Progress Partner Plus Series: A Chat with MIP’s Richard Firth

As we leap into 2013, we've decided to start a new series where we chat with some of our partners about their longstanding relationship with Progress and the ways that our solutions have helped them to bring innovative cloud, web and mobile applications to their customers across industries.

We're kicking things off with Richard Firth, Chairman & CEO of South Africa-based, MIP Holdings. MIP is the world's only software company delivering solutions across the financial service verticals, including !waytag, a location-based service for mobile devices which assigns a fixed name to a location, linking actual location real-time to a ‘free-for-you-to-pick’ name. Built on Progress OpenEdge, !waytag makes it easy to share your location across a range of solutions and devices, unlike other solutions (Facebook, Google and Foursquare) which link users to locations that can only be accessed by others in the same application.

How long have you been a Progress partner? 

Our partnership stretches back 20 years, from one of our first applications, CHAR in 1991, up to WEB HTML5 IOS & Android App in 2011.

We have been through a number of technology changes with Progress.  Uniquely, Progress is the only vendor that has successfully transformed its technology and architecture to span all these technologies.  This is why the market does not understand what Progress has. You have to be a real techie to have an appreciation for the architecture.  Each time we decided to continue with Progress it was like choosing a new vendor in a new technology.  Most people had to leave their supplier and choose another vendor.  Progress had technical difficulties in the technology and architecture transitions but so did all companies.It reminds me of the days when Progress was riled because they had a language and a database.  This has given the company stability, reliability and a cost advantage over all the big players.

What types of applications have you built/are you planning to build on OpenEdge? 

• Healthcare Insurance administration
• Managed Healthcare administration
• Pension Fund or 401K administration
• Life Insurance administration
• Lending administration
• Treasury administration
• Property Rental Administration
• Waypoint and addressing location administration solution

What is your most critical business challenge? 

Developing apps that work on any platform, ensuring that we use a single technology to improve staff redundancy.

How does OpenEdge enable you to be more responsive?

The architecture is layered and incorporates all the components for developing enterprise business applications with a focus on re-usability.  The fact that the language and database are tuned to work together makes a big difference.

What do you love most about working with Progress? 

The ease of use. Progress does not compete with us in any facet of our delivery platform.  The company purely complements our offering.  The executives are open to new ways of doing business.  An example of this openness of the executive to empower partners was when MIP approached Progress to bill on a SaaS basis.

How do you feel about the new sales and channel leadership?

The commitment to get Progress back to its roots is important.  The company seemed to have lost direction for 2 years and the commitment and passion is back!