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UNITED STATES
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

FORM 10-K

[X] ANNUAL REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF
THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934

For the Fiscal Year Ended November 30, 2003

or

[  ] TRANSITION REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF
THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934

Commission File Number: 0-19417

PROGRESS SOFTWARE CORPORATION

14 Oak Park
Bedford, Massachusetts 01730
(Address of principal executive offices)
Telephone Number: (781) 280-4000

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:
None

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(g) of the Act:
Common Stock $.01 par value

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days. Yes [x] No [  ]

Indicate by check mark if disclosure of delinquent filers pursuant to Item 405 of Regulation S-K is not contained herein, and will not be contained, to the best of registrant’s knowledge, in definitive proxy or information statements incorporated by reference in Part III of this Form 10-K or any amendment to this Form 10-K. [x]

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is an accelerated filer (as defined in Exchange Act Rule 12b-2). Yes [x] No [  ]

As of May 31, 2003 (the last business day of the registrant’s most recently completed second fiscal quarter), the aggregate market value of voting stock held by non-affiliates of the registrant was approximately $590,600,000.

As of January 31, 2004, there were 35,672,000 common shares outstanding.

Documents Incorporated by Reference

Portions of the definitive Proxy Statement for the Annual Meeting of Shareholders to be held on April 22, 2004 are incorporated by reference into Part III.

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PROGRESS SOFTWARE CORPORATION

FORM 10-K

FOR THE FISCAL YEAR ENDED NOVEMBER 30, 2003

INDEX

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PART I

CAUTIONARY STATEMENTS

The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 contains certain safe harbor provisions regarding forward-looking statements. This Form 10-K, and other information provided by the Company or statements made by its directors, officers or employees from time to time, may contain “forward-looking” statements and information, which involve risks and uncertainties. Actual future results may differ materially. Statements indicating that the Company “expects,” “estimates,” “believes,” “is planning” or “plans to” are forward-looking, as are other statements concerning future financial results, product offerings or other events that have not yet occurred. There are several important factors that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from those anticipated by the forward-looking statements. Such factors are described in greater detail in Item 7 of this Form 10-K under the heading “Factors That May Affect Future Results” and include, but are not limited to, the timing of the receipt and shipment of new orders, the success of the Company’s distribution channels, the timely release of enhancements to the Company’s products, the growth rates of certain market segments, the positioning of the Company’s products in those market segments, success in the messaging and integration market, variations in the demand for professional services and product maintenance, including technical support, global economic conditions, pricing pressures and the competitive environment in the software industry, the impact of the DataDirect acquisition and any future acquisitions on the Company’s business and the Company’s ability to penetrate international markets and manage its international operations. Although the Company has sought to identify the most significant risks to its business, the Company cannot predict whether, or to what extent, any of such risks may be realized, nor can there be any assurance that the Company has identified all possible issues which the Company might face. The Company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements it makes.

Item 1. Business

Progress Software Corporation (PSC or the Company) develops, markets and distributes software to simplify and accelerate the development, deployment, integration and management of business applications. The mission of PSC is to deliver superior software products and services that empower partners and customers to dramatically improve their development, deployment, integration and management of quality applications worldwide. PSC seeks to achieve its mission by providing a robust set of software platforms, tools and services that simplify the process of delivering highly integrated and constantly evolving business applications that support an open, flexible and dynamic architecture. PSC’s products include development tools, databases, application servers, messaging servers, application management tools, data connectivity products and integration products for distributed and Web-based applications as well as for client/server applications.

PSC has five operating units and a supporting research and business development unit. PSC’s principal operating unit conducts business as the Progress Company and is a division of PSC. Two of the other operating units, Sonic Software Corporation and PeerDirect Corporation, address the needs of emerging markets and operate as subsidiaries of the Company. The fourth operating unit is ObjectStore, a division of PSC, providing advanced data management software for developing high performance real-time applications which require processing of large amounts of data. The fifth operating unit, DataDirect Technologies (DataDirect), was acquired in December 2003. DataDirect is a division of PSC and provides standards-based data connectivity software. . PSC Labs, a division of PSC based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, focuses on new business development, research, and strategic investments.

The Progress Company provides the Progress® OpenEdge™ platform, a set of development and deployment technologies, including the OpenEdge RDBMS, one of the leading embedded databases, that simplifies the job of building business applications. With the release of OpenEdge 10 in December 2003, certain products were combined within the product set and the entire suite was rebranded from Progress to OpenEdge. The goal of the Progress Company, in partnership with its more than 2,000 Application Partners (APs), is to enable customers to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage by delivering business solutions that simplify their operations, are fast to implement, provide one of the lowest total costs of ownership, and have unparalleled reliability.

