Microsoft To Offer Azure Credits To Compete With IBM, AWS

Amanda Parker writes Google, AWS and IBM already offer incentives for start-ups to join them. Microsoft is trying to lure start-ups and SME's to its Azure profile by offering them $500,000 in Azure credits. The deal, announced by Y Combinator, is only available to Y Combinator-backed companies and will be offered to the 2015 Winter and future batches. In addition to this, Microsoft is also giving Y Combinator start-ups a three years Office 365 subscription, access to Microsoft developer staff and one year of free CloudFlare and DataStax enterprise services. The move signifies Microsoft's desire to compete with Amazon Web Services and Google, both of whom already offer credits and freebies.

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[Richard_at_work]

Microsoft has long had several programs that gave away Azure credits:

Website Spark - you got about £35 a month in credits.
BizSpark - you got about £105 a month in credits.
BizSpark Plus - you got anything from £200,000 in credits in the first two years, to all of your Azure paid for for that period, depending on how hard you pressed your MS rep.

Been there, done all of the above three options. BizSpark Plus has been around for more than 5 years.

Re:so to highlight how this has gone so far.

[DaHat]

so most corporations took them only to realize they werent very applicable.

Not applicable in what way? I've got an MSDN subscription and the $150 of free credits I get each month are quite straight forward and applicable... and I use them.

Microsoft recently started revoking, quietly, these credits.

Citation?

now, like a drunken pimp, microsoft is peddling azure to...startups.

Only now? I had an old co-worker who used their BizSpark program to get a good deal of free Azure credits to launch a startup with some friends a few years back.

Alas I've got better things than to do to continue to respond to your screed which does not seem based in much reality.