Bamboo Nation

I have come accross bamboo solutions a few times when searching for different systems to impliment into our sharepoint website. I think the software available looks outstanding with so many features available which could turn our site into something so much more powerful.

The only downside is I dont feel the prices aren't realistic for small business like us (with a handful of users). The prices might be correct because there isnt anything else available on the market and they may also reflect the hardwork, time and effort put into developing, but for the prices alone, its the only reason we havent implimented any bamboo solutions.

I do however keep a close eye on the website :)

Adam 

Adam,

Welcome to Bamboo Nation!  Thank you for the kind words about our products, and the feedback about our pricing.

There is a story of legend here at Bamboo about how we became a SharePoint company.  I'll save the entire history for another day, but suffice to say that Bamboo was once a smaller enterprise than it is today, and we were just getting started with SharePoint.  A short time after our initial deployment, we began to run into some of the functional shortcomings of SharePoint... in this particular instance I believe it was aggregation of list data.  Our COO Lam Le, was casting about for workarounds and solutions and called a local SharePoint technology provider.  The company did offer a list rollup product, but it was 3 or 4 times as expensive as the Web Part we offer today and they wouldn't allow a trial before purchase.  According to the old timers here, this was the seminal spark that would propel Bamboo into the Web Part business.  The fundamental pillars of our business are based on this experience.  They are:

- Allow customers to purchase just what they need, Don't force them to buy a big bundle of functionality they might never use.

- Offer our products at a reasonable and fair price.  Don't price the little guy out of the market.

- Make everything available for trial.  If your products don't stand won't stand up to a real live functional evaluation, they aren't worth selling.

I can tell you that we still struggle with how to price our products.  What is a unit of functionality worth?  What is the value received by the customer?  We had a high-powered, SharePoint savvy consultant in the office a few weeks back.  He felt strongly that our products were grossly underpriced, at least for the big corporate buyer. Frankly, we often have to make an arbitrary, gut decision and let the market tell us whether we're right or wrong.

I'd love to hear specifics from you about what products interest you and what you would be willing to pay.  You're welcome to post that info here in the forum or send it to me privately at steve.gaitten@bamboosolutions.com  I don't know how far out your price range we are, but if there's anything I can do to help you personally, I promise to try and make it happen.

Your feedback is extremely valuable to us.  We sincerely appreciate your visit and your candor.  Please accept the thanks of a grateful nation, Bamboo Nation that is ;)

Best,

Steve Gaitten

Director of Online Operations @ Bamboo