Progress Software has worked with Singapore Telecommunications Ltd (SingTel) to launch a cloud-based software development infrastructure.

While this probably looks like "me too" technology from yet another "something-as-a-Service" vendor, Progress is (arguably) an interesting case as the company has been on something of a transformative journey reinventing itself as a cloud development specialist.

Progress's new "strategic plan" to be a leading platform provider for context-aware applications in the cloud means this collaboration will enable software developers to deploy, access, and analyze applications in the cloud using the firm's OpenEdge application development platform.

NOTE: The Asia-Pacific Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) market is said to be attracting considerable interest from businesses due to the flexibility it brings to application development and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), with Frost & Sullivan projecting that the market will grow to reach $523 million in 2016. The high level of flexibility and the ability to reduce costs while developing, testing, and deploying new applications is creating a strong case for PaaS adoption in the region. Market adoption of SaaS is expected to grow at a CAGR of 20% with one-third of all businesses in Singapore adopting SaaS by 2015, while the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 21% and will be led mainly by medium and large businesses.

The OpenEdge platform is supported by SingTel's on-demand cloud service, called PowerON, which can be scaled to the needs of users in each case. PowerON is SingTel's end-to-end suite of cloud-based services and solutions covering Applications-on-Demand, Infrastructure-on-Demand, Connectivity-on-Demand, and Managed Services-on-Demand.

Alvin Kok, head of Infocomm Services, SingTel, said, "Businesses are already reaping the benefits from cloud computing as many applications can now be accessed through the cloud within their organizations. By harnessing SingTel's cloud capabilities and the Progress OpenEdge platform, Independent Software Vendors can increase their productivity, lower their operating expenditure, and enhance their agility. This will enable them to develop applications and bring them to the market more easily and quickly."

The Progress OpenEdge application platform is described as being used by world's leading embedded databases to ensure the high availability and scalability demanded by SaaS business applications.