7 ms·

$500k of Azure credit for YC startups

393 points by sadfaceunread 12y ago

kevinschumacher 12y ago
WOW that is a lot of credit. How does Azure stack up "in the real world" compared to Amazon, Rackspace, Google?
- radicalbyte 12y ago
  They seem to have had more teething problems recently then Google or Amazon, but the tooling is excellent and getting better by the month.
- junto 12y ago
  Uptime for 2014 compared here: http://www.networkworld.com/article/2866950/cloud-computing/which-cloud-providers-had-the-best-uptime-last-year.html http://www.networkworld.com/article/2866950/cloud-computing/... Azure had 39.77 hours of downtime, whilst Rack space had 7.52 and the winner (of the selected cloud providers was AWS with 2.41 hours. I'm not sure how those figures were calculated though. These cloud providers are multifaceted. I'm not sure which parts if each's services were analysed. Also, it is worth considering that one serious problem can distort these averages. AWS has a much more stable long term history. In my opinion the competition is a good thing and Microsoft seem happy to support whatever framework or OS you want. Their node.js support is supposed to be pretty good. The marketplace also enables you to get things like MongoDb clusters, etc which is competition for SQL Server. They seem to be interested in supporting customer interests rather than the old fashioned MS tech or die philosophy from back in the day.
  - ewzimm 12y ago
    Those figures are a combination of downtime across all regions globally. So it doesn't mean that any individual servers were down. The largest downtime was in Europe, with had 5.97 hours last year. Factors for downtime were an update bug in November and weather. The bug is very unlikely to happen again. Outages due to weather really don't tell you much at all other than that they were unlucky. Overall, I would say the downtime numbers are not very useful. http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240238379/Microsoft-Azure-had-more-downtime-than-main-cloud-rivals http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240238379/Microsoft-Azur...
minimaxir 12y ago
This seems like a Catch-22. If a startup is successful enough to get into YC, wouldn't they have a stable tech infrastructure already? This would only benefit YC startups who already use Azure. (Unless the switching cost from AWS/Rackspace/Google is low enough nowadays.)
- nullspace 12y ago
  If what you have is a couple of web servers and a couple of database servers, I would take the one weekend off to learn Azure and write up scripts to migrate data and servers and other configuration. Would definitely be harder if you have a more complex infrastructure - but in most cases entirely worth it.
- shk 12y ago
  Many startups in YC actually launch during the 3 months they are here. Being successful before entering YC is only true for a small percentage of the companies.
- dkarapetyan 12y ago
  Pretty much all cloud providers are the same. Once you have your service topology figured out deploying to AWS, Azure, or RackSpace is the easy part.
- amitparikh 12y ago
  There is no prerequisite to have a "stable tech infrastructure" -- shoot, there's no prerequisite to even have an actual product! -- for admission to YC. pg has made it pretty clear that YC selects founders, not necessarily ideas. And for those that have a proof-of-concept running on some other provider(s) (AWS/Rackspace/Google), it would be a huge boon to be able to migrate and scale using Azure and the $500k credit.
nullspace 12y ago
This is incredible! 500k is a big amount. Realistically speaking most startups would get free hosting for ~3 years out of this. For the future YC batches - depending on what your company is going to be doing, it would make very little financial sense to NOT host on Azure.
- onion2k 12y ago
  3 years of technical investment is pretty much enough to stop you leaving unless something goes very wrong. This $500k is a small price to pay for a client who goes on to be the next AirBNB or Dropbox. Even just the prestige of having a company like that to draw on for testimonials would justify the spend. However... For a startup to choose to build on Azure they'll need staff with MSFT stack experience. 5 or 6 of those will burn through $500k in no time compared to the equivalent on a more open platform. Whether or not to use Azure is certainly NOT obvious.
  - dangrossman 12y ago
    > For a startup to choose to build on Azure they'll need staff with MSFT stack experience Why's that? Azure's just another cloud hosting provider. You don't have to run any kind of Microsoft software on the servers.
    - morganvachon 12y ago
      Exactly, and Microsoft is happy to host your own custom Linux-based environment if you want complete control over your stack: http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/virtual-machines-linux-create-upload-vhd/ http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/virt... edit: looks like phonon below beat me to it by a few minutes.
