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Why I love the Microsoft BizSpark Programme

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Re: Why I love the Microsoft BizSpark Programme

#21

Post by tphan »

mani04 wrote: post #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…

I don't think it's the same. BizSpark is the equivalent of Google given you free access to their entire Cloud Platform, e.g. Compute Engine, App Engine, Cloud SQL, free upgrades of OS X and free copies of of IntelliJ IDEA... for three years.

Re: Why I love the Microsoft BizSpark Programme

#22

Post by patio11 »

sandGorgon wrote: post #9
goldenkey wrote: post #3

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…

Actually, I would say the best cloud support comes from Rackspace. You actually get a phone call welcoming you and walking through the product, they have Cloud Advisors who will talk you through optimizing performance and if you pay 100$/month extra, someone who will configure and maintain nginx/mysql/haproxy/rails/django/etc.

As long as we're on the subject: anyone here use their managed tier of hosting (VPS or dedicated)? I'm on their standard Cloud Servers (VPS) after having been force-migrated when they bought Slicehost. My experience with their support at that level has been... uneven. If managed means I get their best guys touching my nginx config files, I'd buy that today. If it gets me someone drawn from the pool at random, I'd run screaming.

Re: Why I love the Microsoft BizSpark Programme

#24

Post by quink »

rwg wrote: post #19
goldenkey wrote: post #3

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…

Embrace, extend, extinguish. Justified or not, Microsoft's history makes it hard for me to trust them.

AWS have wiped over $2000 in excess charges incurred by one of our instances' data transfer - we set up an alert after that - they've been awesome to us and we trust them and are now spending more and more every month.

Re: Why I love the Microsoft BizSpark Programme

#25

Post by tarblog »

jtchang wrote: post #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.

You don't give credit. You earn it.

Re: Why I love the Microsoft BizSpark Programme

#26

Post by mani04 »

tphan wrote: post #21
mani04 wrote: post #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…

I don't think it's the same. BizSpark is the equivalent of Google given you free access to their entire Cloud Platform, e.g. Compute Engine, App Engine, Cloud SQL, free upgrades of OS X and free copies of of IntelliJ IDEA... for three years.

Agreed. It is not a fair comparison, BizSpark probably provides a lot more.

But for a startup with only developers and zero capital, App Engine still provides a great platform to get started. And also, there is no need to apply and get accepted, everyone gets the free quota.

Let me change my initial comment - for those who didn't get into BizSpark and who have run out of their free AWS quota can consider Google App Engine for their experiments :-)

Re: Why I love the Microsoft BizSpark Programme

#27

Post by rescendent »

jessedhillon wrote: post #17
sdaityari wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They price match and offer between 33%-97% discount on dev and test as well as charging per minute rather than per hour: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/campaigns/azure-vs-aws/

Re: Why I love the Microsoft BizSpark Programme

#28

Post by sandGorgon »

patio11 wrote: post #22
sandGorgon wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I would say the best cloud support comes from Rackspace. You actually get a phone call welcoming you and walking through the product, they have Cloud Advisors who will talk you through optimizing performance and if you pay 100$/month extra, someone who will configure and maintain nginx/mysql/haproxy/rails/django/etc.

As long as we're on the subject: anyone here use their managed tier of hosting (VPS or dedicated)? I'm on their standard Cloud Servers (VPS) after having been force-migrated when they bought Slicehost. My experience with their support at that level has been... uneven. If managed means I get their best guys touching my nginx config files, I'd buy that today. If it gets me someone drawn from the pool at random, I'd run…

I'm very curious about this as well - although I would accept a standard "recipe" that is implemented by and designed by .

Did you ever try reaching out ? I'm way too small for them to be answering org questions !

Re: Why I love the Microsoft BizSpark Programme

#29

Post by sandGorgon »

rdl wrote: post #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…

and you get to keep them after the MSDN expires

Are you sure about this ? Any more details (assigned to company/individual, etc. ) ?

Re: Why I love the Microsoft BizSpark Programme

#30

Post by rdl »

sandGorgon wrote: post #29
rdl wrote: post #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…

and you get to keep them after the MSDN expires Are you sure about this ? Any more details (assigned to company/individual, etc. ) ?

It's explicitly in the terms -- you get to keep the licenses for the software you've downloaded. Presumably they stay with the company which had the bizspark account.
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