by Barbara Mosher Zinck

Want more proof that cloud computing is becoming very popular? Bamboo Solutions has started up a new division focused on providing hosted solutions based on SharePoint.

The cloud is becoming a popular place, not everyone wants to deal with the licensing and deployment issues related to on-premise solutions. Bamboo Solutions obviously sees an opening in the SaaS market that they can easily fill.

With SharePoint Online opening its doors to extensibility when it upgrades to SharePoint 2010, Bamboo has a potentially burgeoning market for its Web Parts, accelerators, and applications. And there’s room to develop even more. But that doesn’t mean they should stop there.

The newly formed Bamboo Online Applications Group will develop and offer SharePoint-based solutions themselves. The first of these Bamboo SaaS-based offerings will come sometime before the end of January in the form of a collaboration solution. Called the Bamboo Requirements Manager (BambooRM™), it enables geographically dispersed teams to collaborate and communicate on demand.

Requirements Manager is just the start of a number of hosted solutions Bamboo will offer to small to medium-sized businesses on a subscription basis. PMCentral, their flagship application, will also be offered as a hosted service at some point.

If you like SharePoint and you like the idea of someone else providing the application and platform for you, get ready to take Bamboo Online Applications for a trial run (they will offer trials).

SOURCE: CMSWire