PowerBuilder Consultants UK

A specialist PowerBuilder practice based in Horsham, West Sussex. One of only two Appeon-approved consulting partners in the UK, working with PowerBuilder since version 4.

Request a free application review +44 (0)1293 562730

Most people who ring us are not shopping for a supplier

They have a decision to make and nobody impartial to make it with. The application still runs the business. The person who wrote it has gone, or is about to. Someone upstairs has asked whether it can move to the cloud, and someone else has quoted a number for replacing it that made everybody go quiet.

This site is organised around those decisions rather than around our service list. Work through whichever one you are facing and you will get our actual reasoning, including the cases where the answer is that you should leave it alone for now.

If you want the company rather than the practice — forty years of history, our own products, our Sage development work — that lives on the main Powersoft site. This site is PowerBuilder and nothing else.

Legacy PowerBuilder - Powersoft, Sybase and SAP era releases

Which decision are you facing?

Which version should we be on?

What is still supported, what an upgrade from your release actually involves, and how to tell a fortnight's work from a six-month project.

Work it through →

Do we migrate or rewrite?

Why the rewrite quote is usually the expensive answer to the wrong question — and the specific cases where it is genuinely the right one.

Work it through →

What are our support options?

Three routes, what each costs you in risk, and what can honestly be done for a version Appeon stopped patching years ago.

Work it through →

Is PowerServer right for us?

What Appeon's cloud technology actually changes, what it requires first, and the kind of organisation it genuinely suits.

Work it through →

Our PowerBuilder developer is leaving

The most common reason anyone calls us. What to do in the weeks you have left, what to capture before they go, and how to stop one retirement becoming a crisis.

Work it through →

The versions in play

Supported by Appeon

Appeon PowerBuilder is the only version of PowerBuilder that still receives bug fixes and new features. The releases marked LTS are the long-term support versions, and they are what we build new systems on.

PB2017 PB2017r2 PB2017r3 (LTS) PB2019r3 (LTS) PB2022R3 (LTS) PB2025

Supported by us

Appeon issues nothing for these any more. We still support them: troubleshooting, workarounds and keeping the thing running. What we cannot do is issue a patch to PowerBuilder itself.

6.0 6.5 7.0 7.5 8.0 8.5 9.0 9.5 10.0 10.5 11.0 11.5 12.0 12.5 12.6 EAServer 5 & 6

On something not listed here? Ring us. We have seen most of it.

We are in Horsham, and that matters more than you would think

A great deal of PowerBuilder work is now done by people several time zones away who you will never meet. That can work. It also means the person who understands your application is asleep when your month-end run fails, and a difficult conversation happens over email across a nine-hour gap.

Powersoft has been based in West Sussex since 1986. For a UK client that means the ordinary things: we are on your clock, we answer the phone during your working day, and when a project needs people in a room rather than on a call, we can be in the room. You deal with the same named engineers year after year, and you can come and meet them.

It also means a UK company, UK contracts and UK invoicing, which quietly removes a lot of procurement friction for public sector and regulated clients.

One of only two

Powersoft is one of only two Appeon-approved consulting partners in the UK. Because of our relationship with Appeon we are among the first to receive new releases, so we are working with a version before most people have heard it is out.

We have worked with PowerBuilder since version 4 and have supported every release since.

UK organisations we have looked after

Teachers Assurance, now part of LV=. A substantial CRM and policy administration system built in PowerBuilder in 2002 and deployed with EAServer, maintained by another software house before us. We were brought in to fix a migration problem the previous supplier had left, for a small fixed price on a no fix, no fee basis. We then migrated the source to PowerBuilder 12.5 and EAServer 6.3.1, rewriting legacy Java components that would not run under the newer EAServer. Delivered on time and to plan. They are still supported by Powersoft today.

Inara Transfers. A PowerBuilder application running money transfer shops in London. We moved it from SQL Anywhere to SQL Server for performance, then built a .NET web and mobile front end integrated in real time to the back office, which also helped evidence their PSD2 regulatory approval.

A large UK online retailer. PowerBuilder estate upgrades plus a multi-channel pricing solution handling thousands of SKUs with real-time price tracking.

1986trading since

v4the PowerBuilder release we started on

2 of 2UK Appeon consulting partners

Freeinitial application review

Not sure which of these applies to you?

Tell us the PowerBuilder version you are on, the database behind it and what is worrying you. We will give you an honest read on your options, including whether the answer is to do nothing for now. The initial review of your application is free, and we are close enough to come and see you.

Telephone: +44 (0)1293 562730

Email: sales@powersoft-services.co.uk