Microsoft Entices Startups With Free Azure Cloud Credits
As competition to win the hearts, minds and potentially extremely scalable accounts of emerging software developers heats up, Microsoft Tuesday said it is upgrading its BizSpark entrepreneurship program to offer free use of the Azure cloud to select startups.
At the start of July, young companies affiliated with certain business incubators and accelerators can apply to get $120,000 worth of Azure cloud usage per year at no cost, wrote Steve Guggenheimer, Microsoft's chief Azure evangelist, on the company's blog.
"We aim to help early stage companies accelerate innovation and get their stuff in the hands of customers as quickly as possible," Guggenheimer said.
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While BizSpark has been around since 2009, next month's upgrade to the premier version of the program, BizSpark Plus, will be the first time that a broad swath of developers can apply for credits for no-cost cloud services from Microsoft, Redmond, Wash.
Startups interested in securing those credits can reach out to one of the more than 150 accelerators in 47 countries that are participating in the program. Guggenheimer named a few in the blog: Techstars, ERA, MassChallenge, Seedcamp and 1871.
"These organizations are in the trenches, providing the marketing and business support that early stage companies need to be successful," Guggenheimer said of the tech incubators.
It's a smart move for Microsoft, said Chris Hertz, CEO of New Signature, a Washington, D.C.-based Microsoft partner. Through BizSpark Plus, Microsoft can connect directly with a large number of startups that have already gone through a qualification process to join one of the 150 affiliated accelerators.
All cloud providers, including Microsoft, want to be the platform that innovative startups adopt since those companies have to the potential to massively scale their use of cloud services. Startups are also ideal targets for cloud providers like Microsoft because they don't have existing infrastructure and will probably never see an economic justification for investing in owning infrastructure, Hertz told CRN via email.
"The challenge is that you need to win over mind share with these startups at the earliest stages of their development because they grow so quickly that it is unlikely that they will switch platforms as they experience hockey stick growth," he said.
The program is also great news for many startups -- they can gain access to an enterprise platform that natively runs the code and the tools they are are familiar with and want to use, Hertz said.
"Microsoft may be providing as big of an investment in some of these startups as the actual angel investors who are backing them," Hertz told CRN. "That is a pretty amazing story and this investment from Microsoft has the opportunity to have an enormous impact on accelerating the success of these startups and helping grow the global economy."
Google implemented a similar cloud credit program in September last year, offering $100,000 in free usage to startups affiliated with specific incubators, accelerators or investors.
Amazon Web Services has an even older program called AWS Activate that also offers credits and support.
Guggenheimer, in the blog post, also made a point in emphasizing that Azure is "open-source-friendly" -- a departure from Microsoft's attitude of times past, but an essential element these days in winning over modern developers.
PUBLISHED JUNE 17, 2015