Sundar Subramanian on company overview
From Combining Velocity and Governance in Infrastructure Management with Sundar Subramanian · · The IaC Podcast
“Progress is a 40 year old listed company here in US, roughly $1 billion in revenue, 40% operating margin. We make software products, acquire companies, run them efficiently, and support our customers really well.”
On , Sundar Subramanian, Executive Vice President & GM of Infrastructure Management at PROGRESS SOFTWARE CORP, spoke about company overview during Combining Velocity and Governance in Infrastructure Management with Sundar Subramanian on The IaC Podcast.
About Sundar Subramanian
Sundar Subramanian, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Infrastructure Management at Progress Software, discussed the company's approach to combining velocity and governance in infrastructure management on the IaC Podcast in January 2025. He described Progress as a 40-year-old publicly traded company with roughly $1 billion in revenue and a 40% operating margin that makes software products and acquires companies. Subramanian noted that the acquisition of Chef occurred remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and that Chef evolved from an open-source project into a series of products. He stated that practitioners in infrastructure management have evolved into different types, including "scouts" who establish norms, "town planners" who encode security policies, and day-to-day operators who prefer UI-driven tools with guardrails and audits. Subramanian said there is a stronger need for enhanced governance today compared to a decade ago, driven by regulated industries such as financial services and healthcare that require compliance, audit, and security features. He described drift detection and remediation as critical, with many customers checking for drift multiple times a day, and noted that Progress provides artifacts required for cyber insurance by showing system compliance with benchmarks. In a 2018 interview with Mphasis, where Subramanian served as President of Global Delivery, he discussed the transformation of IT services and global delivery models. He said business cycles had shrunk from 12-to-24-month project timelines to weeks due to digital technology, accelerating product launches and business benefits. Subramanian stated that Mphasis was working with the startup platform Plug and Play to curate startups and co-create solutions with customers, providing scale and engineering capabilities. He emphasized that continuous learning is essential in IT services, with fundamentals like Java remaining important while newer skills such as machine learning, data analytics, and Python can be acquired through online platforms. Subramanian also performed a vocal Carnatic music concert at the Sri Lakshmi Venkateswara Temple in San Diego in November 2025, where he was introduced as a senior disciple of Sangeeta Kalanidhi Sri Neri R. Santana Gopalan and a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.