Sonic Software Corporation delivers a distributed, standards-based, communications and integration infrastructure, built on an enterprise service bus (ESB) that integrates existing business applications and orchestrates business processes across the extended enterprise.

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PeerDirect Corporation supplies technology for distributed application and database deployment and management. Its flagship product suite, PeerDirect™ Distributed Enterprise, allows companies to centrally manage distributed applications and synchronize databases. Its products can be deployed across widely distributed locations and mobile users.

ObjectStore, acquired in December 2002 as part of the acquisition of eXcelon Corporation (eXcelon), provides advanced data management software for developing real-time, high performance operational applications. ObjectStore products enable complex relationships among data elements to be modeled identically in memory and on disk, providing fast storage and retrieval of complex data structures at in-memory speeds.

In December 2003, the Company completed its cash acquisition of certain assets and subsidiaries and the assumption of certain liabilities of DataDirect Technologies Limited for approximately $87.4 million, net of cash acquired and subject to certain post-closing adjustments. DataDirect now operates as a division of PSC. Its principal products provide connectivity between software applications and databases in heterogeneous environments.

Based upon the aggregation criteria for segment reporting within consolidated financial statements, PSC had two reportable segments in fiscal 2003: Application Development & Deployment, which primarily includes the Progress Company, ObjectStore, PeerDirect and PSC Labs, and Enterprise Application Integration, which principally represents Sonic Software.

More than half of PSC’s worldwide revenue is realized through its relationships with indirect channel partners, principally APs that market applications utilizing the Company’s technology. These APs sell business applications across diverse markets such as manufacturing, distribution, financial services, retail and health care. PSC also sells software products and services directly to the business groups and Information Technology (IT) organizations of businesses and governments. PSC operates in North America, Latin America, Europe, Middle East, Africa (EMEA) and the Asia/Pacific region through local subsidiaries as well as independent distributors. Financial information relating to business segments and international operations is found in Note 11 of the Consolidated Financial Statements, in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K, and is incorporated herein by reference.

PSC Products

PSC develops, markets and distributes software for the development, deployment, integration and management of business applications. PSC provides development tools that empower developers to deliver high-quality applications. PSC delivers reliable, high-performance deployment and integration products — such as application servers, databases, ESBs and messaging servers — that are essential to the successful use of an application, result in a low total cost of ownership and extend the application’s lifecycle. The Company’s product lines are designed to continually integrate open standards while delivering high levels of performance and scalability. PSC’s products are generally licensed as perpetual licenses.

The Progress Company’s OpenEdge product suite is a flexible, reliable and comprehensive business platform whose components are designed to work together. OpenEdge 10, released in December 2003, allows developers to efficiently develop, deploy, integrate and manage critical business applications. Through a standards-based, service-oriented architecture, OpenEdge delivers flexibility that allows developers to leverage existing technology, effectively adopt new technology and connect applications with customers, partners and suppliers. The OpenEdge 10 product set consists of products such as OpenEdge Studio, WebSpeed® WorkShop, OpenEdge RDBMS, OpenEdge Application Server, Progress Fathom™, OpenEdge DataServers and others as well. OpenEdge 10 provides backward compatibility to the Company’s previous release, Progress Version 9.

Sonic Software provides the Sonic Business Integration Suite™, a standards-based, distributed infrastructure that is designed to reliably and cost-effectively connect applications and orchestrate business processes across the extended enterprise. The Sonic Business Integration Suite is built on the Sonic ESB, which was the first commercially available ESB. Sonic Software also offers SonicMQ®, a highly scalable messaging server. The ObjectStore® product set from the ObjectStore division provides a technology solution for developing reliable, high performance data management and caching support for applications. DataDirect’s primary product for standards-based database connectivity is DataDirect Connect™. PeerDirect’s primary product is PeerDirect Distributed Enterprise.

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The following descriptions, organized by technology groups, provide details about the Company’s significant products:

Development Products

OpenEdge™ Studio

OpenEdge Studio provides developers with a unified, highly productive development environment for building complex distributed business applications. OpenEdge Studio presents one workbench and one set of tools for developing a range of applications from client/server models to transaction processing over the Internet. OpenEdge Studio is the development environment for the Progress® Dynamics™ application framework. OpenEdge contains Progress® AppBuilder, a central workbench providing visual tools for defining objects, laying out interfaces and linking data, and the 4GL Development System, a toolset for writing Progress applications that includes an editor, compiler, data dictionary and data administration utilities.

Progress Dynamics™

Progress Dynamics™ is the application framework of the Progress OpenEdge platform for building and deploying distributed enterprise applications. The application framework is a result of collaboration between Progress developers, consultants, and customers. Progress Dynamics derives its power from a declarative approach to application development. A repository allows developers to declare object properties and templates. This approach facilitates code re-use, streamlines updating and maintaining objects, and enables dynamic business components. The ability to dynamically generate objects during development and at run time decreases development time, eases deployment, and increases an application’s flexibility to react more quickly to market and customer demands.