  - phonon 12y ago
    >they'll need staff with MSFT stack experience You can spin up bog standard Linux instances if you want. http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/virtual-machines-linux-endorsed-distributions/ http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/virt... You don't have to use a MSFT stack.
sz4kerto 12y ago
This reminds me of the old joke: Nietzsche: God is dead. God (couple of years later): Nietzsche is dead. pg: Microsoft is dead. http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html Microsoft (couple of years later): Here's some gift* for your startups. :) (*: please don't start explaining that it is not a gift, etc. -- I know. :) )
- desdiv 12y ago
  The last two points aren't technically contradictory if one imagine pg as a grave robber :D
- cbhl 12y ago
  So if they wanted to be a contender again, this is how they could do it: - Buy all the good "Web 2.0" startups. They could get substantially all of them for less than they'd have to pay for Facebook. - Put them all in a building in Silicon Valley, surrounded by lead shielding to protect them from any contact with Redmond. I feel safe suggesting this, because they'd never do it. I can't help but think that Microsoft has had quite a few acquisitions as of late, though. Minecraft (gaming), Acompli (mobile email), Sunrise (mobile calendar), and probably others.
  - blumkvist 12y ago
    Microsoft has been acquiring aprox. 1 company every two months for the last 28 years...
- drawkbox 12y ago
  The old Microsoft (Ballmer era) is dead though. Microsoft in the last 1-2 years is like a new scrappy competitor who lost market share on hubris. They are now willing to work how developers like to work not forcing them into the corral. Azure is the new OS at Microsoft, lock in higher up the stack but actually not as lock-in as before. Microsoft went back to developer focus over biz/marketing focus and it is working like it always has.
  - 12y ago
h43k3r 12y ago
I read somewhere that Satya Nadella is an active reader of Hacker News.
- jameshk 12y ago
  There's a quote from him about HN on YC's site.
- impish19 12y ago
  Microsoft employee here. Can confirm. He has mentioned HN a couple of times in talks.
imperialdrive 12y ago
That is some serious credit... I should share that having access to Azure MFA (formerly PhoneFactor) alone has been worth the R&D time. Their support, although a little tough to nail down 1-on-1 time with, is very friendly. I chose that word carefully, it's not super professional, but I actually had a good time going through a migration with them, for what's it's worth.
maxbrown 12y ago
Any idea on the LCV for Azure of the average YC startup? I know the average YC startup is going to be a cut above, but are a large percentage of them going to break the $500k in an early stage?
- staunch 12y ago
  If the next Dropbox builds on Azure, instead of AWS, it would all be worth it. From Microsoft's perspective it's a pretty cheap bet that will probably not pay off. The oldest tactic in the Proprietary Platform Handbook is giving away free stuff to hook people early on. In this case Azure can run Linux VMs, so I wouldn't worry much about using them for that. Linux lacks lock in.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- terravion 12y ago
  If we got this much credit, yes, several including mine easily would.
mbesto 12y ago
Microsoft is also giving YC startups three years of Office 365, access to Microsoft developer staff, and one year of free CloudFlare and DataStax enterprise services. Free Office365 and CloudFlare are probably the best part of this announcement, since they are "easily migrate-able" by most startups. Migrating from DO/AWS/Linode isn't fun and productive. Even though they are negligible (in terms of money and value) they are the easiest "sticky" points for early stage startups. That being said - for DevOps people with experience across AWS/DO/Linode and Azure, this would be a good time to start the cold calls and sell your services to YC companies. Paying someone $5-10k on high ($2k/month) AWS bills to free services is a no-brainer. EDIT: On that note, if any DevOps people want me to do the hustling (aka sales, lead generation) for them, let me know. EDIT2: Anyone know if the $500k goes for 3-years? If it's only 1-year, then this may not beat the 1-2 years and ~$10k you get from Amazon via their platform: http://aws.amazon.com/activate/portfolio-detail/ http://aws.amazon.com/activate/portfolio-detail/
- aioprisan 12y ago
  "Migrating from DO/AWS/Linode isn't fun and productive." Huh? You can run more or less the same type of services on Azure that you can on AWS. I wouldn't even consider DO due to lack of load balancers and file backup services.
