Progress Software to Acquire Telerik for $263M | Hacker News Reader

Progress Software to Acquire Telerik for $263M

online.wsj.com

73 pointsjohandt57 comments

Telerik makes awful .Net components. I have used them in past. I was frustrated with their breaking changes, they had the worst release management. Every year they used to release new version and used to outright removed the methods or replace the signatures. No Deprecation!

In the past 8 years I've been involved in more projects to remove Telerik than to use it. The performance and long term maintenability of these drag and drop with no code! components are never well advertised. But I guess it solved a massive issue when companies thought design was cheaper with a consistent skin, forgetting that their programmers would still need to layout everything.

I'm using the Telerik Reporting product. I have to agree that the promoted drag and drop approach is pretty pathetic. Though using it at a programmable level hasn't been too bad. I've been able to do most things I've needed to do without too much heartache.

We briefly evaluated Telerik Reporting, but when a support technician during a technical conversation referred to 16,000 rows as "a large data set" that pretty much turned us off to it.

I have to strongly disagree. I have used their Sliverlight components in every SL project I have been involved with for the last four years and I could`t live without them. They are professional components for enterprise which does something that a open-source project could seldom( maybe never) do, support all the odd-cases needed. These are all the weird cases that no one would bother to implement in an OS-project, since it`s very seldom needed, but since they know that their customers might need this functionally they have already implemented it. Just look at the feature list for their GridView component for SL and try to match that with an OS-project. Combining this with good support and you got a winner.

As a result the good experiences I had with their components in a SL context I am know adopting their KendoUI components together with ReactJs. So far all the points made above for SL still stands for KendoUI.

Try Infragistics, you will never look back.

Both Telerik and Infragistics have their main development offices in Sofia, Bulgaria. From what I've heard most of Infragististics developers/testers/managers have worked for Telerik in the past and there is a considerable current in the other direction as well. I wouldn't expect a massive difference in the quality.

Could you give me some examples of why you switched to Infragistics and never looked back. And also some info on which platforms you have used it on?

What is the benefit of using KendoUI over any of the free JS options available? Edge cases again?

Lets do an example. In many of the enterprise applications I work on large datagrids are used. I did a loot of research in order to find the best open alternative, from what I found this seems to be http://datatables.net/ . It seems like a great product with a lots of features, plugins and ways to tweak it. But still KendoUI`s got features like proper grouping, binding to remote data(filtering, sorting, grouping etc), advanced filtering, fast customisation of headers/rows/cells, proper select/multi-select and so on. Im aware that you could probably do all these things with Datatables, but still you would have to find the appropriate plugins, browse through bad documentations and properly end up implementing half of the missing features your self. Of course this could be done, but with KendoUI you got it all out of the box, with proper documentation. And if you don`t figure it out, you got professional support with fast response(great for junior dev). Yes KendoUi got a steep licence cost, but it don`t take long to realize that it`s worth it. I could to exactly the same example for the TreeView component(and to some degree the Data Visualization package, though the open alternatives seems much more competitive, if not better, here).

So to answer your question, from my experience using KendoUI reduces the time needed for the average developer to complete the task.

Thanks for the "OS" rant. You should use the proper term, Free Software, next time: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....

Your absolutely right. Free Software was the term is was referring to. And if it came out as a rant that was not my purpose at all, but to share a positive experience about Telerik`s products.

We're using the kendo ui mvvm, It seems like they forked knockout js, and just did their own thing. It's kind of awful. I kind of wish I had fought harder to use Angular js.

Kendo is indeed a "fork" of many things. Knockout, Backbone, underscore templates with different delimiters, bootstrap, many existing ui widgets (chosen comes to mind). About the only thing they didn't fork was jQuery itself. But at least you get all of the above in a single product. I guess that's a bonus?

I have personally fought to work around their widgets more times than I've worked with them. And have dropped integrating their widgets into new projects, to avoid the bloat/overhead.

We are still using the original ASP.NET MVC extensions that they released as open source before they went on to develop Kendo.

I've used a fair few .NET controls from various vendors and they all are challenging in different ways. The common problem is that they force you to do things in a particular way.

If I was to rebuild our product it would not be using any of this heavy backend style server controls.

It is history as far as I can see. JavaScript front-end frameworks and REST services even with .NET is where Microsoft seem to be headed as well.

...and now they are working on their own JavaScript-for-mobile-apps language - what could possibly go wrong: http://www.telerik.com/nativescript

I agree. Seems like we even had problems with incremental releases... removed methods and changed signatures.

