Progress Software (PRGS) Names Yogesh Gupta as CEO; Reaffirms Guidance

Progress (NASDAQ: PRGS) today announced the appointment of Yogesh Gupta as its new chief executive officer. Phil Pead, Progress’ current CEO, is retiring but will continue to serve on the Progress board of directors. Pead has been CEO since December 2012 and has led Progress through its strategic transformation to becoming a global leader in application development, empowering the digital transformation organizations need to create and sustain engaging user experiences in today’s evolving marketplace.

Prior to joining Progress, Gupta was president and chief executive officer of Kaseya, Inc., a leading IT management cloud software company, from 2013 until 2015. As CEO of Kaseya, Gupta defined a new growth strategy and led the company through a complete product and business transformation. Gupta successfully implemented a high-velocity sales process that led to the transition of an $80 million on-premise and perpetual business to cloud and subscription.

Prior to Kaseya, Gupta was chief executive officer at FatWire Software, from 2007 until it was acquired by Oracle in 2011. During his time as CEO, FatWire became a leading independent web experience management software company. Under Gupta’s leadership, FatWire increased revenue 100% in three years by delivering innovative new products to manage social web and mobile presence and launching new cloud-based offerings. Prior to FatWire, Gupta was chief technology officer and chief strategist at Computer Associates, with whom he served from 1989 until 2007.

“Yogesh is clearly the right leader for Progress’ future,” said John R. Egan, chairman of the board of directors. “The board, as part of its annual succession planning, considered both internal and external candidates to find the best leader for our company and its employees, customers, partners and shareholders. During the course of this review, we found an individual in Yogesh with a proven track record of delivering outstanding investor returns through innovative growth strategies and strong execution, making him an incredible fit for our company and the CEO to lead the company to the next level.”

Added Egan, “On behalf of the board and company, I want to thank Phil for his many contributions to Progress, particularly in leading the company through a period of significant change. I am thrilled that Phil will continue to serve on the board of directors, where he will be an invaluable resource to Yogesh, while at the same time adding his extensive experience as a public company board member.”

In connection with his appointment as CEO, the board also elected Gupta as a member of the board of directors. Gupta is not related to Ram Gupta, also a member of the Progress board of directors.

“Over the last four years, we have refocused Progress and built a solid strategic foundation for growth,” said Pead. “Making the decision to retire is never easy but given the alignment of Yogesh’s skills and experience with the strides we have made as we prepare to exit 2016, I decided that this would be the right time for me to accelerate my retirement so that we could recruit Yogesh to lead the next phase of the growth of our company. I couldn’t be more excited to welcome Yogesh as our new CEO. I will also remain on the board of Progress and look forward to seeing our momentum accelerate under Yogesh’s leadership.”

“I’m incredibly excited to join the Progress team,” said Gupta. “Progress has that rare combination of a passionate customer and partner base, leading products, amazingly talented people, dedication to technology innovation, and momentum in the market. As we add capabilities for our customers and partners, deepen our enterprise presence, and further expand into the cloud, our mission remains unchanged—to enable developers to create the applications of tomorrow - ones that deliver engaging user experiences, leverage enterprise data, and run on the most scalable and reliable platform in the industry.”

As part of today’s announcement, Progress is reaffirming its guidance for the fiscal quarter and year ended November 30, 2016 as stated in its press release issued on September 28, 2016 as follows:

In conjunction with this announcement, Progress will host a conference call at 5:00 pm ET on Monday, October 10, 2016 with Phil Pead and Yogesh Gupta, which can be accessed on the investor relations section of the company’s website, located at www.progress.com. Additionally, you can listen to the call by telephone by dialing 1-800-768-6563, pass code 9700607. An archived version of the conference call will be available on the Progress website within the investor relations section after the live conference call.

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