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Why I love the Microsoft BizSpark Programme

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11–20 of 98 posts

Re: Why I love the Microsoft BizSpark Programme

#11
I love BizSpark because it makes setting up new Windows VMs for testing (browsers, code deployment, etc.) pretty painless - you get at least 2 valid serial numbers for virtually every Microsoft product ever through the MSDN subscription, and you get to keep them after the MSDN expires.

I'm also looking at doing some stuff with Windows Phone hardware (not with the OS, just the hardware...), so there's value in that.

I haven't even touched Azure yet.

Re: Why I love the Microsoft BizSpark Programme

#13
post #5

I made the switch from AWS to Azure prior to being signed up with BizSpark. And from my experience is a a whole lot more bang for your buck for what you get even it you're just spinning up a bog standard VM. And might I add the AWS micro instance is pretty useless for anything besides having a tiny play. You'll never even have a test site working properly on t1.micro. The other thing that swung me is the managed scal…

Why would you need to pay SQL licensing costs? Couldn't you use their SQL storage platform (or Amazon's, or anybody else's)?

Re: Why I love the Microsoft BizSpark Programme

#15
post #6

You got a bill because you went over the free tier. I've had the same thing and talked to Amazon and they wiped the bill and credited me with $200 worth of credit for the inconvenience and misunderstanding. Amazon wins, hands down. You get great Linux support and aren't locked into Microsoft's shady tactics of giving away free stuff to only screw you later. That's what Bizspark effectively does, gives you free Visual…

Why is Windows Azure a terrible service?

I signed up for the Azure trial program a while back, and I found the interface quite nice. About a week later I received a call from the Azure sales team asking if I would like to provision another MS SQL server -- I guess they looked into my billings. Anyways, I told the sales rep no thank you, and how I normally use linux machines for my startup. I asked if there were any promos for someone in my position, and the sales rep quoted me prices on developer network subscriptions, or something like that.

Conclusion: I don't think it's terrible, but their tactics aren't always clear. AND, I'm consistently getting a bill for $2/m and I have no idea why.

Re: Why I love the Microsoft BizSpark Programme

#17

You got a bill because you went over the free tier. I've had the same thing and talked to Amazon and they wiped the bill and credited me with $200 worth of credit for the inconvenience and misunderstanding. Amazon wins, hands down. You get great Linux support and aren't locked into Microsoft's shady tactics of giving away free stuff to only screw you later. That's what Bizspark effectively does, gives you free Visual…

Another thing. BizSpark gives me a small instance- with two cores and 3.5 GB memory. And I can start another instance with half of that capability under the $150 per month I get. That is given to every small startup which enrolls in BizSpark. For 3 years! Can Amazon beat that?

Yes, we all read the article. The question is not how does Microsoft's free giveaway compare to that of AWS' -- it's, how much will that cost you in three years, once you've committed yourself to using those resources. What are you going to do after that, sign up again with a different email address?

Re: Why I love the Microsoft BizSpark Programme

#18
How about Google App Engine for startups? They give a free tier, which I presume is free for life as long as the web application stays within quota.

Ofcourse there is lock-in, there is no free lunch anywhere! But it should be ok for startups with no capital, who just want to figure out their business model. Once the idea is validated, they can always learn from the experience, and rewrite the application if platform absolutely needs to be changed.

Disclaimer: I don't get paid by Google for writing this, though I am trying to do something with google app engine (python) and that may lead to some bias on my side :-)

Re: Why I love the Microsoft BizSpark Programme

#19

You got a bill because you went over the free tier. I've had the same thing and talked to Amazon and they wiped the bill and credited me with $200 worth of credit for the inconvenience and misunderstanding. Amazon wins, hands down. You get great Linux support and aren't locked into Microsoft's shady tactics of giving away free stuff to only screw you later. That's what Bizspark effectively does, gives you free Visual…

Amazon wins, hands down. You get great Linux support and aren't locked into Microsoft's shady tactics of giving away free stuff to only screw you later.

BizSpark giving away three years of $150/mo Azure credit is shady, but Amazon giving away one year of the free tier is not shady?

That's what Bizspark effectively does, gives you free Visual Studio, other MS software, so when you are profitable, you pay them through the nose, because you are locked into proprietary anti-open-source bait.

You don't have to use the software licenses to make use of the Azure credits in BizSpark, and Azure will run any Linux distro containing a kernel with Hyper-V support.

Instead you went with a shitty competitor and we're supposed to applaud that?

What's so shitty about Azure again?

Sorry, Azure is still garbage

Why?

and AWS is one of the most advanced and performant cloud platforms available.

Unfortunately, staying in AWS's free tier means never seeing any of that performance.

Re: Why I love the Microsoft BizSpark Programme

#20
A bunch of you guys complaining about how BizSpark sucks...have any of you actually USED BizSpark and their free Azure offering?

I've used it for a Windows server just to get stuff up and running that may not run on Linux.

I've downloaded and used some of the free MS software.

Give Microsoft some credit.

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