A little early but because of the holidays exactly timed. And what a year it was :-)

First of all I need to thank two groups of fine people that made this company happen:

- our great team;

- the customers.

Our great team
Our team is a great bunch of hardworking fun people with SharePoint in their blood and veins. The “fun” part is important for me because work is about people in the first place. People are willing to spend at least 40 hours a week at our company and because of that we need to make sure that they enjoy these 40 hours otherwise they will move on.

The first guy I want to mention is of course Daniel. Our very ambitious full of energy Australian guy that is glued to his laptop. Does he ever sleep? When I met Daniel (it wasn’t easy to meet) I immediately thought “this is the guy that I need as a bizpartner”. Of course it took a while but in the end we started this zevenseas thing. Actually, Daniel came up with the name so don’t blame me for that :-) Thanks mate for this fantastic year and I really appreciate the high-level discussions that we have, it really improves us both person- and job wise.

The second guy is Robin (he is the first team member that joined). Robin has this very bright brain that can switch to solution mode very fast. Besides that he is a really wonderful person to work with.

The third guy is Mark. Mark also does tremendous work at customers and I don’t know anyone that doesn’t like Mark (he is a funny bloke). Watch the finger mate :-)

The customers
What shall I say? Our customers have supported us all along even when we started and they are all still there. I guess it isn’t easy to explain to a manager to do business with this small company called zevenseas :-) We want to thank all our customers (real people) for all the business they brought to us in 2008, we hope to see more in 2009!

The last year
So we started the beginning of this year and it took us a while to get used to the consultancy business. There are a lot of middleman in this business that don’t get SharePoint and potential customers get confused or even worse lost. We had to adapt to that and pick the right ones, a good lesson that we learned.

Our year started fantastic with the conference in Seattle and I really enjoyed the sessions and of course the city Seattle. Just the conference wouldn’t have been the same experience, I guess that describes our company best, hard work and socializing. We met great people and in 2009 we will be there again.

The rest of the year was one big rollercoaster but still enjoying it very much!

Right now we notice there is a gold rush going on with SharePoint but there aren’t many skilled gold diggers, that is a real problem but for us a fantastic potential. We think that our focus on SharePoint is the best decision we ever made.

On a personal level 2008 wasn’t a great year, I lost my beloved mother and I still have to cope with the fact that I have become a no-parents child and it isn’t easy. Anyway, thanks mam for the time that you have been around to support me!

The year 2009
This is a tricky one, everyone says we have a huge crisis but my feeling says we (zevenseas) are not influenced. There are several reasons to believe that:

• we are small and we have a very healthy “modus operandi” financial wise;
• we are very very focused and niche (although SharePoint is mainstream right now) and that always survives;
• there is still a huge shortage of IT people in our country (5000-10000);
• lay offs mean hires of temporary people (the work needs to be done);
• we are really good with SharePoint :-)

The CEO of our partner Bamboo has a good story on optimism here.

We have lots of plans for 2009 and I want to share a few with you:

• more direct customers;
• more delivered products;
• a Dutch web site;
• a localized Nintex Workflow;
• more partnerships;
• more great team members (at least 3);
• good fun.

I really really believe 2009 is going to be a fantastic year, SharePoint is going more mainstream in 2009 and we are on top of it!

Have a very good Christmas and a happy new year for you and your family!