Progress is a global software company. The Progress portfolio includes solutions for enterprise integration, data interoperability and application development, including Software as a Service (SaaS) enablement and delivery. Progress's headquarters are in Bedford, Massachusetts.

It also has offices in locations such as Hyderabad, India.

Progress products and technology are used at over 60,000 organizations in 140 countries including 90% of the Fortune 500. Progress technology provides the infrastructure for applications as diverse as ERP and financial trading, across industries as diverse as retail (Smartstores), manufacturing, telecommunications, financial services, and government. Its best known product is the OpenEdge ABL (formerly known as Progress 4GL), which was developed in the early 1980s.

The company is composed of the following business units: Application Development & Deployment, OpenEdge, and Data Integration. In September 2016, it was announced that Yogesh Gupta would be named president and CEO, replacing Phil Pead.

Progress Software was co-founded by several MIT graduates, including Joseph W. Alsop, in 1981. Initially called Data Language Corporation (DLC), the company changed its name in 1987 to match that of its flagship product, Progress.

In October 2002, Progress Software acquired Boston based eXcelon Corporation (NASDAQ: EXLN, formerly Object Design, NASDAQ: ODIS) for approximately US$24 Million. eXcelon created an XML IDE, Stylus Studio, which is now marketed by Progress Software.

In December 2003, Progress Software acquired DataDirect Technologies Ltd. for $88 million. In 2005, Progress acquired Apama and entered the Complex Event Processing Space.

In January 2006, Progress Software acquired Mountain View-based Actional Corporation, which itself was the merger between Actional Corporation and WestBridge Technologies (an XML Security company). Actional focuses on providing enterprise-class SOA Management, Security, and run-time Governance solutions that cross vendor and protocol boundaries, based upon open standards.

In March 2006, Progress Software acquired Neon Systems (NASDAQ: NEON), which offers a set of capabilities for companies seeking to modernize existing 3270 applications. In 2010, Progress Software acquired the Santa Clara-based Savvion Inc., a provider of Business Process Management technology. Later that year, Progress announced the introduction of its Responsive Process Management (RPM) suite, including its Progress Control Tower.

In April 2011, Progress Software sold their SWIFT integration product "ADS" (formally Iona's "Artix Data Services") to C24 Technologies Ltd (UK). The product was re-branded to its former name "Integration Objects".

In April 2012, Progress announced strategy shift to become a much more narrowly focused, specialist vendor, looking to sell or decommission most of their existing products.

In June 2013, Progress Software acquired Rollbase Inc., a platform as a service (PaaS) for rapid development of cloud business applications. Rollbase was recognized by Gartner as a "2013 Cool Vendor in PaaS".

In June 2013, Software AG acquired Apama activities from Progress Software.

In June 2014, Progress Software announced that it had acquired Cincinnati-based Modulus, a company providing a Node.js and MongoDB cloud platform.

In December 2014, Progress Software completed the acquisition of Telerik, a leading provider of application development tools.

The Progress portfolio includes solutions for enterprise integration, data interoperability and application development, including Software as a Service (SaaS) enablement and delivery.

During the early-2000s, SonicMQ became a popular message broker made by Progress Software. It implements the Java Message Service 1.1 API. Gilliland's notion was that the term 'Bus,' being the fast communication layer in computer hardware architecture was analogous with the SonicXQ capabilities; further he felt the term more marketable generally. Gilliland reviewed his idea with Sonic marketing director Danny Goodall, they concluded 'Enterprise' over 'Application' and Goodall shared the thinking with US management. The idea was taken up by Greg O'Connor, Bill Cullen and Gordon Van Huizen of the Progress Sonic team, and subsequently adopted by IT analyst firm Gartner to become an industry accepted term.

In June 2008, Progress Software acquired Xcalia, a data integration company, and Mindreef, which developed SOAPscope products. In September 2008, Progress acquired IONA Technologies. IONA brought three product lines into the fold: FUSE (open source SOA), Artix (commercially licensed SOA), and Orbix (CORBA infrastructure).

In June 2012, the company sold its subsidiary FuseSource, which was spun out from Progress in October 2010, to Red Hat. In October 2012, Progress Software sold the brands Sonic, Savvion, Actional and DataXtend (DXSI) to Trilogy which created the company Aurea Software. The company also announced that Jay Bhatt planned to step down from the positions and as a director, effective December 7.

In May, 2016, Progress Software re-branded as "Progress" to emphasize its increased focus on delivering cloud-based software.