  - vosper 12y ago
    Sure, but in practice if you have any complexity in your stack then it's going to be a PITA to from Azure to AWS (or vice-versa). If you're just running instances then maybe it's not too much work - though you're still going to have to think about backup / restore, access control, autoscaling (maybe), cost tracking / allocation, etc... I'm sure Microsoft are banking on a profitable percentage of YC companies becoming so wedded to that Azure systems that the opportunity cost of switching to AWS is too high. Edit: Typo
    - mikermcneil 12y ago
      Looks like Azure has a PaaS now though-- I mean it's no heroku, but as far as I can tell it's working.
sadfaceunread 12y ago
In addition to the Azure credit I'm interested in the CloudFlare and DataStax enterprise services value. Cloudflare at least reports an average for enterprise services at $5k/mo.
mark_l_watson 12y ago
Great offer. I was accepted into Microsoft's BizSpark program last year so I get $150/month free Azure credit. Azure is very nice to use. So far, I have just been using Ubuntu Linux VPS instances (similar to AWS EC2) and everything works similarly to other providers I use like AWS, IBM BlueMix, Digital Ocean, and Google's cloud services. Really, these are all very good services, so use the one you can get for free or at a low cost. I used to be pretty much down on Microsoft, but now they are doing a lot of stuff right in my opinion: providing solid Linux support on Azure and providing an unbelievably good deal on the family edition of Office365. It seems like they are buying themselves into the cloud market, but with all of their cash on hand, that seems like a good strategy! Anyway, if you have a business idea you want to try then look into BizSpark.
- city41 12y ago
  You can actually get $600/month in Azure credit. Your BizSpark account allows up to 4 users, and each gets $150/month. EDIT: correction, it looks like it's actually 5 users: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/niallsblog/archive/2014/08/22/activating-your-5-free-azure-accounts-on-bizspark.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/niallsblog/archive/2014/08/22/activa...
jorgecastillo 12y ago
Wow amazing, I am not the biggest Microsoft fan & I would never have what it takes to be part of a YC startup, yet just reading this got me all excited. This is truly great for those startups that qualify!
pdknsk 12y ago
Makes the 1-year $100K credit by Google look not so good now. https://cloud.google.com/developers/startups/ https://cloud.google.com/developers/startups/
- alwaysdoit 12y ago
  It's still pretty good if you're not in YC, of course.
philip1209 12y ago
This is a smart move for Microsoft. Most companies will not utilize the credit, a few will use some but not all of the credit, and there will probably be one or two breakout companies from the batch with huge computing costs. If they snag one of these breakout unicorns, $500K in free computing is a reasonable expense.
philip1209 12y ago
This is a smart move for Microsoft. Most companies will not utilize the credit, a few will use some but not all of the credit, and there will probably be one or two breakout companies from the batch with huge computing costs. If they snag one of these breakout unicorns, $500K in free computing is a reasonable expense.
efiftythree 12y ago
It will be interesting to see if Microsoft uses this to push their PaaS offerings. All too often people jump into cloud services with IaaS whereas the Azure Websites offering will provide a lower cost for run while allowing easier scale out, management, and tie-ins with other Azure services like Azure Storage (various types), HDInsight (Hadoop), and Azure Machine Learning.
- aceperry 12y ago
  "the Azure Websites offering will provide a lower cost for run while allowing easier scale out, management, and tie-ins with other Azure services" How do you figure that? Pricing on cloud services can be tough to compare so I really question anyone who presents blanket statements like that.
  - efiftythree 12y ago
    I probably shouldn't have used such a initiative word like "will". That said scaling out PaaS compared to scaling out IaaS, specifically on Azure, is almost guaranteed to be less expensive from an infrastructure standpoint. Less actual VM's to manage also translates into less overhead from maintenance activities. At the very least it will be interesting to see if more people adopt the Azure Websites PaaS offering. I know that right now most people dip their toes into Azure with IaaS because its historically more comfortable for them.
aceperry 12y ago
Microsoft has been really trying to entice devs for the last few years. My experience with their cloud service has been terrible, although I haven't used it in a couple of years. It was seriously bad then, and some of their recent missteps haven't done much to change my mind. But MS is definitely trying, so I wonder if Google or AWS will respond to this latest move.
