Editor’s note: As we continue our annual Year in Review series with a look back on 2010, you’ll notice a number of new faces among the participants this year. Our goal with this year’s offering was to offer the most holistic glimpse into the “year in Bamboo” to date … and what a year it was. Including the release of SharePoint 2010 as well as the continued growth of Bamboo, as evidenced by the double-digit increases in our product line, revenue, and staff. 

Rob Manfredi As one of the newest members of the Bamboo team, what is your mission? 

As SharePoint becomes more and more important to our customer’s infrastructure, they have asked us to step up our relationship with them to provide a more enterprise-focused solution from a software and services perspective. My mission is to craft that program so that Bamboo can successfully support our clients as our footprint grows within their organization.

What is the value proposition for Bamboo Enterprise?  How is Bamboo Enterprise different than a purchase of a software suite such as Bamboo Ultimate?

Historically, Web Parts have been purchased on an “as-needed” basis.  Suite offerings such as Ultimate provide a great way to purchase groups of Web Parts and applications. However, Web Parts are also tied to specific Web front-ends (WFEs). This can cause problems for enterprise clients that want the flexibility to deploy new WFEs as needed to meet their continuity of operations ( CooP) guidelines. Also, for non-production environments such as Test, DR, and Dev, Bamboo needed flexible licensing to support these environments at no additional charge. Even more important are the services that come with the Enterprise Offering to ensure that our Enterprise customers gain the maximum value from their license. This includes Account Management, Dedicated Technical Support, and ongoing Training on the products. We get you the answers you need when you need them so that you can respond quickly to user requests.

What is the profile of a typical Bamboo Enterprise customer?  What’s the most important aspect of the Enterprise offering to a typical customer? 

What we are seeing in the market are customers that have somewhat complicated installations of SharePoint. This includes not only multiple productions and non-production servers. Also, teams that are regionally or globally based are managing their SharePoint environments. SharePoint is great at expanding and growing, but this can often lead to a mish-mash of Web Parts from different vendors and poor choices as to when to use custom code to solve critical issues. We can work with the SharePoint team to educate these users on the power of Web Parts, and what can be accomplished through the configuration of off-the-shelf products as opposed to custom coding.

Tom Polivka recently joined the Bamboo Enterprise team, introducing himself to Bamboo Nation in our “New Faces” series.  How will you and Tom be working together on the Enterprise offering?

Tom brings much-needed support to the team through his expertise in enterprise software. He also has a great track record in working with major integrators. We believe Bamboo can become a part of the implementations that are being supported by these big integrators. It’s another indicator that SharePoint is becoming a serious enterprise application and Bamboo is an important part of the solution software stack – with that. We need to be prepared to support those environments appropriately.

What is your primary goal for the year ahead?

My goal is to have fun while creating a serious offering to support our customers. If we can get customers to think of Bamboo when they are ready to standardize their Web Parts with a single vendor then I will have met my primary goal.

Read the entire 2010 Year in Review series:

• The Year in Review with Bamboo COO Lam Le
• Bamboo Product Strategy’s Year in Review with Wes Bryan
• Bamboo Web Parts & Components’ Year in Review with Jeff Kozloff
• Bamboo Applications & Accelerators’ Year in Review with ‘Bamboo PM Girl’
• Bamboo Tools & Technologies’ Year in Review with Jeff Tubb
• Bamboo Support’s Year in Review with Mike O’Brien
• Bamboo Marketing & Online Operations’ Year in Review with Steve Gaitten
• Bamboo Nation’s Year in Review with John Anderson
• Bamboo Partner Program’s Year in Review with Jill Kunkel
• Bamboo Enterprise’s Year in Review with Rob Manfredi
• Bamboo Services’ Year in Review with Daisy Anand