If you are a Microsoft shop either way then it doesn't matter too much, but if you're making technological choices now, consider how well that will scale without free licenses (e.g. ASP.net/MVC, how much is Windows Serve licensing going to cost you? Visual Studio? Active Directory? MS SQL?).
This isn't an anti-Microsoft post, just a post to remind everyone to think about the future of your small business with technological choices. Bizspark is designed for you to get yourself into the Microsoft's way of doing things (which is good and bad, depending on your needs, etc).
I actually like Microsoft's stack, but realise it is expensive, too expensive for many small businesses.
Check out the license, for non-"enterprise" (where enterprise is >250 PCs, or >$1M in revenue) users, up to 5 users in your company can use it.
Some higher tiers of the partnership program receive free software. But initially you'll be at "Network member" which doesn't provide any free stuff.
Silver and Gold tiers receive:
- Free support (20 and 50 hrs respectively, 15 and 20 incidents)
- Internal use licenses: 25 and 50 on-site respectively.
- MSDN: 5 or 10 seats.
However to get to Silver or Gold you need:
- Customer references: 3 or 5 (silver or gold).
- Business-focused competency assessment: 1 or 2.
- Revenue commitment (i.e. buy a certain number of Microsoft licenses)
- Microsoft certified staff: 1 or 2 minimum (that must be active, so renewed every few years).
The Silver and Gold partnership tiers are pointless for large business/corporations, and unreachable for startups/small businesses. They're really for mid level businesses that are Microsoft focused.
Also, after the acquisition, it was probably one of the reasons why a full integration with the parent company other products wasn't considered (different tech stacks), so we integrated via APIs, which was the right decision (it would have taken too long otherwise, even on the same software stack)
On the other hand, I never want to have anything to do with RDP ever again.