On Monday, Bedford, Massachusetts-based software company Progress announced it will buy file management platform ShareFile for $875 million in a mix of cash and credit.
The deal, set to close by November 30, adds a set of tools meant to help companies share and collaborate on documents more efficiently to Progress’ portfolio, according to the company’s CEO, Yogesh Gupta.
“In today’s environment, businesses need to be better at serving their customers while constantly optimising their operations to drive efficiency, security, and compliance,” Gupta said.”ShareFile customers will benefit from Progress’s strong commitment to customer success, broad portfolio and expertise, and unparalleled history of customer success.”
Jesse Lipson, a self-taught programmer, founded ShareFile in 2005 and it is based in Raleigh. Operating a web design consulting company at the time, Lipson developed ShareFile because a lot of his clients wanted a web-based service that would enable them to manage folders and share files with their customers. 
By 2011, without taking any venture capital or offering a free version, ShareFile had attained 3 million users. Upon its acquisition by Citrix in the same year, the service grew to hit the 40 million user mark. Besides continuing to sell ShareFile as a discrete product, Citrix incorporated the service into a variety of other enterprise-focused offerings.
Lipson, who had joined Citrix’s executive staff after the company’s purchase of ShareFile, remained with Citrix until 2017. Both the data integration expert Tibco and the Citrix holding company Cloud Software Group acquired ShareFile in 2023 for an undisclosed sum.
Today ShareFile offers a variety of file sharing tools and services geared towards businesses, one of which enables users to create customised, password-protected portals for their files, much like Dropbox and Box do. The company offers e-signing services, regulation-compliant cloud solutions to health and financial documents, and a service allowing clients to serve data from their on-premises data centres.
Thomas Krause, the CEO of Cloud Software Group, says that ShareFile will amount to a significant profit driver for Progress as it can bring in as much as $240 million in annual recurring revenue for the company while at the same time extending its client database to as many as 86,000 clients.
The enterprise file sharing services market brings with it a considerable financial potential for Progress, estimating analytics firm Grand View Research to value at $9.5 billion in 2023. ShareFile does not rank as one of the top services considering usage patterns last year, but significant market demand value will be generated irrespective of the share gained in the vast sector, statistics portal Statista describes as a highly competitive business area—Google Drive, Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, Box, and Jupyter were more popular than ShareFile.”
ShareFile [has a] track record in the safe content collaboration and customer engagement space. This transaction positions that legacy, now as part of Progress, to extend well into the future,” Krause said in a press statement.
We believe ShareFile customers will benefit immensely from Progress’s strong commitment to customer service, extensive portfolio of offerings, experience, and vast number of users.” Following the announcement of the ShareFile acquisition, Progress announces the elimination of the quarterly dividend to utilise its capital for debt repayment. It allows Progress, said Gupta, to further enhance liquidity towards mergers and acquisitions in the future and share repurchases. ShareFile is the first for this year by Progress.
The 43-year-old publicly traded company, specialising in the automation of business processes and monitoring IT infrastructure, reported a 2.3% year-over-year decline in revenue for its fiscal year second quarter. Indeed, Progress has offered a hint that revenue and adjusted earnings per share are expected to be “within or above” the upper limit of its forecast for Q3.
