A while ago I explained the structure of our two companies (codezeven and zevenseas) and for the new “full SharePoint product development” company codezeven we have created a new logo.

We kept it simple and just changed a few things to keep it very related to zevenseas. See the end result below:

The grey “zeven” is consistent with the part in the zevenseas logo.

Thanks James for this fast delivery!

We always had this global vision for SharePoint consultancy and products and finally it becomes more real. Our positive experience with India (started last year) is the main reason that we started up our zevenseas India corporation. It is clear that some development work (web parts etc.) can easily be done on remote locations without sacrificing quality. This last is important, you still want quality!

Is is our plan to offer SharePoint product development (like we did with our own products) for companies that want to transform their own ideas into usable products. This all backed by the expertise of our local Dutch team (I think we did some innovative things) and managed by zevenseas Holland.

As a potential customer you don’t have to deal with people you don’t know, we at zevenseas are there to help you out and you know we know SharePoint!

It is our plan to focus on work first that can be done easily remotely, web parts are very suitable for that. But more advanced products are possible too. If you take a look at our own products (TunnelPoint, ProduShare and the blogging platform) that we designed, you know we are capable of getting it done!

If you are in the need for some custom development work please ping me on hans@zevenseas .com with your requirements.

On June 26 Robin will host a session on SP Application Pages, don’t miss it! See more session info here.

Our team has worked hard lately to finish the blogging platform and the result is great, we start selling and shipping it from today on!

Blogs inside the enterprise can be used in several ways:

-          To thrive innovation by easily sharing knowledge;

-          To gain new knowledge by following specialized topics;

-          To discover new talents among your team members;

-          To build knowledge bases.

Please visit our product information page to see all related information and demo.

Just got a ping from Microsoft for a special offer for BPOS. So here is the offering.

BPOS offering

You can get a 25% discount (maximum and depending on what you buy) if you buy the Business Productivity Online Standard Suite right now by visiting this link. We would appreciate it if you could use our partner ID during signup (see below screen):

Click on Find a Partner and use our Partner ID: 2228504.

This offer is valid till June 30, 2009.

Thanks to the Dutch government to make electronic invoicing easier!

We will start a.s.a.p. with electronic invoicing where possible because it has become much easier without any difficult software to install.

How does SharePoint fit in? You could email enable your document library so that people can send invoices to a certain site. If new invoices arrive you could start a workflow process to route the invoice to the correct person.

We are pleased to be able to announce the first ever Pint2Share (ok, ok, SharePint) in Amsterdam this Friday, details as follows:

De Veranda
Amstelveenseweg 764
Amsterdam
http://www.deveranda.nl/ (in Dutch)

Sponsorship is provided by Sparked, SDN and zevenseas.

There will be an excellent crowd coming along, including Joel Oleson, Mike Watson, Robin Meuré and Ton Stegeman (MOSS MVP) and Waldek Mastykarz

This will follow a great day of SharePoint sessions at the “SharePoint Day with the Experts: Amsterdam” which has a new venue and some really good numbers.

NOTE: You need to register for this event.

Congrescentrum Amstelveen
Sandbergplein 24
1181 ZX Amstelveen
(map)

See you there!

Recently we have taken steps to investigate how we can offer our customers on demand web part development. Overall our consultants are more involved in the higher level SharePoint projects and web part development isn’t always part of that. However, we see a growing interest for just web part development and we would like to offer that for the long term.

By partnering with a few very good SharePoint development companies we have plans to release an on demand web part development initiative that can be used by our current customers or new customers. The aim is to deliver web parts in two weeks cycles (by using scrum).

So if you are interested please ping us!

In ons streven om het epicentrum van de SharePoint wereld te worden (ja ja, dat is nogal wat) hebben we de "SharePoint Marketplace" gelanceerd. Het is een initiatief om een groot aantal interessante aan SharePoint gerelateerde producten centraal bereikbaar te maken voor onze huidige- en toekomstige klanten.

Natuurlijk zijn er al diverse producten te vinden op diverse blogs of online shops maar naar onze mening was het tijd voor een meer gestructureerd overzicht op een centrale plek. De “SharePoint Marketplace” van zevenseas is wat ons betreft de plek om informatie te vinden over producten en ze aan te kopen. Niet alle producten die we opnemen in de site zullen we ook zelf direct verkopen maar o.a. de producten van Nintex, Colligo Networks en Bamboo Solutions kunnen we via de site leveren. Gratis producten en informatie zijn ook op de site te vinden en te downloaden na registratie.