So i was working on a small decision support system for a hospital. Some designer recommended their chart control and i used it in project.

In final stage, client asked for empty values support, i check and found that in next release they have this feature. So i said yes and gave them 1 week estimate. Assuming all i have to do is replace radchart dll.

But, I was wrong. I upgraded the Radchart and found 70% code is not working. Forget working, it's not even compiling anymore. Insted of deprecating the method, they remove it right away in next minor release.

I don't think there was any architect or senior programmers in their team.

In my previous company designers or managers fell for their shiny features and got trapped. Crappy product!

Another HP+Autonomy kinda scam.

You just need to be more agile.

Agile doesn't mean redoing the whole app everytime third party vendor releases the minor version.

I've had good luck using their Kendo UI Web components in an Angular context. Their Grid component is hard to beat.

I don't really agree, I've used their web stuff with kendo ui and WPF stuff, they do lack a good documentation, and had things breaking with a minor release or half done things they shouldn't have released, but they have lot of solid controls that save weeks or months of work.

Yes. I had RadControls inflicted upon me once.

I, like many people here by the looks, spent a good deal of time removing them. We had one issue where the page response with an AJAX Manager (or whatever it was called) was 5x as slow than a full page refresh. Turns out it was POSTing 2Mb of crap for some reason.

I'd rather eat my own poop that use their software again.

That is one of the most successful Bulgarian companies being acquired. Telerik has been a center piece in the Bulgarian IT sector. There is hardly an IT company here in Sofia that doesn't have at least one employee that has been employed with Telerik or gone through their training programmes.

The rumors in Sofia were that the company was going downhill. This seems to confirm it.

I really tried to like their products. Didn't managed. And they flooded the market with half trained "developers" from their academy.

And how exactly is 263M for 10 years "going downhill"?

Its called aquihire. Its also one seventh tumblr and rounding error of whatsapp.

Which prove what kind of value? Oh wait, I know. Cats pictures and yet another chat app. #Sigh I really hope that all these overpriced startups which provide zero value and plans for "ads revenue" get what they deserve, and then we'll speak about "value" at all.

Every large number sounds impressive, don't get yourself caught in that mind-trap. Divide the number by their employees, check earnings/winnings, subtract investments, compare to other companies and draw your conclusions again.

If I make $1000000/year, that's great. But if it takes me 1000 people to do it, that's less than $100 per person per month.

It was bootstrapped, from what I know the original 4 founders used to own 80% of the company a year or so ago.

What you know is false, sorry.

And what if they started with 4 and ended up with a 1000?

For non-subscribers: https://www.google.com/search?q=Progress+Software+to+Acquire...

It's amazing the kind of crap you can produce in the enterprise space and get away with it to the tune of multi hundred million dollar acquisitions.

Hmmmm, apparently I'm the only one here with a positive experience. I've used their Windows Phone and Windows 8 components and I really really like them. They are much, much faster than their opensource counterparts, they are very flexible and advanced and Telerik's support is great. I always get answers within 24 hours, and they often provide a complete solution/project with samples.

You are not the only one. People tend to share the negative stuff first though. No company like Telerik can reach this state without a value given to their customers.

HN has become very negative in the recent years. Only stuff build by Apple and Google gets mostly positive comments.

I did not realize that Telerik was of Bulgarian origin. That is a pretty sizable exit.

This is a fascinating move for Progress Software, who seem to have managed decades of survival through the onslaught of SQL and MySQL/Postgres cutting into their market .. and so to see them acquiring Telerik now is really interesting. Progress were, once, one of the major players in the database space (and still are in many vertical markets) so it could really be an interesting development to see them rise again. Could be with this acquisition they are gearing up for a new era in database development...

They survive because of vendor lockin, too many companies have years or decades of work in to using that system and it would be far too costly to move.

If your starting a project from scratch today you are not using progress, Legacy is their only business.

They know it, which is why they are buying up companies like this.

Bingo! I came across Progress first time this week in a different context (Indian startup scene) - they portray themselves as incubators here (https://www.progress.com/incubator). Have a fancy application system et al.. even stress how they don't take any equity.

Turns out in lieu of essentially a deskspace and maybe wifi they mandate the incubated startups to use their Cloud platform products - aha lockin! This is how shitty enterprises survive. When they can't find new customers, they come to India and tomtom around as evangelists & incubators and other $100 words in self-description.

Well, to be fair, Progress has had traction in India as an application environment for decades now, so it only makes sense that there be an iCloud'ification of their whole product line - all the cool kids are doing it..

I remember using the Progress database, 4GL and all, and it was a painful experience.