- shiftpgdn 12y ago
  Glad I'm not alone. Trying to use my account during my Azure trial period resulted in getting 500 errors. I gave up and had a DO droplet going in like 30 seconds instead.
- mark_l_watson 12y ago
  You might want to try again. I have been using Azure for about 6 months with no problems at all.
- city41 12y ago
  Azure has been doing better. I've been using them for about 15 months now and the quality, uptime, speed, etc have all steadily improved. I haven't had an issue that was Azure's fault in quite some time now.
- jread 12y ago
  It's much better now. Check out the new Ivy Bridge/Haswell, SSD backed D and G series VMs. They are a vast improvement over the old AMD/magnetic backed A series.
- photorized 12y ago
  You should give them another try. Azure has become much more stable. There was a major global outage a month or so ago, but then again that's something that had happened with other cloud providers. Overall, I find them easier to use than AWS, for example.
  - jread 12y ago
    It was a multi-region, multi-hour outage on Nov 18. To my knowledge AWS has not experienced a multi-region outage. That said, they are learning from these events and improving stability.
felixrieseberg 12y ago
We have a bunch of Microsofties at YC today, but reach out to Steve or me directly at (founders@microsoft.com) if you're a Winter 2015 batch company and for some reason not at YC today. It's also worth pointing out that our $60k offer for YC companies is still around, if you're in one of the older batches.
- 650REDHAIR 12y ago
  Not a YC company, but we'd love to buy you and Scott coffee or lunch if you're free tomorrow. We (Fanout) received a boat-load of Azure credits that haven't been used, but with all of the cool new Microsoft OSS developments recently we think it'd be great to start working on Azure. My twitter/phone# is the same as my HN handle.
  - felixrieseberg 12y ago
    Do me a favor and shoot me a mail at feriese@microsoft.com - I'm sure we can set something up!
garazy 12y ago
Might help to compete against Amazon as they and Akamai have the lions share of YCombinator sites - http://trends.builtwith.com/tech-reports/Y-Combinator/hosting http://trends.builtwith.com/tech-reports/Y-Combinator/hostin...
markolschesky 12y ago
How long do companies have to utilize the $500K? In the BizSpark Plus days, your company would receive $60K of hosting but could only use it to pay 100% of your bill in the first year of BS+. In the second year, you could use it to pay 50% and then in the third year you were paying full price for Azure. It was a pretty good deal, but if you are already spending $30-60K (or $250-$500 K) on infra in your first year or two, you're in a select breed of companies.
- MatthewMcDonald 12y ago
  >How long do companies have to utilize the $500K? 3 Years
reagan83 12y ago
"The relentless nagging from partners to grow faster we throw in for free." Is this sentence constructed poorly or did a private comment slip in?
- jameshk 12y ago
  I think it's meant to be in there.
rjurney 12y ago
"ITS A TRAP!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F4qzPbcFiA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F4qzPbcFiA
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
bobbles 12y ago
Ahh suddenly it all makes sense. I wondered why my company after 18 months of effort to get going on AWS with certain apps has had a shift to get on Azure 'without compromise' in 2 months. I doubt these sort of offers are only going to start ups, Microsoft is taking on web services hard core.
- nathangrant 12y ago
  This is something we may start to see. I think they are aggressively targeting AWS customers with lower pricing and getting companies (including my employer) to begin the move to Azure.
milesf 12y ago
How is this any different than their previous "free" access to server products for a few years? The idea being build it at low cost, then flip the company?
higherpurpose 12y ago
Figures that the HN server would die at the same time of an Azure announcement. Azure isn't exactly best known for its uptime.
