Is Microsoft's Bizsparks right for start up businesses
Microsoft have launched a new incentive to help start up businesses. According to the news item on BBC, Microsoft want to work with organisations and governments around the world to offer businesses with an income under $1 million to use their software without charge.
However, as your business grows and makes profit, once your business has been operating for three years, taken over of surpassed the revenue cut off, you will owe Microsoft a fee and then be charged the normal fee's.
Bizspark, is only available to start up businesses who are selected by venture capital group or one of Microsoft's champions. Ok, it will give you access to Microsoft's development software and cloud but we feel that many start ups can benefit from the wide range of FREE resources already available.
Openoffice3 is a free download and provides you with everything you need to operate your day to day business. It is more powerful and has more tools than any of the Microsoft office programs plus it is fully compatible. For instance, you can create a "write" document in openoffice3 - save it as a pdf at a click of a button, plus you can choose which other format to save it as so if you are e-mailing to someone using word, they too can open it without any issues.
Another major advantage is it can open documents from any Microsoft format both present and past. That's something not even Microsoft software can do. An example is you have office 2007 and you save a excel file. You send it to someone who has office2000. They will not be able to open it. In openoffice, that is not an issue.
To get the full enjoyment download openoffice3 at: Openoffice organisation website
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1 comment:
From my perrsonal experience I am finding mis-statements in this post. OpenOffice is in no way as powerful as MS Office for business.
BizSpark gives you access to top talent and venture funding, it is an amazing opurtunity to seek and follow through with. I am a new BizSparks member, I would only have to fork over $100 at the end of three years. If I sell my product or become profitable I'd still only have to give $100USD. There are instances in the contract where I wouldn't have to pay that. If you go over a certain limit you have cloud computing fees. You get special computing fees while you are a member.
Your account comes with a MSDN membership, it is one of the most coveted IT memberships in the business. The membership entitles you to all levels of development software(compilers, servers, OS) and business software, legal, licensed downloads from MSDN, pre releases on software and amazing support for highly technical problems you may encounter and need an expert to help you do it right. You also get licenses to distribute legal copies of your software if you're embedding copyrighted code.
It is an amazing opportuniy for any one wanting to break into the bigger leagues and believe they have what it takes to compete at that level. Even if your goals aren't so lofty it is still and amazing opportunity because the world's top IT talent roam there.
I've used OO2.4 and prior releases because of budget constraints having me unable to afford MS products. MS products are superior, all of the worlds top businesses wouldn't stick with an inferior product if the superior was cheaper.
A lot of the "new" GUI and program models being implemented in the Linux, Apache world came out of MS Labs. MS Labs was playing with those things back in the 1990's.
MS does keep the small guy out of the loop with pricing being to high and out of reach to get everything needed done but, MS has been in the past few years working to reach out to the small guy who has little or no money but talent a plenty. Its a part of a business strategy I believe to better position MS everywhere in the future, Linux was a call to not be comfortable.
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