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Who's still working up in Waterloo?

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I can't help but be happy for him, but it looks like Mike Paola has stepped into the world of retirement after what looks like being involved with SQL Anywhere for over 35 years. Someone correct me if my math isn't correct. 🙂

Just curious who we can still reach out to up there. I saw that James Gingerich, who used to work with the SQL Anywhere partners that Chris retired as well. I assume he meant Chris Kleisath. I saw this on LinkedIn.

This obviously makes me nervous that two major retirements at that level could mean that we're looking at the sunset here.

Anybody have any thoughts?

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Answers (2)

Answers (2)

MarkCulp
Participant

Yes, Mike and Chris have retired ... but there are still lots of very talented people working diligently on the team: Ivan, Dan, John, Mohammed, Jason, Reg, Ani, Mary, Jack ... to name just a few. I do not know who specifically is taking on Mike's role but you can always ask your questions here (or its soon-to-be replacement).

VolkerBarth
Contributor

@Mark: Am I right that not all of the mentioned great developers do work on SQL Anywhere exclusively but on probably related projects (SAP HANA Cloud infrastructure, IQ, Data Lake)...?

I think the concern is the optics Mark. Recently Mike was fighting to move this sunset date, extend it, drop it, whatever.... And then... He's gone (along with Chris).

It feels like that us as developers and what have effectively been the Watcom/Powersoft/Sybase/SAP partners for the last 30-35 years feel like they have just been thrown out (This is NOT aimed at you Mark, 100% at SAP) ever since SAP took over the SQL Anywhere product line.

We want to be able to have an on-premise database that runs as absolutely ROCK SOLID as SQL Anywhere does. And now it feels like SAP just wants us to go away. They know better. We just need to shut up and move to the cloud.

I hate the idea of this forum being shut down. This is a family of developers that understand and know each other. We will effectively be lost the moment any of this gets thrown into the SAP Universe. Breck Carter had the right idea when he spun up the original SQL Anywhere forum.

IMHO, the reason SQL Anywhere has been as successful as it has been over the decades is because of this family.

What I want to know is what we can do to get SAP's attention. And yes, I'm just a TINY cog in this wheel.

I will get off my soap box. I just want to see this database continue. In a form that allows us to continue.

Now I'm just talking pie in the sky now, but I would open the doors to Appeon to take the on prem database over. Let you all go back to the iAnywhere days where people were banging down your doors to use your database.

I'm scared to ask what SAP is going to tell Intuit.

OK. Off soap box. 🙂

justin_willey
Participant

Back in April, I know Mike was following up on the OEM question. Do you know who is dealing with this now?

MarkCulp
Participant

These are all very good questions to ask and I understand your concerns. Unfortunately, I do not know the answers since I retired several years ago. I will poke a few people to see if someone from "inside" can respond.

0 Kudos

I'm uncertain what the latest was on this Justin. But would love to know.

MCMartin
Participant
0 Kudos

Who is the new product manager for SQLA?