- photorized 12y ago
  True, Azure did have a major outage in November 2014, significantly more than the other popular providers: http://www.networkworld.com/article/2866950/cloud-computing/which-cloud-providers-had-the-best-uptime-last-year.html http://www.networkworld.com/article/2866950/cloud-computing/... That's can't be the only reason to choose (or ignore) a particular platform, because: - 100% is not commercially feasible - with rare exceptions, a little downtime won't kill you
bolonomciz 12y ago
mucrosoft goin ham
aledalgrande 12y ago
When a free HoloLens?
- aledalgrande 12y ago
  Hater apparently doesn't want a HoloLens
hinicholas 12y ago
I'm not sure how Azure intends to compete in this space. I've used Amazon, Rackspace, Google Cloud, Azure, and a bunch more. Professionally, for simplicity I'd choose Rackspace or Google. For Scalability and price I'd choose Amazon. For personal projects I love Digital Ocean. I dislike Azure's control panel and VM setup, and find their VMs slow. I'd only really consider them if I planned to implement a project that required leveraging the entirety of the Microsoft technology stack. I can't see technology companies embracing Virtual Windows Server RTs and MSSQL Servers. Startups enjoy technologies that are easy to manage and scale with smaller teams. Enterprise level companies still need inhouse dedicated hardware for security. Azure is kind of an oddball in the virtual hosting space.
- _delirium 12y ago
  > find their VMs slow I've found the network drives to be oddly slow, but the machines otherwise to perform well. So they can be performant if you can run I/O-intensive stuff off the ephemeral local storage, especially on one of the SSD instances.
- hudo 12y ago
  I compared mid-size VM on Azure and AWS, and I got almost 50% better hdd and cpu perf on azure. And with Win Server, I run ASP.NET and PHP and Node, it works nice. Db (pg) is on linux.
  - VSpike 12y ago
    I recently had to compare AWS and Azure for my company. I limited my comparison to AWS c3 and c4 class instances versus mid-range A and D class instances. I did some of my own quick benchmarks here http://browser.primatelabs.com/user/82525 http://browser.primatelabs.com/user/82525 For comparison, on-demand prices are (Linux / Windows):- * AWS c3.xlarge - $0.239 / $0.376 * AWS c4.xlarge - $0.264 / $0.430 * Azure Standard A3 - $0.24 / $0.324 * Azure Standard D3 - $0.46 / $0.732 I also did some quick disk benchmarks https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B096UguGrNHAfmZjM1VQMFd3SURqRXlaX3hDazNuUUVnTVJjT2Z3b1VpZVNPYkpiajZqTmc&usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B096UguGrNHAfmZjM1VQ... My tests are very limited I realise, but it looks to me like the AWS boxes represent better value for the money there, even in the on-demand range. Azure used to offer 6-month and 12-month plans but they removed those. Now you need an enterprise agreement to get anything other than published rates, and you need a big spend to qualify for that AFAICT. AWS reserved instances therefore make their instance rates even more competitive, if those make sense for you. I sent all this to the company trying to push Azure to us hoping they would have better data to refute my simple benchmarks, but they didn't really have any coherent response beyond talking about the "other advantages" of Azure. I also looked at:- * https://cloudharmony.com/reports/editions/state-of-the-cloud-compute/premium/state-of-the-cloud-compute-0714.pdf https://cloudharmony.com/reports/editions/state-of-the-cloud... * http://windowsitpro.com/cloud/microsofts-unwanted-win-cloud-downtime http://windowsitpro.com/cloud/microsofts-unwanted-win-cloud-... Beyond that I looked at the excellent data at https://cloudharmony.com/cloudscores https://cloudharmony.com/cloudscores (great site by the way). Their service is not live yet, so I scraped the data into Google Sheets and compared it there. AWS seems to beat Azure on most cases. You can see my sheet here:- https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19jltGybjXN3-PnKXAwQXtuS6AyMYd_K2yKf1J8QcIwE/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19jltGybjXN3-PnKXAwQX... (Data entirely owned by Cloud Harmony). Sorry, I can't find a way to let viewers change the filter on the data. As far as "other advantages go":- * If you use Win Server 2012 + HyperV in house then there's a good reason to use Azure because of tight integration. * If you're using SQL Server it's potentially a good fit too. (MySQL on Azure is recommended via a DB as a service they offer from a 3rd party which seems very pricey). * If you're starting out and are using Visual Studio tooling then the tight integration with Azure Websites, Web Roles and Worker Roles would be pretty nice since the build/test/deploy process would be pretty slick. Re-engineering an existing system to fit the PaaS could be hard, depending on your architecture (it would be for us).
