On May 12, Bamboo was a sponsor of the Philly SharePoint 2010 Community Launch Event, alongside our Partner RJB Technical Consulting (RJB Tech) at the Microsoft office in Malvern, PA.  The event was hosted by the Philadelphia Area SharePoint User Group, and Bamboo was excited to be at the show and to discuss how our products extend the SharePoint platform to help businesses enable a more effective SharePoint deployment.

Many of our current customers, such as Merck, Boeing, Poverty-Action and Highmark were in attendance, and we had an opportunity to chat about how their Bamboo Web Parts are working for them. Primarily the focus for them has been in our project management parts to simplify tracking projects for their respective businesses and how happy they were with the ease of use.

Given that May 12 was the official product launch day, most of the information that was presented at the event focused on SharePoint 2010.  Information on the new release is being covered throughout the blogosphere by writers far more capable than me, but some common themes stood out based on my day spent at the show and the questions that I was asked at the Bamboo booth.

Bamboo Labs – Russell Basiura, one of our good friends from RJB Tech was presenting a Return on Investment session, speaking to the measurable ways that a SharePoint deployment can bring value to your business. One of the Bamboo offerings that he asked me to speak about was the SharePoint price calculator, which is available at Bamboo Labs.  Basically the calculator is a tool that Bamboo put together that gathers publicly available information from Microsoft to do some back-of-envelope calculations on the costs associated with buying MOSS. A version of the calculator will soon be available for a deployment of SharePoint 2010 as well.  Bamboo Labs also features beta versions of many in-development Web Parts, as well as additional Web Parts and applications that are beneficial to SharePoint users.  The best news about Bamboo labs?  All of the downloads are free.

Licensing schema – Every software company does this differently.  Our method is that we sell our products per Web front-end.  A lot of companies go by number of users, but we find that our method is easier to keep track of for clients, and makes for easier pricing calculations. For non-production Web front-ends, we have special discounted pricing.  In addition, every environment is different and some companies have a mix of production, development, staging, load balancers and every server term under the sun, so feel free to contact sales@bamboosolutions.com and we will work with you to make sure you get the correct number of licenses (and any applicable discounts) for a successful deployment of your Bamboo products.

Documentation of processes – Bamboo does one of the best jobs in the industry on documenting tips, tricks and application notes for our products.  We truly believe in keeping transparent business processes so that your business can see the real value of Bamboo.  Bamboo Nation, Bamboo's community site is one of the things that we're proud of at Bamboo, as it focuses on bringing real value-add to our customers about all aspects of SharePoint, in addition to tips on how to get the most out of your investment in Bamboo products in the form of use cases and tips and tricks. Our application notes are available online, and we have myriad sources of information on our products including blogs, forum posts, and critical analyses from SharePoint MVPs.  A simple Web search including the product name, the words Bamboo Solutions and your specific question will usually turn up great search results that either one of our own engineers or an outside SharePoint guru has written that answers that question specifically and allows you to get on with your day.

At the end of the show, we were excited to raffle off a brand new Zune as a grand prize to attendees. Askold Sandursky of Incyte was the lucky winner.

It was a pleasure to be set up alongside our Partner RJB Tech at the event, and we were proud to help sponsor the Philadelphia Area SharePoint User Group's efforts with the Philly SharePoint 2010 Community Launch Event.