Progress Software to Acquire Telerik for $263M

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 " rel="nofollow">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

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

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.

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.

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.