dlu 12y ago
I'm surprised Dropbox or someone similar hasn't tried this already
grandalf 12y ago
This is pretty cool but I'd still prefer to use Google Apps and Gmail. The MS office web apps are pretty poor in comparison and unless you're a dedicated windows shop or have a lot of ex-finance people there is little benefit to the office suite.
- bratsche 12y ago
  But you also get access to the non-web versions of the office apps, which are not poor.
  - grandalf 12y ago
    True if you're in the 1% of users who need features that go beyond what Google Apps does and prefer to manually deal with the versioning mess using some ad-hoc convention.
eob 12y ago
This would be against the spirit of the offer, but I wonder if there is any easy way to arbitrage that credit into cold hard cash with low effort. E.g., boot up a bitcoin mining cluster (though this particular idea would obviously yield low return since it would be running on off the shelf hardware)
- photorized 12y ago
  Build a startup quickly, then sell it. :)
photorized 12y ago
This is huge for Microsoft, because this is how Azure is finally starting to get accepted by the startup/VC community. They never had difficulty selling Azure to the enterprise, but for startups - AWS had always been the default choice.
rl3 12y ago
I wonder if Azure competitors will increase their free offerings to YC companies as a result of this. The PaaS front is of particular interest. For example, it's not immediately evident that Heroku even offers anything similar, beyond a small free tier available to anyone.
Nux 12y ago
How do you call a startup running on Windows? A shutdown. LOL!
forgotAgain 12y ago
If you have the money, it's a great way to prevent being voted off of the front page of hacker news.
pallian 12y ago
Just FYI - the $60k/year Azure offer is technically available for any startup just willing to ask nicely (not limited to just incubators). My company, http://trippeo.com http://trippeo.com just qualified for it last month (we get $5k/mo free hosting).
- bravo22 12y ago
  That's a great tip! How do you ask "nicely"? Is there a rep you contact or contact just general billing/support?
  - pallian 12y ago
    I just emailed a developer evangelist at Microsoft - tons of them around and more than willing to help startups, especially new ones with under $1M in funding.
    - icelancer 12y ago
      Is there a list for these? I have seriously had problems trying to redeem any offers from Microsoft / Bizspark. I run a sports science startup and would love to look into this.
      - pallian 12y ago
        Pick a few of these folks and email them directly: https://www.linkedin.com/title/developer-evangelist-at-microsoft https://www.linkedin.com/title/developer-evangelist-at-micro...
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- czbond 12y ago
  For others interested, Softlayer does too. I like their competitive stack compared to AWS.
  - 12y ago
deleted 12y ago
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orliesaurus 12y ago
This smells like desperation from 100 miles away
moe 12y ago
Is there anything in the fineprint to stop the startups from reselling those credits? Passing them on at a 20% discount would make for a sweet ~$400k runway extension.
- jameshk 12y ago
  Interesting question.
- mmahemoff 12y ago
  Considering MS's long track record of offering discounts and freebies to startup (in the form of BizSpark and many other programmes), we can happily assume Redmond's considerable troupe of lawyers has anticipated that loophole.
rajacombinator 12y ago
That's a pretty impressive offer. As an AWS user, it would get me to look at Azure at least.
gregimba 12y ago
Bitcoin mining startups?
- err4nt 12y ago
  What a colossal waste of electricity though, think about the impact mining leaves on the world, is it worth the digital gold?
rjurney 12y ago
Company scrip http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip
- whyaduck 12y ago
  That doesn't seem like a germane comparison. Scrip was given in lieu of compensation - I don't think that describes the deal MS is offering here. Without this program, YC companies wouldn't otherwise be receiving anything of value from MS, would they?
  - rjurney 12y ago
    Just saying, it isn't free. There is lock-in, and with Microsoft... do you really want to be locked in?
