Progress Software Corp., a Bedford, Massachusetts-based business-software company, named Melissa Cruz to serve as its CFO and senior vice president, finance and administration, effective today. She fills a position that has been open since Charles Wagner, the previous CFO, left the company at the end of March.
Since then, Progress’s finance department has been helmed by the company’s chief executive, Jay Bhatt, according to The Boston Business Journal. The journal noted that Wagner left after company profits fell by 64% in the first quarter, which ended February 29. Net income at Progress fell to $7.5 million from $20.5 million in the same quarter of last year.
Cruz is a 28-year veteran of the technology industry with executive leadership and international experience across finance, human resources, IT, and other shared services for publicly traded software and service companies. Before joining Progress, she served as finance chief at several software companies, including Picis, a provider of health-care software solutions acquired by UnitedHealth; BladeLogic, a market leader in data-center automation; and Concord Communications, a provider of network-security software.
Cruz “brings an impressive mix of leadership, financial-management skills, and broad software and operational knowledge and experience that will be invaluable as we continue to transform the company into a leader in the application platform as a service (aPaaS) space,” says Bhatt.