chief Executive Officer Yogesh Gupta is passionate about how technology can make life simpler—both in the workplace and at home. He brings an infectious energy to work each day, defining company strategy and direction, gaining alignment and ensuring each team has what it needs to execute. His goal is for Progress to be a powerful voice in fueling marketplace transformation.