Discussing the future of AI and infrastructure

Progress Software (hereinafter “Progress”), whose portfolio includes Flowmon, our main product, holds a networking event for partners every two years. Following the previous event held in Bali, Indonesia in October 2023, the “APJ Progress Partner Summit 2025” was held in Da Nang, a resort city in central Vietnam, in July 2025. ORIZON Systems was invited to this event, which brought together major partners from the Asia-Pacific region (APJ), as a partner representing Japan, and participated in three days of meetings and discussions.

The various infrastructure management and visualization solutions provided by Progress are essential tools for system integrators like us in supporting our customers’ IT operations. At this summit, in addition to the evolution of these products, information was shared about the company’s “AI First” strategy, new sales and consumption models, and the restructuring of its partner ecosystem, making it a very packed event.

AI-driven transformation and corporate strategy

The keynote speech was delivered by Nicholas Ellis, Senior Vice President of Emerging Markets & Field Operations at Progress. His session made a strong impression that the use of AI is at the heart of the company’s business transformation.

Particularly noteworthy was the advancement of the company’s natural language processing and summarization engine, based on technology from Nuclia, an AI startup acquired in 2025. This will dramatically improve the efficiency of searching, summarizing, and suggesting massive amounts of log data and system configuration information through Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) technology.

The company also announced the appointment of a new Chief AI Officer (CAIO) with the aim of promoting AI company-wide. The presentation outlined the company’s vision of integrating AI into traditional infrastructure management to enable more autonomous operations, predictive incident detection, and enhanced security, highlighting the company’s leadership in the industry.

The next step in infrastructure visibility

The first feature that attracted attention in the technical sessions at this event was Flowmon’s new feature, “Threat Briefings.” The Flowmon ADS (Anormaly Detection System) Threat Briefing mechanism constantly collects threat information from threat sources around the world, extracting and summarizing key information on new attacks, vulnerabilities, and campaigns. This scrutinized threat data is automatically distributed to each customer’s Flowmon ADS via the Progress update service. Flowmon analyzes historical and real-time network flows using IoCs and communication patterns to quickly detect relevant threats. This allows organizations to instantly utilize global threat intelligence and achieve proactive and efficient cyber defense.

Meanwhile, the long-trusted network monitoring tool “WhatsUp Gold” has undergone significant evolution. The “NTA+”, integrates Flowmon’s NPM (Network Performance Monitoring) and NTA (Network Traffic Analysis) engines with the traditional SNMP-based monitoring configuration, enabling seamless, integrated monitoring from the network layer (L2) to the application layer (L7). This integration consolidates monitoring tasks that were previously distributed across multiple tools, significantly reducing operational burden. Furthermore, its multi-tenant support and flexible dashboard configuration capabilities make it a highly effective tool for companies with nationwide bases, as well as local governments and educational institutions that operate multiple networks in parallel.

It’s worth noting that these solutions will be designed to work closely with Progress’ AI platform. This dramatically improves IT department response speed and directly contributes to improved business continuity. Infrastructure visualization tools are evolving from mere visualization to meaningful insights. By incorporating the power of AI, Flowmon and WhatsUp Gold are expected to see even greater adoption as platforms that contribute to the realization of more strategic infrastructure operations.

The power of our solutions as seen in practical examples

This session introduced domestic and international case studies of Progress Software’s infrastructure management solutions, including Flowmon, WhatsUp Gold (WUG), and LoadMaster.

A major Hong Kong IT services company implemented Flowmon to enhance network visibility and threat detection in a complex hybrid cloud environment. Anomaly detection and behavioral analysis have enabled the company to improve its competitiveness as an MSP while also enabling audit compliance. ORIZON Systems also presented a customer case study in which Flowmon’s URL-level visibility was highly valued for analyzing the causes of traffic that could not be identified with existing SNMP monitoring.

In a WhatsUp Gold case study, a Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturer achieved both security and availability by utilizing ISO 27001-compliant configuration management and monitoring features. Furthermore, a Malaysian company applied WUG for integrated IT/OT monitoring, including OT, significantly reducing incident response times.

In a LoadMaster case study, a major Australian bank successfully replaced their object storage load balancer to improve response time. With using two independent sites of high availability configuration, service response times were reduced from 60 seconds to 2.4 seconds, significantly improving customer satisfaction and SLA achievement rates.

These examples clearly demonstrate that Progress products are adaptable to a variety of industries and scales, and demonstrate the scalability and agility to address real-world operational challenges.

Our future mission as a partner

With the rapid advancement of cutting-edge technologies, including generative AI, the value customers seek is also changing dramatically. In response, the role of partners who accompany customers through problem identification, definition, and implementation, rather than simply providing products and solutions, will become increasingly important. As conditions become more challenging, with IT environments becoming more complex, cyber risks increasing, and cloud adoption expanding, it is essential to understand customers’ challenges, present appropriate options, and build a system that can quickly and reliably implement them.

To meet these expectations, we have combined technology and business knowledge to build a constantly evolving support system. What customers truly seek is not just tools, but the results they achieve through their use of them, and our mission is to take responsibility for those results.

In recognition of these efforts, ORIZON Systems received the Outstanding Partner Award from Progress. This award marks both a milestone achievement and a signpost for further evolution. We will continue to challenge ourselves to constantly learn and adapt to technological advances, remaining an “indispensable” presence for our customers. A partnership is an ongoing collaboration built on trust. Our unchanging mission is to live up to that trust and carve out a bright future together.