Progress Software, a maker of application development software, is buying Boston-based Kinvey for $49 million in cash.
Kinvey, which fostered development of business-oriented mobile apps, will help Progress (PRGS) provide tools that companies can use to build apps that run on smartphones, tablets, desktops, TV screens, or wherever is most appropriate, Kinvey’s founder and chief executive Sravish Sridhar told Fortune.
Software applications can no longer be segregated, Sridhar added. “You used to think of mobile apps or web apps or desktop apps, but in the future the user will decide where to consume an app, and every business has to deliver its apps on all those devices, including sales kiosks.”
When Kinvey was founded in 2011, it played in a mobile application development field that included Parse, which Facebook (FB) bought in 2013; Stackmob, which eBay (EBAY) purchased the same year; and FeedHenry, which Red Hat (RHT) bought the following year.
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Clearly, all those acquirers saw the need to boost their mobile app development skills and personnel. Facebook and eBay subsequently shuttered those teams—perhaps an indication that mobile development had already gone mainstream.
Yogesh Gupta, who was named Progress’s chief executive in October, led the Kinvey acquisition and will keep the company’s 40 employees in its current downtown location. Progress, which started out in 1981 providing an array of software tools to techies, is based in Bedford, Mass. That suburban location makes it harder to recruit young programmers who want to work in the city, which is something Kinvey can help address.
The joint company will employ about 1,700 people.
