Some great news for Bloomington, Ind software and technology start-ups – the Bloomington Technology Partnership recently joined the BizSpark program, which provides certain software technology companies with three years of free Microsoft software, including Microsoft Windows Server, Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server, Visual Studio, SQL Server and more! To be eligible for the BizSpark program, start-up companies must be:
- privately held
- have a software-based product or service at the core of their current or future business
- be in business for less than three years
- earn less than $1 million in annual revenue.
The entire press release follows:
Bloomington, Ind. — The Bloomington Technology Partnership announced today that they have joined BizSpark, an international program that provides software technology startup companies with three years of free Microsoft software.
“We are very excited to help bring cost savings to our local start up business community,” said Jeremy Sowders, Vice President of Business Development for the Bloomington Economic Development Corporation (BEDC) which manages the Bloomington Technology Partnership. “The BizSpark program by Microsoft is an innovative way to help companies during the critical early stages of development and for that reason we wanted to help make this resource available in Bloomington.”
The Bloomington Technology Partnership worked closely with the Indiana University Research & Technology Corporation (IURTC) to bring the BizSpark program to the Bloomington area. “The Microsoft BizSpark program fits right into our mission of helping fledgling start up ventures successfully transition into profitable entities.” added Tony Armstrong, President & CEO of the IURTC. “By sponsoring this program the Bloomington Technology Partnership strengthens the position of both the Bloomington area and Indiana University-Bloomington in today’s ultra competitive start up business environment.”
Microsoft programs available through BizSpark include Microsoft Windows Server, Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server, Visual Studio, SQL Server and more. To be eligible for the BizSpark program, startup companies must be privately held, have a software-based product or service at the core of their current or future business, be in business for less than three years, and earn less than $1 million in annual revenue. A company may take part in the program for up to three years unless it goes public or is acquired by another company. There are no initial fees to join the program, but $100 is due from the company when it exits the program.
Companies can solicit the Bloomington Technology Partnership to be their BizSpark sponsor by visiting the program’s web page at http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/ and entering the section labeled “Startups.” After selecting the proper region, click on the Bloomington Technology Partnership as the sponsor organization.
About Bloomington Technology Partnership
The Bloomington Technology Partnership fosters the growth of Bloomington’s emerging high-tech economy. A public-private partnership established in 2008, it draws on the “best and brightest” to meet the needs of high-tech companies and their employees.
The Bloomington Technology Partnership is a program of the BEDC, a not-for-profit corporation funded through memberships from private industry, City of Bloomington, Monroe County, Indiana University and Ivy Tech Community College-Bloomington. The Bloomington Technology Partnership is funded in part by the City of Bloomington. For more information go to www.bloomingtontech.com
Source: Bloomington Economic Development Corp.
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looks like a good deal until you figure out that the reason for doing this is to battle the lure of opensource. What startups need to know is that if they are successful and are around in 5 years, they will have a company based on MS products that will cost a fortune to port and will now be subject to license fees out the wazoo. Use opensource – it works better and have ZERO licensing costs.
I agree that using MS products is a horrible, horrible idea for startups, even if they are ‘free’. Open source has a strong community around it, and actually some really awesome software (numerous super-scalable key-value datastores) has been developed by startups grown into huge companies who have given back.
The web was essentially built on open source software (MicroSoft was a me too here).
The general freedom and meritocracy of the open source community fits well with the startup mentality.
Also, all the really clever kids use Linux, Python, Ruby, PHP, etc anyway