WebSpeed® Workshop

WebSpeed Workshop is a solution for building and deploying highly scalable, business Web applications that process large volumes of transactions. WebSpeed WorkShop combines a visual toolset, packaged Web objects, and SpeedScript, a scripting language specially purposed for internet applications to create a productive development environment.

Sonic Stylus Studio™

Sonic Stylus Studio™ is an advanced eXtensible Mark-up Language (XML) development environment. Sonic Stylus Studio includes numerous XML-related data maps, editors and debuggers. Sonic Stylus Studio has the capability to query and update relational data using the emerging SQL/XML standard. Sonic Stylus Studio includes the XQuery Editor, a standards-based, advanced XQuery development environment.

Deployment Products

OpenEdge™ RDBMS

The OpenEdge RDBMS products are high-performance relational databases that can scale from a single-user Windows system to symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) and cache coherent non-uniform memory access (ccNUMA) systems, supporting thousands of concurrent users. In addition to offering scalability and a low total cost of ownership, the OpenEdge RDBMS products offer high availability, reliability, performance, and platform portability. OpenEdge provides flexible data storage capabilities that allow multiple clients to access the same data via Progress 4GL or SQL-92 access via Open DataBase Connectivity (ODBC) and Java DataBase Connectivity (JDBC). OpenEdge RDBMS products integrate with enterprise applications, tools and numerous third-party data management systems. The three OpenEdge RDBMS products – Enterprise, Workgroup and Personal - allow users to select a solution that satisfies their business objectives.

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The OpenEdge Enterprise RDBMS is designed for large user environments and the transaction processing throughput of high volume SQL-based and Progress 4GL-based on-line transaction processing (OLTP) applications. The OpenEdge Enterprise RDBMS was developed with a flexible, multithreaded, multiserver architecture. The OpenEdge Enterprise RDBMS is a powerful, open and large-scale enterprise database that can run across multiple hardware platforms and networks. The architecture of the OpenEdge storage engine lets applications take advantage of powerful computing systems. With support for over 10,000 concurrent users and numerous terabytes of data, it provides the capacity for large-scale, high-performance computing.

The OpenEdge Workgroup RDBMS, which offers many of the same powerful capabilities as the OpenEdge Enterprise RDBMS, is designed for workgroups of two to thirty simultaneous users. This department-level solution provides high performance, multi-user support and cross-platform interoperability. The OpenEdge Workgroup RDBMS runs on a wide variety of hardware and operating system platforms. The OpenEdge Personal RDBMS is bundled with OpenEdge development tools and is suitable for deploying single-user SQL-based and 4GL-based applications and for developing, prototyping and testing applications.

OpenEdge™ Application Server

OpenEdge Application Server supports an open, component-based model for partitioning applications and enables applications to be transformed into modular elements within an integrated environment. This enables business logic to be more easily distributed and reused. OpenEdge Application Server provides open, standards-based interoperability and integration to ensure that applications can support multiple user interface and integration methodologies. OpenEdge Application Server includes WebSpeed Transaction Server which is designed for high-throughput transaction processing over the Internet.

There are two editions of OpenEdge Application Server to address varying processing needs. OpenEdge Application Server Basic Edition provides a solution for deploying simple yet dynamic business applications for some small and mid-sized businesses. OpenEdge Application Server Enterprise Edition provides an application server solution for mid-size and large businesses. The Enterprise Edition provides the foundation for delivering service-oriented architecture and next-generation integration, including Web services, SonicMQ messaging and Sonic ESB.

OpenEdge™ DataServers

OpenEdge DataServers provide developers with a transparent interface to a wide range of database management systems. These products offer full read, write, update, insert and delete capabilities to diverse data management systems and enable developers to write OpenEdge-based applications once and deploy them across numerous data sources. OpenEdge DataServers provide native access to Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server and access to range of ODBC-compliant data sources, including IBM DB2, IBM Informix On-Line and Sybase.

ObjectStore®

ObjectStore is a data management solution for enterprise e-Business, telecommunications and commercial software applications. This scalable, high-performance technology leverages its object-oriented data modeling and native support for Java® and C++ to provide the reliability, scalability and time-to-market demands required of mission-critical systems. ObjectStore provides developers with highly efficient data storage. An ObjectStore database is defined by the components’ object model. ObjectStore’s Cache-Forward™ architecture is designed to maximize the performance of an application through load balancing, cache affinity, transaction services, and overall component coordination and management. The Cache-Forward architecture creates local data caches for components from the ObjectStore server or other enterprise databases.