    - blumkvist 12y ago
      You are not just saying. You are just hating.
forrestthewoods 12y ago
I hope all startups are made aware of Microsoft BizSpark. You get a pretty spectacular line up of freebies. And freebies that stay free even after you graduate. Free copes of Windows, Windows Server, SQL Server, Visual Studio, Office, etc. It's damn near everything. A++++ would recommend. http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/default.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/default.aspx
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- robotnoises 12y ago
  Note: for anyone interested in this program, make sure you have the following before applying (in addition to a well-written proposal for your business) 1.) A working website, at least a landing page explaining your product/idea. 2.) An email address @ the same domain as the aforementioned website If you have those two things you have a pretty solid shot at getting approved.
hristov 12y ago
Does Azure offer Linux images nowadays?
- grennis 12y ago
  Do you want me to bing that for you?
andhofmt 12y ago
Azure also offers a small business "BizSpark" program. http://www.devfactor.net http://www.devfactor.net is hosted on Azure thanks to BizSpark, where it gets $150/mo for three years. It was enough to handle the front page of Reddit.
empressplay 12y ago
In case anyone here missed this, Microsoft gives a bunch of free stuff (including an MSDN subscription) to any new startup through their BizSpark program: http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark
- icelancer 12y ago
  I have had no end of problems getting signed up for this for my startup. It was a month of back and forth arguing then I eventually gave up and paid $200/month on Digital Ocean and stuck with Linux. Very frustrating. Anyone to talk to there that can help outside of generic customer support?
  - klausjensen 12y ago
    I signed up two companies recently, and it was literally a matter of filling out the form (<5 mins) - and waiting 3-5 days for a "WELCOME" e-mail. Not saying you did not have a bad experience, just offering mine. :)
rebootthesystem 12y ago
If Microsoft truly wants to transform they need to launch an intensive secret project. Let's call it "Project Redmond". The goal of the project would be to develop "Quantum", the next Microsoft OS. Quantum aligns MS with Linux by effectively building Windows on top of Linux as well as all the tools necessary to, as automatically as possible, migrate existing Windows code into Quantum. With a move like this Microsoft becomes THE Linux company as the millions of non-tech and tech businesses who are Windows based migrate to Quantum over time. They could make the underlying souped-up Linux OS FOSS and sell the Quantum OS layer (or whatever works). I am thinking in terms of the next 50 years, not 5. In the long term I just don't see how the existing MS model can prevail. A move like this Quantum OS concept would instantly align them with web development and provide a solid alternative to Apple on developers desktops and perhaps even Ubuntu at the server level.
- guardian5x 12y ago
  You describe Embrace, Extend, ... I don't think Microsoft has to stop doing Windows. Its fine to just be open to everything out there as well.
patternpaul 12y ago
Reach out to me if you need help with the PaaS side of things for Azure. I am currently a DevOps lead at my company and we deploy approximately 35+ micro-services to Azure about a few hundred times a day. I'd love to talk!
anonbanker 12y ago
The fact that HN doesn't view Microsoft's known complicity with NSA programs (partner of PRISM data collection since before 2007, _NSAKEY[1] before that) as a human rights violation is troubling, to say the least, but it's absolutely unnerving that anyone would trust them (including YC members) to store sensitive data post-Snowden. Does anyone actually trust cloud services in Five-eyes jurisdictions anymore? Is there a company in those jurisdictions that people could use that is more dangerous to trust than Microsoft? 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY
vyrotek 12y ago
Azure has been great for our start-up (http://iactionable.com http://iactionable.com). We've been with them for over 4 years. There have been ups and downs but we're fans of C#/.NET and it was a great fit for our team. We store and crunch a lot of real-time data with ServiceBus Queues and SQL Server. It has scaled well so far. We also went through the BizSpark program which REALLY helped jump start things. We were invited up to Redmond in the past to meet with teams from various Azure services and participate in private previews of some cool features. They're really working hard to make a great platform. Satya, please don't have them mess things up with the next portal release! The whole sideways scrolling gives me a headache.
theuri 12y ago
May be helpful to clarify/reword - sounded like $500k total from the headline, but is actually $500k per company. Sweet deal...
