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Author's profile photo Martin Berner

Appeon Signs Agreement with SAP to Bring Major Innovations to PowerBuilder

On July 5, 2016, SAP and Appeon entered into an agreement that allows Appeon to develop a new generation of the PowerBuilder development platform. This partnership will enable Appeon to develop, sell, and support its own offering powered by PowerBuilder technology. Appeon has major innovations planned from mobile and cloud deployment to test-driven development and continuous integration.  The new generation of Appeon’s PowerBuilder  is scheduled by Appeon for the first half of 2017. For existing customers the transition to Appeon PowerBuilder is planned to be easy and seamless.

Since 1991, PowerBuilder has been one of the fastest and easiest-to-use Application Development Tools in the world and came to SAP with the Sybase acquisition. Thousands of organizations worldwide – from small to large – have been relying on PowerBuilder to develop client/server apps for the Microsoft Windows platform. While PowerBuilder is excellent at developing client/server apps, SAP had been looking for a dedicated and focused partner who could move PowerBuilder forward into the future.  Essentially, SAP wanted to ensure the plethora of existing apps continue to run reliably for years to come while making it cost-effective and low-risk for organizations with PowerBuilder assets to embrace the latest technology innovations.

Appeon, a former partner of Sybase (acquired by SAP), has demonstrated a strong track record over many years of delivering innovations for the PowerBuilder development platform. Appeon was the first company in the world to offer a deployment solution for PowerBuilder that automatically generates .NET Web apps. Its most recent innovation is a solution for mobilizing existing PowerBuilder projects onto iOS and Android devices. 

Part of the agreement and included in the PowerBuilder package is InfoMaker, the reporting tool to query databases and create sophisticated and effective customer reports of data. It can also be used as a simplified interface for end users to customize reports in PowerBuilder apps. InfoMaker uses a subset of the PowerBuilder source code.

Version 12.6 is the final release of SAP PowerBuilder. Thereafter, the next generation of the PowerBuilder development platform will be created and owned by Appeon, which will be branded as Appeon PowerBuilder.  Appeon will take responsibility for selling and supporting its version of PowerBuilder directly and in certain regions through partners. In order to ensure an easy transition for existing customers, SAP has extended the maintenance of SAP’s PowerBuilder 12.6 until January 31, 2018.

To find out more about the timeline and roadmap for the new generation of PowerBuilder from Appeon please visit http://www.appeon.com/pbfuture.

We will post new updates here on SCN periodically, so please check back soon!

Disclaimer: Please note, the above mentioned forward-looking statements can still be subject to change, due to various risks and uncertainties. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates, and they should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions.

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      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Nice

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      A bit sad there are so few comments on this momentous new 🙁

      I wish Appeon all the best, as far as I can tell they are planning to do all the things that can be done to improve PowerBuilder and bring it to where it needs to be. I hope it's not too late, and I wish SAP hadn't moved so slowly. Looking forward to seeing what happens now. I hope they can move at a good pace!

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      SAP took too long getting this done. But it is welcome news!

      Author's profile photo Bruce Armstrong
      Bruce Armstrong

      Happy PowerBuilder Independance Day.... 😆

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Well stated Bruce and ... What a great PowerBuilder 25th Birthday present too!    😉

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Great news!!  3.0a to 12.6

      Author's profile photo Jeff Gibson
      Jeff Gibson

      It's never too late.  Let's remember.  This same event happened to Borland.  They dumped their tools division and everything practically stayed stagnant for 3 to 4 years.  Embarcadero came in and more or less reinvented the Borland tools line.  And where is Borland now?   Penny stock?   Junk status?

      I'm backing Appeon 100% on their move to move PowerBuilder to the next generation and I am ecstatic about it!!  Finally a company that believes in the product again.

      SAP will realize in the years to come the revenues they gave up on not just in sales alone, but in the products that could have been built using PowerBuilder that could drive their database sales up.

      All SAP has to do is wake up and realize that they acquired a tools based company in Sybase.  Not a mini SAP.  Tools drive products.  Products drives licensing.  Licensing drives revenue.  Simple as that!

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      "All SAP has to do is wake up..."

      Ha, ha,

      great quote...

      Author's profile photo Ranjith Singh Lakshman
      Ranjith Singh Lakshman

      Nice to know Appeon committing and officially declaring it. Now PowerBuilder gets the close attention and picks up as earlier PowerSoft. Will Wait that to happen.

      Also I believe Appeon is not going to emphasize more on Appeon product and keep's it separate from PowerBuilder. ( As name goes 'Power'   'Builder' in office by using PB...:-) )

      Indeed, Independence day as well as rebirth day. 🙂

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Too bad though that the first release won't be in December 2016, as initially targeted at pre-sales. But hey, we can wait a little bit longer 🙂

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Miguel;

      During the high-level PB road-map presentation in March 2016, I believe that the hope was that SAP would have the contract ready for Appeon in the late March / early April time frame. However as we know now, the contract was only just signed on July 5, 2016 putting the December target behind at least another quarter for Appeon due to the later start.

      Regards ... Chris

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Chris,

      Yes, that's what I was thinking also. Then, afterwards, Appeon still has to deal with all unfixed bugs, so yes, extra time might be needed I think.

      Regards

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Bugs ... nooooo  -  LOL!  😆

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      FINALLY !!!!!

      Most welcoming news !!

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Very delighted!

      I've been using PB for almost 20 years and hoping this awesome story is going to last at least another 20 (here's my promise- I am going to stay on board!).

      😉 pKlopfer

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Peter;

        Here is the new Appeon PowerBuilder road-map ... PB Vision and Roadmap Webcasts

      Enjoy!  😉

      Regards ... Chris

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Anyone know what this means for license management of SAP Powerbuilder post Jan 2018. That is - if you need to move a Powerbuilder 12.6 license from one workstation to another (by returning and generating a new license) can this still be done post Jan 2018 using the SAP Support Portal.

      Or are we expected to keep paying support to SAP although SAP will be providing no support?

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Appeon are going to a yearly licence which will include support. The price of the equivalent of PB Enterprise today will be around USD700 per year. I presume that if you go across to the yearly licence you will be able to remain on version 12 if you want to but I would have thought that an upgrade to Appeon PowerBuilder should be contemplated - for the bug fixes at least 🙂

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      We have the same question (the people I work for). Myself I'm not worried about it. I don't think local licences will stop being valid. Not too sure about server licences though. If your computer name and mac address of one of your network cards / external wifi is the same as in your licence file, it'll work. I surely wouldn't pay for "no support".

      Author's profile photo Merardo Porras
      Merardo Porras

      Would Appeon support the Server License model ?

      Author's profile photo Martin Berner
      Martin Berner
      Blog Post Author

      Additional details are outlined in SAP Note 2482456 "PowerBuilder 12.6 / InfoMaker 12.6: No Maintenance Renewals beyond Q2 2018"

      Author's profile photo David Peace
      David Peace

      Now that SAP nolonger support the older version of PowerBuilder you can always get technical support from Powersoft with no bug fixes of upgrades.

      go here http://www.powersoft-services.co.uk/powerbuilder_support.html for details.

      Cheers

      David