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DataDirect Connect™

DataDirect offers DataDirect Connect for ODBC, a wire protocol ODBC driver for every major database, including DB2, Informix, OpenEdge, Oracle, SQL Server and Sybase. The wire protocol drivers eliminate the need for the database vendor’s client software. This feature makes applications easier to configure, deploy and maintain, and increases data access speeds. DataDirect Connect for JDBC is a Type 4 JDBC driver for high-performance database connectivity. DataDirect Connect for JDBC drivers support the latest database features, such as JTA (Java Transaction API). Other products from DataDirect include Connect for .NET, Connect for ADO and Connect for XML/XQuery.

Integration and Messaging Products

Sonic Business Integration Suite™

The Sonic Business Integration Suite provides a distributed service-oriented architecture that connects any number of applications to each other. The Sonic Business Integration Suite is composed of the Sonic ESB, Sonic Orchestration Server™, Sonic XML Server™, Sonic Integration Workbench™ and Adapters for the Sonic ESB™. The key component of the Sonic Business Integration Suite is the Sonic ESB, which provides an incrementally extensible method to connect applications through the distributed service-oriented architecture. The Sonic Integration Workbench provides tools, including process modeling, definitions of service interfaces and data transformation maps, for service-oriented integration projects.

Sonic ESB™

The Sonic ESB™ is an enterprise service bus that provides a new and more efficient approach to application integration. Merging service-oriented architecture, messaging, Web services and XML with a distributed deployment infrastructure, the Sonic ESB provides a cost-effective way to centrally configure, deploy, and manage services distributed across the extended enterprise. The Sonic ESB supports incremental deployment, enables companies to reuse resources from one integration project to the next, and is flexible enough to scale from project to enterprise level. Its management framework allows administrators to configure, deploy and manage large integration networks from any point in the network. Adapters for Sonic ESB improve integration efforts and lower the costs associated with maintaining data islands when used in conjunction with the Sonic ESB.

SonicMQ®

SonicMQ is a reliable Java messaging solution that provides a scalable, standards-based platform for the guaranteed and secure delivery of business critical data across the extended enterprise. SonicMQ is one of the only standards-based messaging systems that fully complies with Sun Microsystems’ Java Messaging Server (JMS) and the World Wide Web Consortium’s XML specifications. Distributed applications bring together a number of variables that make the integration and exchange of business-critical data a highly complex endeavor. Messaging allows such applications to exchange data and business logic with each other asynchronously. SonicMQ allows developers to establish quickly and maintain an efficient, high-performance messaging structure that can handle complex business logic flow requirements without compromising application functionality.

SonicMQ provides guaranteed message delivery and high performance through its patent-pending Dynamic Routing Architecture® (DRA). The DRA provides the ability to dynamically add numerous business partners to an e-business application. Messages are delivered across the network of brokers via a routing path that enhances performance and limits outages. SonicMQ dynamically detects all message brokers within the enterprise and across a network, including remote operations and business partners over the Internet. This architecture scales to accommodate rapidly growing intranets and extranets without the bottleneck of a central server.

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Sonic Orchestration Server™

The Sonic Orchestration Server extends the intelligent routing capabilities of the ESB to facilitate the modeling, execution, and management of sophisticated business processes across the extended enterprise. The Sonic Orchestration Server leverages the extensive reach of the ESB to include any service in a coordinated and managed process.

Sonic XML Server™

The Sonic XML Server provides flexible and scalable XML processing, storage and query services throughout the ESB-enabled enterprise. Because it can be accessed as an ESB service, the Sonic XML Server is an easy-to-configure and natural way to provide a broad range of XML capabilities to integration projects. Sonic XML Server’s embedded database overcomes the performance vs. flexibility compromise associated with storing XML data in relational databases, while providing the enterprise-class capacity required to manage vast amounts of XML data.

Management Products

PeerDirect™ Distributed Enterprise

PeerDirect™ Distributed Enterprise offers patented technology for two-way, read-write replication of databases and applications, supporting companies that need to manage data across multiple sites, geographies or systems. This technology enables enterprises to effectively distribute business applications within an enterprise or to remote offices and users, improving the quality of service and system availability. Unlike products from individual vendors, PeerDirect solutions allow enterprises to share data bi-directionally between mixed environments, such as OpenEdge, Oracle, SQL Server, DB2 and open source databases.

PeerDirect Mobilized Enterprise and PeerDirect Remote Office are products in the PeerDirect Distributed Enterprise suite that leverage patented technology for application distribution and data synchronization. PeerDirect Mobilized Enterprise enables centralized control of applications and their databases, while automatically provisioning the same application on mobile computers. PeerDirect Mobilized Enterprise also provides mobile users access to a subset of the application database whether they are online or offline. PeerDirect Remote Office enables applications and associated data to be managed centrally even when deployed in remote offices. PeerDirect Remote Office includes database synchronization technology that provides integration of data from remote systems, and features embedded application management that makes installation, updates and support a centralized function.

