Powerbuilder EOL Date

[Former Member]

According to the product details the end of the mainstream maintenance is at 08/31/2015 for PowerBuilder 12.5.

According to the product details the end of the mainstream maintenance is at 07/31/2017 for PowerBuilder 12.6.

is it true ?

and what about PowerBuilder 12.1. When is the EOL ?

[Former Member]

SAP have made one decision........

My contract that allows me to sell PB expires at the end of December and SAP have advised me that it will not be renewed. So that's one decision that they have made!

[Former Member]

Hi David;

OMG .. that's sad.    😞

  Its the same scenario that Sybase did when they bought PowerSoft. They basically shutdown the VAR's and tried to have their local offices sell PB. However, the local VAR new the local market, clientele, PB, and the competition much better than the Sybase office staff. So in looking back historically, this was one of the bad business decisions that started PB's demise in the market place way back when.

   Its sad when history starts repeating itself (no lessons learned).

Regards ... Chris

[Former Member]

[Former Member]

I would not mind if that were the case. At lease then people who wanted to buy PB could do so!

PB has not made it onto the SAP price list so SAP cannot sell it either. I have been one of a handful of partners that could sell it worldwide. I am the only source in the UK, that will all stop come 2015.

I had to fight hammer and tongs to get the contract to sell but my willingness to fight SAP any more on this is just not there. At some point one has to say that they make their bed and lie in it. I hope that PB customers who want another copy of PB will raise merry hell!

It's all a bit of a joke really.

[Former Member]

  Seems like its just another move to squash PB sales and then finally EOL it later on by blaming the products demise on "lack of sales". 

I think Charles's picture says it all.    

[Former Member]

That would imply that they have a strategy and a plan! THEY DON'T!

This is just some random action from their legal department who cannot be arsed to continue the contracts, it's all too much work and does not fit with the "SAP Cooperate Model" FFS.

[Former Member]

Then I wonder if they will drop Novalys the same way and force them out as well?

[Former Member]

I would not want to speculate on that, sometime these ridiculous decisions are only made in the UK and the rest of the world is fine. Unfortunately I cannot tell right now.

[arnd_schmidt]

or the winner is... Novalys at www.powerbuilder.eu

[former_member190719]

It seems odd to me that a statement by an SAP executive vice-president indicating that the product would not be EOLed is met with disregard and suspicion, but one single vendor not being able to renew their distribution license is taken as positive proof that life as we know it is coming to an end.

[Former Member]

Denial is "bliss".   

[Former Member]

Hi Bruce

I never said that SAP were going to EOL, indeed I do not think that is the case. We just need to be patient. My comment was more to the fact that a UK customer who wants to buy PB cannot after December. Although I'm sure that they can by going to a EU distributor or further afield.

I never made any money selling the PB products but felt it was a service to the customer base. I'm just slightly frustrated by the situation.

Our core business is in supporting PB applications and that business is doing well. Customers are investing in the future of their systems developed in PB, some are treading water pending the development of a replacement (but these tend to be a long term project). There are still 1,000s of PB applications running and being heavily used, so that market will be strong for many years.

All the best to everyone and please buy you PB from Novalys if we cannot supply

Cheers

David

[former_member190719]

I never said that SAP were going to EOL

Didn't mean to imply you did.  Just making a general comment about how people respond to news, particularly in this thread.

[Former Member]

David,

You can still buy PowerBuilder at a distributor and sell it to your customers.

We do it that way. And YES, people buy again!

If you are a  distributor I feel sorry for you.

It is not only Novalys that sells PowerBuilder. But they are best in advertising!

If people are not fine with Novalys they can come to the shop on our WEB-Site.

As far as I understood "The Price List" lists what SAP-sales sell. PB has not necessarily be on it to be available on the market. Sybase also worked with distributors - so nothing changed for us.

[Former Member]

Hi Ludwin

We are a distributor and have been for many years. We were one of Sybase's longest standing partners, when SAP took over. Unfortunately as PB has not made it to the SAP price list we have to have a special agreement to sell it which took months to negotiate. To be quite frank if SAP do not want to sell PB then I cannot see why I should get too stressed about it. Hopefully the customers will give SAP a hard time and they will see the error of their ways.

It's all a bit of a farce really.

Thanks for the thoughts though.

Cheers

David

[Former Member]

The policy was always to have two active "major" releases on active engineering support.  When a new major release came out, the one from two releases prior would go EOL 90 days later. 

However - every maintenance release and EBF for PB between 11.0 and 12.5.2 had to be pulled because they included the Telerik web controls.  SAP decided not to renew that OEM agreement, so we were legally restricted from distributing any release that included those 3rd-party components. 

12.5.2 was the first PB release with the WebForms target removed (and the Telerik controls).  That's why you can only get 12.5.2 and 12.6 right now.

-Paul-

[Former Member]

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[Former Member]

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[Former Member]

If it hasn't already been removed from the nosupport site, you'd find that EOL for PowerBuilder 12.0 is on 30 Nov. 2014. There is no mention of 12.1 anywhere. As it was a maintenance release to 12.0 it's safe to assume that PB 12.1 is also EOL on  30/11/2014.

[Former Member]

Sorry, that's 11/30/2014 in the non-English speaking world.

[Former Member]

or  better yet ....  2014-11-30 in the ANSI world!  

[Former Member]

Sorry chris, but ANSI is something to die out in our globalized world! It's typically american standards as usual not respecting other languages and countries in the natural real world. Same with german DIN or other national standards...

[Former Member]

Maybe - but for now, the ANSI international date standard rules .... cc yy mm dd. 

[Former Member]

SAP have a fixed life term for every release that is set when the release is issued. This is not an EOL on the product but just a notional date when they would expect to no-longer support that version, probably because a new version will have been released.

If you look at EAServer 6.3 this was end of mainstream maintenance some time ago, but SAP chose to extend that because there was no new release.

Now with PowerBuilder when 12.5.2 came out is was the only release supported by SAP, now we have 12.6 then I expect that they will end support for 12.5.2 on 31st Aug 2015. PowerBuilder 12.1 is not supported.

Cheers

David

[Former Member]

Unfortunately, this is all speculation without official statements from SAP on the PowerBuilder product's support, direction, etc - not to mention a solid road-map.

[Former Member]

More than likely it has already happened. I Googled it and the section of the Sybase website with that statement is offline.