Proginet

In 1986, long before the cloud made digital file sharing commonplace, a company named Teleprocessing Connection Inc. was founded in New York City by Joseph T. Mohen. The company, which would become Proginet, focused on a fundamental business problem: moving large amounts of data between different computer systems. With chief developer Thomas Charles Bauer, Proginet created a breakthrough product called XCOM, designed to manage bulk data transfers across 26 different operating systems. The playbook took an interesting turn in the early 1990s when Proginet sold the rights to its flagship product, XCOM, to a distributor. That product went on to generate hundreds of millions in revenue for its new owner, CA-Inc., which later acquired the distributor. After selling its only product, Proginet had to reinvent itself. The company went on to develop a new suite of enterprise managed file transfer products. For years, Proginet continued to operate in this critical, niche market of enterprise software. The culmination of its journey came in June 2010 when TIBCO Software announced it would acquire Proginet for approximately $23 million. The acquisition was a strategic move for TIBCO to enhance its managed file transfer capabilities. For Proginet stockholders, the deal represented a significant premium on their shares, marking a successful exit and the end of an era for a company that had navigated the evolving world of enterprise data for over two decades.