Progress internal incubator programme inspires, enables and supports new ideas; driving innovation in application development technologies

Progress (NASDAQ: PRGS), the leading provider of application development and deployment technologies, today publicly announced Progress Labs, the technology incubator in which Progress team members create, test, and bring their innovative ideas to life. As a result of the Progress Labs pilot program run in 2017, Progress Labs has already launched its first product, Progress® NativeChat™, the artificial intelligence-driven platform for creating and deploying chatbots.

“Innovation comes in many forms from many places, and we believe that our talented employees possess the ideas that will carry Progress and our customers into the future,” said Dmitri Tcherevik, Chief Technology Officer, Progress. “With the establishment of Progress Labs, we’re giving our best and brightest a unique opportunity to explore their ideas with the full support of an established technology leader, with the goal of driving new value to our customers over time.”

Progress Labs was established to surface innovative ideas within Progress, and to nurture and harness these ideas so they can be developed as a part of the company’s product offerings. Each year, Progress Labs commissions a new set of teams that will test innovative ideas through a sequence of experiments carefully designed to prove their economic and customer value. Those selected to participate are freed from their day-to-day responsibilities to focus entirely on their incubator projects which last one to a maximum of two years.

The pilot programme for Progress Labs took place in 2017 in which one project was selected and cultivated through the Progress Labs methodologies and practices. This project came to fruition in the form of a new product offering – announced today, Progress NativeChat, the AI-driven platform for creating and deploying chatbots. Progress NativeChat enables customer service teams to automate routine interactions, freeing service personnel to deliver better experiences by focusing on higher value-added customer interactions. Unlike other chatbot technologies, the NativeChat solution is based on patent pending CognitiveFlow technology with the ability to self-learn as interactions evolve. Progress NativeChat is offered in 72 languages. For more information about Progress NativeChat, click here.

With ideas exploring augmented, virtual reality, blockchain, edge computing for IoT, new AI-based applications and more, a multitude of new Progress Labs applications are already in hand with the next cohort underway. For more information about Progress Labs and to track the progress of future cohorts, please click here.