Microsoft has officially announced a release date of May 12th for SharePoint 2010. Many who haven’t yet spent time with the beta release are suddenly planning to take a hard look at the new version of SharePoint. They are, or will soon be, discovering what is to be a strong investment from Microsoft in the SharePoint franchise. Many of our customers have shared with us their adoption plans for 2010 and, as one might expect, they are extremely varied. Some will adopt right away, while others are planning for near-term deployments to their staging and test environments. Many are waiting until the latter half of this year, while others have no plans at all. Whatever your plans for 2010, the purpose of this blog is to let you know when your Bamboo products will be ready for SharePoint 2010.

Before we discuss the product release timeline, let’s cover the answers to a few commonly asked questions. The one we receive most often is, “If I make a purchase now, will I be able to upgrade to SharePoint 2010?” The answer is, “Yes, and for free!” All customers who hold current versions of our products by maintaining an active premium support contract will receive free upgrades to the 2010 platform. Furthermore, we are extending this offer to any customer that has purchased Bamboo software since November 2009. The second most popular question we are fielding is, “Will all of your products support SharePoint 2010?”  Outside of a few isolated exceptions, the answer is yes, and this support will come in the form of free software updates. The few products that we have decided not to port to the new platform are detailed in our SharePoint 2010 Bamboo Product FAQ. This includes two older products that were designed for WSS 2.0 and SPS 2003 and one with functionality that will be covered by the SharePoint 2010 platform out of the box.  In the latter case, we will be providing our customers with solution migration assistance. Why no ported version? The simple answer is that it just wasn’t in the best interests of our customers to keep them tied to what would amount to a bolt-on third-party solution when they are much better served by adopting the new SharePoint 2010 features. Now, when was the last time you got honesty like that from a vendor?

One of the big issues we wrestled with as a product team was how to provide 2010-compatible solutions for our customers as near as possible to the Microsoft release date without compromising our typical product improvement cycle by placing releases into a virtual holding pattern. As you might imagine, this is not easily accomplished with a portfolio of close to 60 products. The plan we decided on calls for a staged rollout of product support for 2010. The first phase will involve a release of PM Central and 16 of our best-selling Web Parts. This is planned to occur by the end of June.

Once SharePoint 2010 is released, all new releases of Bamboo software will be in two versions; one supporting SharePoint 2010 and the other SharePoint 2007 (WSS 3.0, MOSS 2007).  This will be the case whether the releases are new products or are just point releases. Web Parts will be re-released for SharePoint 2010 as they are made ready for the new platform. This second phase of support for SharePoint 2010 will include all products in the Product Management Suite.  The final stage of our deployment will consist of all remaining Bamboo products with the exception of the Workflow Conductor. (Workflow Conductor support for SP2010 will occur in Q3 when the next major release of that product is made.) All other products (including any remaining components of the SharePoint Administration Suite and Ultimate Suite) will be released by the middle of August.  Although the vast majority of products will be offered for SharePoint 2010 much sooner, you can be sure that (with the exception of Workflow Conductor) the complete set of Bamboo products will be available within 90 days of the release of SharePoint 2010.

Bamboo looks forward to standing behind you as you move to SharePoint 2010.  As part of Microsoft’s Technology Adoption Program for Office/SharePoint 2010, we have been working with the new version of SharePoint for close to a year. Our team is ready to help offer you guidance, support, and, of course, product whenever you choose to move to SharePoint 2010. We look forward to working with you in what looks to be a great step forward for SharePoint.  For more detailed information regarding Bamboo’s plans for SharePoint 2010, please read the SharePoint 2010 Bamboo Product FAQ.