When you start up a new business then your business plan needs to account for how every cent is spent. When you start up a business that is IT driven then those investment costs can be significant. Not only that, but you require expertise to engineer a stable, secure and scalable platform to not only deliver your service but deliver it in a way that will enhance your brand, not damage it.
C Infinity is an Irish hosting partner in the Microsoft BizSpark program. The benefits of the program are quite valuable:
- Free MSDN account with access to software for test and development purposes (only)
- Free PSS support
- Membership of the program with access to special programs from local and international BizSpark partners
- Access to free production software when your product is hosted with a BizSpark hosting partner through a special SPLA program
Note: You don’t need to be developing on the Microsoft platform to join BizSpark.
That last one is where C Infinity comes in. Our hosting service differentiates itself by providing an enterprise level infrastructure on a “consume what you need, pay for what you use” way. It’s built on best-of-class servers, storage and networking equipment with manufacturer 4 hour support contracts. We’ve implemented management systems that give us and our customers a complete view of the health and performance of the infrastructure. But more than all that, our customers gain an IT partner, not a supplier. We become the sorely needed IT infrastructure expertise to advise and guide your business. Instead of getting distracted by server and networking issues, our customers can focus on developing their product and marketing their business to potential customers and investors.
By signing up for hosting services with a BizSpark hosting partner such as C Infinity you get access to free production Microsoft software such as Windows Server 2008 and SQL 2008 for the entirety of the 3 years in the BizSpark program. That includes the ability to use any edition you want, free of charge. So you can deploy Windows Server Web edition, Standard, Enterprise or even Datacenter on your production servers with no money owed to either your BizSpark hosting partner or Microsoft for the licenses consumed. Here’s a useful piece of advice. After your three years you will need to pay for the licenses through the SPLA program on a monthly basis. Plan for that. My advice to our BizSpark customers has been to check the features and use only what you need. If you need a low end web server then don’t go deploying SQL Enterprise Edition just for the sake of it. That will cost quite a bit more than SQL Web Edition.
Microsoft is giving quite a bit away there. Why? Microsoft wants a larger base of customers using their product. That’s fair enough; they’re a business.You’ve just started a business and have the exact same goal.
But couldn’t you get free software by going open source? We’re not going to bash open source here. It has a place in the market and the market has spoken. Linux and MySQL have a significant share of the online market space. I want to compare apples with apples:
- If you use something free like Ubuntu or CentOS what level of support do you get? You’ve got zero-SLA support through often unhelpful web forums. With BizSpark you get free support from Microsoft’s products via Microsoft PSS. With C Infinity you gain access to our infrastructure expertise. It’s our goal and our job to provide you with timely and expert help.
- With MySQL what support do you get? It’s the same again; web forums. When it comes to databases and data we shouldn’t take any chances. Do you want to have your business depend on the expertise of a faceless person who has no obligation to you? Or would you rather build your customer’s perception of your brand quality on a completely supported product and service?
That’s the free open source software. With a couple of mouse clicks you will find Open Source software with support. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) and RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) both have yearly fee based support programs. MySQL also has and Enterprise version with various support plans and additional features.
SLES, RHEL and MySQL are quality products and we’re not going to bash them; C Infinity hosts and manages these platforms. We’re strong believers in using the right product for the right situation, e.g. although the majority of our own systems and Windows based we do run SLES and MySQL for some roles.
Let’s look at the costs of supported SLES, RHEL and MySQL Enterprise and compare these with similar costs to Microsoft products for a start-up company.
| Product | Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| SLES with 3 year phone and web support, 24*7 | €3110 | |
| RHEL with 3 year phone and web support, 24*7 | €2708 | 1 year rate converted from $USD and multiplied by 3 |
| MySQL Enterprise with 1 year phone and web support24*7 | €7197 | Includes tools like the Query Analyser not available otherwise. 1 year rate multiplied by 3 |
The costs shown above are the cost prices from the official websites. We’ve taken the programs with 24*7 support contracts and used the 3 year programs to compare with the equivalent BizSpark offering.
The cheapest LAMP server you can build with 24*7 support is RHEL server running MySQL. That will cost €9905 up front for a 3 year contract. You can reduce that cost by half if you are happy with 12*5 business hours/day only support. Let’s compare that with a BizSpark package. A Windows Server 2008 Standard edition server license with SQL 2008 Standard will cost you a total of €0 over three years. There will be a €100 fee for exiting the program at the end of the three years. The mathematics seems to imply that if you want a software package with support from the vendor then Microsoft BizSpark is the way to go. There’s zero spend up front when your business needs to be careful with every cent.
In summary, you want to spend wisely when starting up your business and build on a supported and stable platform. Microsoft BizSpark offers you free production software if you host your product with a BizSpark hosting partner. This includes free support from Microsoft via PSS. Choose the right hosting partner and you also get their support and expertise. When compared with the equivalent supported LAMP platform you can see that the Microsoft offering is logically worth looking at because it’s free. That saves your business a lot of upfront costs when spending needs to be controlled and targeted. You could go with free open source software but there’s little or no support for it when things inevitably go wrong.
And if you want a hosting service that offers you a highly managed, enterprise level infrastructure with expertise via a partnership then contact C Infinity for more details.
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