Progress® Fathom™

Progress Fathom is a set of enterprise-class application management tools designed to increase the operational effectiveness of business systems. Progress Fathom enhances the availability and performance of Progress-based applications through system monitoring, alerting and automatic handling of corrective actions. Progress Fathom can allow customers to become more efficient, decreasing the cost of managing the OpenEdge or Progress environment while maintaining high availability and performance.

Product Development

Most of PSC’s products have been developed by its internal product development staff or the internal staffs of acquired companies. PSC believes that the features and performance of its products are competitive with those of other available development and deployment tools and that none of the current versions of its products is approaching obsolescence. However, PSC believes that significant investments in new product development and continuing enhancements of its current products will be required to enable the Company to maintain its competitive position.

PSC’s product development staff consisted of 296 employees as of November 30, 2003. Product development is primarily conducted at PSC’s offices in North America, including Bedford, Massachusetts; Cambridge, Massachusetts; Nashua, New Hampshire; and Mississauga, Ontario. In fiscal years 2003, 2002 and 2001, PSC spent $50.6 million, $42.1 million and $42.1 million, respectively, on product development, of which $0.4 million in each of fiscal years 2003 and 2001 was capitalized. No amounts were capitalized in fiscal 2002.

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Customers

PSC globally markets its products primarily through APs and to direct end users, who are either business managers or IT departments in corporations and government agencies. In addition, the DataDirect, ObjectStore and Sonic product lines are also marketed to OEMs who embed and resell these products as part of an integrated solution. Sonic Software also utilizes value added resellers who resell Sonic products and services, adding value in the form of complementary product, consulting and/or support. No single customer has accounted for more than 10% of PSC’s total revenue in any of its last three fiscal years.

Application Partners

The Company’s APs cover a broad range of markets, offer an extensive library of business applications and are a source of follow-on revenue. PSC maintains on-line application catalogs and includes APs in trade shows and other marketing programs. PSC also has kept entry costs for APs low to encourage a wide variety of APs to build applications. An AP typically takes six to twelve months to develop an application. Although many of the Company’s APs have developed successful applications and have large installed customer bases, others are engaged in earlier stages of product development and marketing and may not contribute follow-on revenue to PSC for some time, if at all. However, if an AP succeeds in marketing its applications, PSC obtains follow-on revenue as the AP licenses the Company’s deployment products to allow its application to be installed and used by customers. Through the ASPen (ASP-enablement) Program, the Progress Company offers a subscription model alternative to the traditional sales model for APs who have chosen to ASP-enable their business applications.

Direct End Users

PSC licenses its products directly to corporations, government agencies and other organizations. Many end users who purchase AP applications also purchase PSC’s development tools to supplement their internal application development or purchase add-on products directly from PSC. Like APs, end user customers also license deployment products for internal applications.

Sales and Marketing

PSC sells its products through its direct sales force in the United States and in over 25 other countries and through independent distributors in over 30 countries outside North America. The sales, marketing and service groups are organized by operating company and by regions within each operating company as applicable. The Progress Company operates by region in North America, EMEA, Asia/Pacific and Latin America. Sonic Software operates by region within North America, EMEA and Japan. PSC believes that this structure allows it to maintain direct contact with and support the diverse market requirements of its customers. PSC’s international operations provide focused local marketing efforts and are able to respond directly to changes in local conditions.

Sales personnel are responsible for developing direct end user accounts, new AP accounts, assisting APs in closing major accounts and servicing existing customers. PSC actively seeks to avoid conflict between the sales efforts of its APs and the Company’s own sales efforts. PSC uses its inside sales and customer service groups to enhance its direct sales efforts and to generate new business and follow-on business from existing customers. These groups may provide evaluation copies to APs or end user organizations to help qualify them as prospective customers, and also sell additional development and deployment products to existing customers.

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The marketing groups within PSC and each operating company conduct a variety of marketing programs designed to ensure a stream of market-ready products, raise general awareness of PSC and its operating companies, generate leads for the sales organization and promote the various product lines. These programs include public relations, direct mail, participation in trade shows, advertising and production of collateral literature. In fiscal 2003, the Company held three regional user conference events in the United States, Ireland and Australia.

Customer Support

PSC’s technical support staff provides telephone support to application developers and end-users. Customers may purchase maintenance services entitling them to software updates, technical support and technical bulletins. The annual fee for maintenance is generally a fixed percentage, ranging from 15% to 20% depending on the product, of the current list price of the product to be maintained. First year maintenance is not included with the Company’s products and is purchased separately. PSC provides technical support to customers primarily through its technical support centers in Bedford, Massachusetts; Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Slough, United Kingdom; and Melbourne, Australia. Local technical support for specific products is provided in certain countries, primarily in Japan.