Op dit moment is de “Marketplace” gevuld met een klein assortiment producten waar we elke week iets aan toe zullen voegen. Overigens kan in onze ogen een product ook een lijst template of site template zijn.

Daarmee komen we gelijk op de volgende functie van de site, we willen zo graag voorkomen dat iedereen opnieuw het wiel gaat uitvinden. Mocht u een prachtige lijst hebben gemaakt voor bijvoorbeeld kilometerregistratie laat het ons dan weten zodat we hem beschikbaar kunnen maken op de site, u helpt daarmee andere bedrijven.

De site is te bereiken via de URL: http://marketplace.zevenseas.com en u kunt kiezen uit Engels of Nederlands.

Mocht u een lijst template, site template of ander product in de “Marketplace” willen aten opnemen, stuur dan het product met omschrijving en bijlage naar: marketplace@online.zevenseas.com

Alvast bedankt voor uw bijdrage!

We are almost there, 6 months after the start. In my mind Feb. 2008 was the official start of zevenseas and on August 2008 we are in business for 6 months under the name zevenseas.

If we count up all the SharePoint experience of Daniel, Robin, Mark and me I think we reach 15 years of solid SharePoint experience. Probably that is a lot compared to a few other companies.

I must say, till now it is a fantastic ride and our decision to do 100% SharePoint has paid off! Everyone is happy with his role and the things that we wanted to do differently have evolved into a kind of natural philosophy that is basically something Daniel and I had in our mind. Some of these are related to the 7 C's (Collaboration, Consulting, Coding, Creativity, Community, Content,Capable) but some are more how we think a consultancy business should be. I pick two things we value a lot:

• friday@sea;
• responsibility.

The first one is a commitment we agreed on and the second one is something we give.

friday@sea
Now after almost 6 months we can conclude that this Friday is really important. Besides the fact that we skipped some Fridays because of holidays etc. it is clear that this one day a week paid off. Sure, it is a non-billable day :-)

On this day we come together and we evaluate the week in detail (including demonstrations). The rest of the day is to: discuss problems, new solutions, sharing knowledge etc. It is not rocket science but a day to keep in touch on all important issues related to the company. Without this we simply cannot run our company because the social connection wouldn't been there.

Responsibility
Many companies talk about responsibility but are not really giving this responsibility to team members. We really try to give it, other team members are the coach but don't touch the ball. We don't interfere (only guidance) with how to do it, we rather evaluate the end result.

Overall after these 6 months we can be happy with the total end result. We have national and international companies as a customer and we are happy to Grow.

The next phase of zevenseas will be to focus on getting new quality consultants aboard. Check out this post and maybe you are interested in joining our team!

According to SimplyHired (they index millions of jobs) SharePoint jobs have increased with 21% since October 2006.

Currently we are involved in a few projects:

• corporate blogging by using the Enhanced Blogging Edition;
• workflows and InfoPath;
• sites for real estate;
• healthcare project that includes workflows, OCS and custom webparts.

A while ago we have been publishing a few projects on Codeplex. Daniel has been very active to set this up and you can see we have to offer by following this link.

Today we launched our new site. It took Robin a while to do a re-design but the end result is fresh and more suitable. It proves again that it isn't easy to do a customized SharePoint site.

PixelMill and zevenseas have agreed to work together on design projects for national and international companies. PixelMill will operate as zevenseas's SharePoint Design Partner where needed.

By working with PixelMill we can guarantee customers the highest quality in masterpage- and CSS design. Check out the PixelMill site for some off the shelf SharePoint templates.

As a SharePoint company we like to help the community with free tools. We just released our first product on codeplex and we invite you to download it.

Download

Our partner Nintex has unveiled their new product called Nintex Reporting 2008.

"Nintex Reporting 2008 will provide unprecedented insight into workplace usage, trends and behaviours. With Nintex Reporting 2008, everyone from system administrators to business owners will be able to access online reports and key information dashboards targeted to their role."

Check out the press release on the Nintex site