The Power of the People

As I'm sure everyone is now aware, yesterday we announced that Progress is joining forces with IONA Technologies with a goal of strengthening our position as a leader in independent, standards-based, heterogeneous, distributed SOA infrastructure. The innovative approach to professional open source and strong adherence to standards in the IONA product set really gets a technology geek like me excited about the possibilities that this combination enables. If you are like me, and spend your leisure time digging into OSGi while thinking that the Spring Framework is the best thing to happen to Java since Hibernate (admittedly I try to have a life too), then you too may be salivating over the future possibilities. But I digress…

What I want to talk about is how impressed I am with all of the people that I have encountered at IONA throughout this process. Posts I have read over the course of the day are quick to point out the proximity of our US offices and our mutual 20+ year history in the software industry as similarities, but the alignment goes well beyond geography and highly adopted heritage platforms (the marketing guys have finally driven the word legacy out of my vocabulary ;-)). Rather, we have a remarkably similar way that we think about the problems that we solve for our customers and a passion for the technology and standards that we leverage in our mutual product lines. Technology and strategy discussions I have had with IONA employees (before the acquisition was even contemplated) have been lively, insightful, and very productive. Furthermore, IONA employees have a deep understanding of the requirements around creating mission-critical, high-performance, transactional systems. This pedigree is highly valued in the industry and a core tenet of all of the products that we release at Progress and IONA.

SOA What? Well beyond the product, standards, and open source opportunities that Progress+IONA represents, perhaps the most valuable asset that we are obtaining is the world-class team of technology leaders and innovators. I look forward to working with my new colleagues from IONA and welcome them to Progress.