How long has P6 been in the market?

John,

 Primavera Enterprise Version 1.0 was released in July of 1999.  The name has been changed (almost with every version) over years.  There never really was a “P5”.  Some genius at Primavera had decided that they wanted to be like SAP and named the software after the company, (i.e. “Primavera”).  As Primavera was selling three different CPM scheduling programs at the time, naming one of them “Primavera” caused such confusion that the customers revolted and started calling the Version 5 enterprise software, “P5”.  Primavera took the hint and named the Version 6 enterprise software, “P6”.  With Version 8, the folks at Oracle/Primavera are starting to rename the product again.  I wonder if someone in Oracle/Primavera Marketing keeps renaming their children at every birthday?  It would explain a lot.

 Primavera’s earlier software product, Primavera Project Planner (also known as P3) was released in October of 1983.  P3 and P6 were both sold throughout the 2000’s until P3 was officially retired at the end of 2009.  For further, I suggest that you read a History of Primavera Scheduling Software that I presented at the 2013 Construction CPM conference.  You can find this on-line at http://www.ronwinterconsulting.com/The_History_of_Primavera_Scheduling.pdf.

Before Primavera Enterprise 1.0 the same software was called Eagle Ray and was presented at PMI'98 conference exhibition (Long Beach, California). At that time it did not belong to Primavera.