The Progress Company launched the Progress Software Developers Network (PSDN) to deliver information, education and software resources for creating business applications with Progress technology. PSDN facilitates the exchange of technical expertise within the Progress developer community. PSDN offers Progress partners access to Progress expertise via technical white papers, live chats with experts and Web seminars.

Professional Services

PSC’s global professional services organization delivers business solutions for customers through a combination of products, consulting and education. PSC’s consulting organization offers project management, custom development, programming, application implementation, Internet migration and other services. PSC’s consulting organization also provides services to Web-enable existing applications or take advantage of the capabilities of new product releases. The Company’s education organization offers numerous training options, from traditional instructor-led courses to advanced learning modules available on CDs. Personnel at PSC’s international subsidiaries and distributors provide consulting and training services for customers located outside North America.

Competition

The computer software industry is intensely competitive. PSC experiences significant competition from a variety of sources with respect to all its products. PSC believes that the breadth and integration of its product offerings have become increasingly important competitive advantages. Other factors affecting competition in the markets served by PSC include product performance in complex applications, application portability, vendor experience, ease of integration, price, training and support.

PSC competes in various markets with a number of entities including database vendors offering development tools in conjunction with their database systems, such as Microsoft Corporation, Oracle Corporation and IBM Corporation, as well as numerous enterprise application integration vendors, messaging vendors and application development tools vendors. PSC believes that Oracle, Microsoft and IBM currently dominate the database market and that IBM dominates the messaging market. PSC does not believe that there is a dominant application development tools vendor or enterprise application integration vendor. Some of PSC’s competitors have greater financial, marketing or technical resources than PSC and may be able to adapt more quickly to new or emerging technologies and changes in customer requirements or to devote greater resources to the promotion and sale of their products than can the Company. Increased competition could make it more difficult for PSC to maintain its revenue and market presence.

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Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents and Licenses

PSC relies upon a combination of contractual provisions and copyright, patent, trademark and trade secret laws to protect its proprietary rights in its products. PSC distributes its products under software license agreements that grant customers a perpetual nonexclusive license to use the Company’s products and contain terms and conditions prohibiting the unauthorized reproduction or transfer of the Company’s products. In addition, PSC attempts to protect its trade secrets and other proprietary information through agreements with employees and consultants. Although PSC intends to protect its rights vigorously, there can be no assurance that these measures will be successful.

PSC seeks to protect the source code of its products as trade secrets and as unpublished copyrighted works. PSC owns nine patents covering portions of its products. PSC also owns twelve patent applications for some of its other product technologies. Where possible, PSC seeks to obtain protection of its product names and service offerings through trademark registration and other similar procedures throughout the world.

Progress, WebSpeed and ObjectStore are registered trademarks of Progress Software Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. Progress Dynamics, Fathom, Cache-Forward and OpenEdge are trademarks of Progress Software Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. SonicMQ and Dynamic Routing Architecture are registered trademarks of Sonic Software Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. Sonic ESB, Sonic Business Integration Suite, Sonic Integration Workbench, Sonic XML Server, Sonic Orchestration Server and Sonic Stylus Studio are trademarks of Sonic Software Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. PeerDirect is a trademark of PeerDirect Corporation in the U.S. and a registered trademark of PeerDirect Corporation in Canada. DataDirect Connect is a trademark of DataDirect Technologies Corp. in the U.S. and other countries. Java and all Java-based marks are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. Any other trademarks or trade names appearing in this Form 10-K are the property of their respective owners.

PSC believes that due to the rapid pace of innovation within its industry, factors such as the technological and creative skills of its personnel are as important in establishing and maintaining a leadership position within the industry as are the various legal protections of its technology. In addition, PSC believes that the nature of its customers, the importance of PSC’s products to them and their need for continuing product support may reduce the risk of unauthorized reproduction.

Employees

As of November 30, 2003, PSC had 1,391 employees worldwide, including 571 in sales and marketing, 306 in customer support and services (including manufacturing and distribution), 296 in product development and 218 in administration. None of PSC’s U.S. employees is subject to a collective bargaining agreement. Employees in certain foreign jurisdictions are represented by local workers’ councils and/or collective bargaining agreements as may be customary or required in that jurisdiction. PSC has experienced no work stoppages and believes its relations with employees are good.

PSC has various equity incentive plans that permit the granting of options to eligible employees and the purchase of shares by eligible employees. The payment of cash bonuses and contributions to retirement plans is at the discretion of the compensation committee of the Board of Directors and the amounts depend on the level of attainment relative to PSC’s financial plan. These programs are designed to reward employees for performance and reduce employee turnover, although there can be no assurance that such programs will be successful.

