Looking to kickstart growth and modernize its technology offerings, Progress Software announced Wednesday that it is acquiring Bulgarian application development tool maker Telerik for $262.5 million.
Telerik, which claims to support 130,000 clients, builds software tools to help develop cloud, Web, mobile and desktop applications. The company said its platform “combines industry-leading UI tools with cloud services to simplify the entire app development lifecycle.” Telerik has about 750 employees globally.
Progress said it hopes the acquisition will help it create a comprehensive platform for both cloud and on-premise deployment. “The combined offering will enable developers to create highly personalized user experiences, powerful applications and connections to multiple data sources without being limited by cloud or device,” the company said.
Buying Growth
The acquisition follows Progress’ June purchase of Modulus, a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) company specializing in scalable, cloud-hosted business and consumer applications. One year earlier, the company bought another PaaS company, Rollbase, to provide its independent software vendor clients with a drag-and-drop user interface.
With the Telerik acquisition, Bedford, Mass.-based Progress gets its hands on Sitefinity, a content management system for creating and managing mobile enterprise applications, a cloud-based mobile development platform, a suite of user-interface development tools and application life cycle management, and a .Net toolbox.
Perhaps more importantly, it also gains access to Telerik’s its community of 1.4 million developers, including developers working in ABL, .NET, Java, JavaScript, Node.js and mobile environments. Moreover, Telerik is predicting annual sales growth of more than 20 percent.
“Telerik’s strength is in helping developers create elegant, custom user interfaces for their cloud, web-based and on-premise applications,” said Phil Pead, Progress CEO. Pead cited the complexity inherent in developing modern applications, including the need to deal with security, scaling, massive amounts of data and the ability to deploy on a large number of different devices, as another rationale for the acquisition. “Together, Progress and Telerik can help to solve these issues so that developers can focus on building software that solves business problems.”
Strengthening Enterprise and Cloud Offerings
Telerik clients include developers at 450 of the Fortune 500 companies. Telerik was positioned as a “Visionary” in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Mobile Application Development Platforms and the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Integrated Software Quality Suites.
“The acquisition by Progress will further strengthen our enterprise and cloud offerings, and will enable us to continue innovating and redefining modern application development,” said Vassil Terziev, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Telerik. Terziev said the deal should dramatically increase growth for both companies.
The acquisition is expected to close in early December, subject to obtaining regulatory approval and other customary closing conditions. Following the completion of the acquisition, the Telerik founders and key management will join Progress. Progress expects to fund a portion of the purchase price with debt. The company said it will provide further details regarding the funding and debt structure after the transaction is closed.