I remember being very surprised that in mid-2000's, it didn't automatically optimize a query like "A>B and X=Y". It ended up running A>B first, which pulled in most of a huge table, instead of running X=Y, which was much narrower. I thought it was a basic query optimization heuristic to prioritize equality constraints, so I thought it was unacceptable for an enterprise SQL database in mid-2000's to not have that.

I think in Progress' 4GL, you basically had 'the power' to use ()'s to hint at your preference. I dunno though, been a looooong time (1989) since I wrote any Progress 4GL code. Been mostly a MySQL/PostgreSQL user since then, although I confess to being more inclined to NoSQL these days .. :)

Telerik wasn't half bad when I was the only .net developer for a hospital system with 3,000 employees. It made short work for me since building AJAX-y controls meant less time building business rules.

The controls are really bad, they produce a lot of awful JS. Also, with newer frameworks such as angular, knockout, ember, et al...building reusable JS components got simpler. I haven't yet used KendoUI but haven't had a need too, building my own was far more fun (and with OData, not that much time either).

I did use their reporting product a lot but even that was too heavy and cumbersome.

I just hope Carl and Richard at the .NET Rocks podcast can find a new sponsor or figure out some other option to keep their great show going. Seems like Telerik has been their main sponsor forever.

Richard is (was?) on the board of Telerik also. I've contacted DNR to try and organise sponsorship and never heard back from them.

Progresses' database is an interesting and very powerful product, but, I'm not sure that this will be beneficial to anyone who isn't really familiar with the verticals and integrations that Progress owns. I know that I've seen progress used by running MFP/ERP suites that are used by automotive and manufacturing companies.

Good for them. The Telerik .NET controls are an overall a positive experience.

Just got their email to the devs:

Today, we’re excited to announce that Telerik has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Progress Software (progress.com <http://info.telerik.com/UoQy00P0TG0TOJ003C000AR>), a U.S.-based public company that specializes in the development, deployment, integration and management of a deep suite of business applications. They’ve been in business since 1981 and their technology is used by nearly 140,000 organizations in more than 180 countries, including 90% of the Fortune 500.

By becoming part of Progress, Telerik will have the support and resources to continue delivering on its grand ambitions to change the way people develop applications for the modern world. Telerik will preserve its identity and its brand name.

As we chase our ambition with more energy than ever before, we promise to stay true to the values that have guided us since our humble beginnings, including taking care of our customers and employees; evolving together with you as the world changes; going the extra mile; reinventing ourselves; innovating; creating great products; and continuing to “deliver more than expected” every day in our quest to create a better digital world.

We’re committed to keeping our promises as we will be joining a company that shares a similar philosophy, bold vision and is driven to reinvent itself. Telerik and Progress have very complementary product portfolios, business models and expertise. This will make both of us stronger and more capable to deliver on our shared vision: to help individual developers and enterprises build modern applications across platforms and devices.

Please know that your relationship with Telerik is not changing as a result of this transaction. You should continue contacting us in the same ways you always have. Connect with the same Telerik staff members you’re used to. Read our thought leadership content on TDN. Submit your issues and product features requests.

Telerik remains fully committed to continuing to empower every one of you with our industry-leading UI tools, platform, and cloud services. We will continue to innovate and improve all of our products. Our 1.4 million developers and 130,000 companies depend on Telerik day in and day out to get their jobs done as effectively as possible and we treat your investment and trust very seriously. You can expect the same level of relentless focus and passion we have always delivered. We are here to stay and will continue to be your trusted partner and enable you to develop the greatest experiences possible for your customers.

Last, but not least – a VERY BIG THANK YOU! Without the trust of every one of you, our customers, Telerik would have never become what it is today. We are very excited about being able to serve you well in the future.

Telerik founders and senior leadership will continue to drive the Telerik vision and strategy as part of Progress Software and we’d love to hear from you! You can reach us at: Telerikprogress@telerik.com.

Yours truly, Svetozar Georgiev and Vassil Terziev Co-Founders and Co-CEOS, Telerik

Having HN as the only source of information is not a good thing. I didn't know who Progress Corp were, and I would not know Telerik if my brother, who works in big corporate, had not told me sometime ago.

What does telerik actually do/sell out of interest?

Although I'm sure they do other things, they sell .Net components, kind of a "create grids/reporting/tables" with no code or UI development toolkit.

I have several friends there. I've never used their products (neither .Net or .js) but can't be happier for them :)

I hope Fiddler remains free...

Telerik makes awful

Did you just create an account to say a half of a negative sentence? o_O

Reply on news.ycombinator.com