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Executive Officers of the Registrant

The following table sets forth certain information regarding the executive officers of the Company.

Mr. Alsop, a co-founder of PSC, has been a director and Chief Executive Officer since the Company’s inception in 1981.

Mr. Cooper joined the Company in February 2001 as President of NuSphere Corporation, a subsidiary of PSC, and became President of PeerDirect Corporation in September 2002. From November 1994 to June 2000, Mr. Cooper was employed by Sente, Inc., a computer software company, as President and Chief Executive Officer. From July 2000 to January 2001, Mr. Cooper was Vice Chairman of Sequence Design, Inc., a computer software company.

Mr. Ireland joined the Company in September 1997 as Vice President, Core Products and Services and was appointed Vice President and General Manager, Core Products and Services in March 1998, Vice President and General Manager, Worldwide Field Operations in December 1999 and President, the Progress Company in December 2000.

Mr. O’Connor was appointed Vice President, Apptivity Engineering in August 1998 and was appointed Vice President, Sonic Engineering in December 1999 and President, Sonic Software Corporation in November 2001. Mr. O’Connor joined PSC in 1992.

Mr. Peters joined the Company in December 2003 upon the completion of the acquisition of DataDirect as the President of DataDirect Technologies. From November 2001 to December 2003, Mr. Peters was President and CEO, DataDirect Technologies, Inc. From February 2001 to November 2001, Mr. Peters was Senior Vice President and General Manager – Enterprise Connectivity Division, Merant Plc, a computer software company. Prior to that, Mr. Peters was President and CEO, Cerebellum Software Corporation, a computer software company, from August 1999 to September 2000.

Mr. Reidy was appointed Vice President, Development Tools in July 1996 and was appointed Vice President, Product Development in July 1997, Vice President, Products in December 1999 and Senior Vice President, Products and Corporate Development in December 2000. Mr. Reidy joined PSC in 1985.

Mr. Robertson joined PSC in May 1996 as Vice President, Finance and Chief Financial Officer and was appointed Vice President, Finance and Administration and Chief Financial Officer in December 1997 and Senior Vice President, Finance and Administration and Chief Financial Officer in December 2000.

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Available Information

The Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K and amendments to reports filed or furnished pursuant to Sections 13(a) and 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, are available free of charge on the Company’s website at www.progress.com as soon as reasonably practicable after such reports are electronically filed with, or furnished to, the Securities and Exchange Commission. The information posted on the Company’s web site is not incorporated into this Annual Report.

Item 2. Properties

PSC owns its principal administrative, sales, support, marketing and product development facility, which is located in a single building of approximately 165,000 square feet in Bedford, Massachusetts. PSC leases approximately 58,000 square feet in Wilmington, Massachusetts, and maintains its manufacturing and distribution operations at this location. In addition, PSC maintains offices in approximately 15 other locations in North America and approximately 40 locations outside North America. The terms of leases generally range from one to seven years. PSC believes that its present and proposed facilities are adequate for its current needs and that suitable additional space will be available as needed.

Item 3. Legal Proceedings

The Company is subject to various legal proceedings and claims, either asserted or unasserted, which arise in the ordinary course of business. While the outcome of these claims cannot be predicted with certainty, management does not believe that the outcome of any of these legal matters will have a material adverse effect on the Company’s consolidated financial position or results of operations.

Item 4. Submission of Matters to a Vote of Security Holders

No matters were submitted to a vote of PSC’s shareholders during the fourth quarter of the fiscal year ended November 30, 2003.

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PART II

Item 5. Market for Registrant’s Common Equity and Related Stockholder Matters

The following table sets forth, for the periods indicated, the range of high and low trade prices for the Company’s common stock. The Company’s common stock trades on the Nasdaq National Market under the symbol PRGS.

The Company has not declared or paid cash dividends on its common stock and does not plan to pay cash dividends to its shareholders in the near future. As of December 31, 2003, the Company’s common stock was held by approximately 6,000 shareholders of record or through nominee or street name accounts with brokers.

Information related to securities authorized for issuance under equity compensation plans is set forth under Item 12 of this report on Form 10-K.

Item 6. Selected Financial Data

The following table sets forth selected financial data regarding the Company for the last five fiscal years.

(In thousands, except per share data)

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Item 7. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations

Overview

The Company develops, markets and distributes software to simplify and accelerate the development, deployment, integration and management of business applications. The mission of the Company is to deliver software products and services that empower partners and customers to improve their development, deployment, integration and management of quality applications worldwide. The Company’s products include development tools, databases, application servers, messaging servers, application management tools and integration products for distributed and Web-based applications as well as for client/server applications. The Company, through its various operating units, markets its products globally to a broad range of organizations in manufacturing, distribution, finance, retail, healthcare, telecommunications, government and many others fields.

