It’s been 10 months since the Sybase teams became integrated with SAP and a lot has happened, especially for the PowerBuilder team. We participated in our second TechEd, our first InnoJam, and 3 of us were named as SAP Mentors. As we create our roadmap and work with other engineering teams to find integration points, it’s important to make sure we also engage developers and find integration points in our new, large SAP community.
PowerBuilder is a great product to have been associated with for the past 17 years; it’s one of the few products in any industry that has a committed, passionate and loyal base of customers, and a true community of users. Sure, we share technical information and professional successes, but it goes beyond there. We have a long history together rooted in our common use of a development tool, but it’s fostered many different professional relationships, friendships, support and trust.
SAP is ten times larger than Sybase, but it doesn’t really feel that way, mainly because at every turn, there are people focused on changing the way things are done so that we are better able to support developers. And, there are many members of our senior management team who were PowerBuilder developers at one point in their career. As SAP makes this strategic shift to embrace a platform for developers, there are people who really understand what is necessary for this to be successful because they’ve been there before.
PowerBuilder has always had an active set of developer user community groups that meet regularly to network, share technical tips and tricks, and stay current on technology and trends. We are hoping to expand the membership of these groups to include users of other SAP products, and are interested in hearing your suggestions on what would be most useful for you. A combination of smaller meet-up style gatherings and larger, regional events will kick off this year to start to bring the SAP developers together and see what works best for each area.
Our developer user groups are organized the Independent SAP Technical User Group (formerly International Sybase User Group). Their name change indicates that their focus is really around being the key source for technical information for developers using SAP products. You can see if there is a chapter near you here http://my.isug.com/home and feel free to contact me if you’d like to start a new group in your area or contribute to the one that already exists.
