Bamboo Solutions announced late last month on its community site that it has devised a way to run Microsoft SharePoint on a Vista box.Until now, running SharePoint required installing Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS) on one of the versions of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS), or using virtualization tools such as Virtual PC or VMware.

With this approach, you need to be running Vista SP1. Start by installing the SharePoint on Vista Installation Helper File from Bamboo Solutions, and then install Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. Because the version of IIS included in Vista SP1 is similar to IIS 7.0, the solution should work fairly smoothly. The software's still in beta, so the normal warnings apply: back up your systems before starting the process and don't try to use the solution to run a production instance of SharePoint.

For developers or anyone interested in messing around with SharePoint to get their feet wet, this should be exciting news. Sidestepping the per-seat license cost of more than $4,000 for SharePoint Server 2007 and the potential performance challenges created by using a virtual machine, this will certainly have broad appeal within the SharePoint user community.

I was a little bit surprised to find the Bamboo Solutions news mentioned on Microsoft's SharePoint Server site, and, in fact, a post on the MSDN site gives a tacit endorsement of the approach. From Chris Johnson's blog on the Microsoft Developers Network:

"...I want to stress that this is not supported by Microsoft. We have not tested WSS on Vista and thus make no commitment to supporting this. However, I imagine that this will not bother many people and we will end up seeing this being a popular option."

Time will tell if the solution gets out of beta or if Microsoft ultimately makes changes that would hobble this approach. In the meantime, it's worth taking Bamboo Solutions' free download out for a spin.