A significant portion of the Company’s revenue is derived from international operations. In fiscal 2003 and fiscal 2002, the weakening of the U.S. dollar against most major currencies, primarily the euro and the British pound, positively affected the Company’s results. Prior to that, the U.S. dollar had strengthened considerably and the Company’s results were adversely affected.

In fiscal 2003, the Company had four principal operating units and a supporting research and business development unit. The first operating unit conducts business as the Progress Company and is a division of the Company. Two other operating units, Sonic Software Corporation and PeerDirect Corporation, seek to address the needs of emerging markets and operate as subsidiaries of the Company. The fourth operating unit is ObjectStore, which is also a division of the Company. PSC Labs, a division of the Company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, focuses on new business development, research and strategic investments.

The Progress Company provides the OpenEdge™ platform, a set of development and deployment technologies, including the OpenEdge RDBMS, one of the leading embedded databases, for building business applications. Sonic Software Corporation delivers a distributed, standards-based, communications and integration infrastructure, built on an ESB that integrates existing business applications and orchestrates business processes across the extended enterprise. PeerDirect Corporation is a supplier of technology for distributed application deployment and management. Its flagship product suite, PeerDirect™ Distributed Enterprise, allows companies to centrally manage distributed applications with synchronized databases deployed across widely distributed locations.

In December 2002, the Company completed its acquisition of eXcelon for approximately $24 million in cash. eXcelon had two principal product groups: object-oriented data management products marketed under the ObjectStore brand and XML technology-based products. The ObjectStore division of PSC manages the data management products. The XML-related products and functions were combined with Sonic Software.

In December 2003, the Company completed its cash acquisition of certain assets and subsidiaries and the assumption of certain liabilities of DataDirect Technologies Limited for approximately $87.4 million, net of cash acquired and subject to certain post-closing adjustments. DataDirect will operate as a division of PSC. Its principal products provide connectivity between applications and data sources in heterogeneous environments.

Critical Accounting Policies

Management’s discussion and analysis of financial condition and results of operations are based upon the Company’s consolidated financial statements, which have been prepared in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America. The Company makes estimates and assumptions in the preparation of its consolidated financial statements that affect the reported amounts of assets and liabilities, revenue and expenses, and related disclosures of contingent assets and liabilities. The Company bases its estimates on historical experience and various other assumptions that are believed to be reasonable under the circumstances. However, actual results may differ from these estimates.

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The Company has identified the following critical accounting policies that require the use of significant judgments and estimates in the preparation of its consolidated financial statements. This listing is not a comprehensive list of all of the Company’s accounting policies. For further information regarding the application of these and other accounting policies, see Note 1 in the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Revenue Recognition — The Company’s revenue recognition policy is significant because revenue is a key component affecting results of operations. In determining when to recognize revenue from a customer arrangement, the Company is often required to exercise judgment regarding the application of its accounting policies to a particular arrangement. For example, judgment is required in determining whether a customer arrangement has multiple elements. If such a situation exists, judgment is also involved in determining whether vendor-specific objective evidence (VSOE) of fair value for the undelivered elements exists. While the Company follows specific and detailed rules and guidelines related to revenue recognition, significant management judgments and estimates are made and used in connection with the revenue recognized in any reporting period, particularly in the areas described above as well as collectibility. If management made different estimates or judgments, material differences in the timing of the recognition of revenue could occur.

Allowance for Doubtful Accounts — The Company maintains an allowance for doubtful accounts for estimated losses resulting from the inability of customers to make required payments. This allowance is established using estimates that the Company makes based on factors such as the composition of the accounts receivable aging, historical bad debts, changes in payment patterns, customer creditworthiness and current economic trends. If the Company used different estimates, or if the financial condition of customers were to deteriorate, resulting in an impairment of their ability to make payments, additional provisions for doubtful accounts would be required and would increase bad debt expense.

Deferred Income Taxes — The Company had a net deferred tax asset of $25.2 million at November 30, 2003. The Company records valuation allowances to reduce deferred tax assets to the amount that is more likely than not to be realized. The Company considers scheduled reversals of deferred tax liabilities, projected future taxable income, ongoing tax planning strategies and other matters in assessing the need for and the amount of a valuation allowance. If the Company were to change its assumptions or otherwise determine that it was unable to realize all or part of its net deferred tax asset in the future, an adjustment to the deferred tax asset would be charged to income in the period that such change or determination was made.

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Results of Operations

The following table sets forth certain income and expense items as a percentage of total revenue, and the percentage change in dollar amounts of such items compared with the corresponding period in the previous fiscal year.