theuri 12y ago
May be helpful to clarify/reword - sounded like $500k total from the headline, but is actually $500k per company. Sweet deal...
ing33k 12y ago
Our Startup is part of BizSpark and I have no doubts in saying that its great ! . Big win for MS and Equally a good deal for YC Startups.
kriro 12y ago
Free stuff is great but I wonder if there'll be any subtle nudges to use this for the next badges. "Your hosting estimates seem high, why don't you just use Azure"? "Well we considered it but long term we'd rather use another hoster for reasons X,Y,Z"..."Well yeah but 500k more runway is a lot." I'm probably worried over nothing since YC investors are smart and tend to leave tech choices to the founders but I'd like to hear some feedback on this from people that pitch in the future. Either way Microsoft seems to make pretty good decisions lately (from my humble POV). Seems like they are essentially playing the same power law as (other) investors, hoping that the next XXX will be run on Azure. On a somewhat realted note...I worked in IT in Africa for a bit and it was pretty strange how locked into Microsoft server stuff they (Africa is big but it was true for all countires I had work relations in) are. I naively assumed that Linux/BSD would be more wide spread there but my very subjective conclusion is that MSxx-certificates are really widespread there and piracy is kind of tolerated so it's easy to learn. It was a little bit harder than expected to find Linux admins for example. I've always wondered if this was active corporate policy or just an "accident".
gadders 12y ago
I'm applying to YC next year. My startup is offering Azure hosting at a discount. Not sure how long we will last though...
- zongitsrinzler 12y ago
  Great idea!
greatabel 12y ago
Ms has a terrible records of abandoning Ms-related tech followers by technology renewal: vb->.net，wp7 !-> wp8. To many developers,ms is irrelevant. And after using onedrive/Office365 for a long time, the experience is poor:sometimes even on a wp/lumia,bugs like file loss and page broken is usual。

393 points by sadfaceunread 12y ago

kevinschumacher 12y ago

WOW that is a lot of credit. How does Azure stack up "in the real world" compared to Amazon, Rackspace, Google?

radicalbyte 12y ago
They seem to have had more teething problems recently then Google or Amazon, but the tooling is excellent and getting better by the month.
junto 12y ago
Uptime for 2014 compared here: http://www.networkworld.com/article/2866950/cloud-computing/which-cloud-providers-had-the-best-uptime-last-year.html http://www.networkworld.com/article/2866950/cloud-computing/... Azure had 39.77 hours of downtime, whilst Rack space had 7.52 and the winner (of the selected cloud providers was AWS with 2.41 hours. I'm not sure how those figures were calculated though. These cloud providers are multifaceted. I'm not sure which parts if each's services were analysed. Also, it is worth considering that one serious problem can distort these averages. AWS has a much more stable long term history. In my opinion the competition is a good thing and Microsoft seem happy to support whatever framework or OS you want. Their node.js support is supposed to be pretty good. The marketplace also enables you to get things like MongoDb clusters, etc which is competition for SQL Server. They seem to be interested in supporting customer interests rather than the old fashioned MS tech or die philosophy from back in the day.
- ewzimm 12y ago
  Those figures are a combination of downtime across all regions globally. So it doesn't mean that any individual servers were down. The largest downtime was in Europe, with had 5.97 hours last year. Factors for downtime were an update bug in November and weather. The bug is very unlikely to happen again. Outages due to weather really don't tell you much at all other than that they were unlucky. Overall, I would say the downtime numbers are not very useful. http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240238379/Microsoft-Azure-had-more-downtime-than-main-cloud-rivals http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240238379/Microsoft-Azur...

minimaxir 12y ago

This seems like a Catch-22. If a startup is successful enough to get into YC, wouldn't they have a stable tech infrastructure already? This would only benefit YC startups who already use Azure. (Unless the switching cost from AWS/Rackspace/Google is low enough nowadays.)

nullspace 12y ago
If what you have is a couple of web servers and a couple of database servers, I would take the one weekend off to learn Azure and write up scripts to migrate data and servers and other configuration. Would definitely be harder if you have a more complex infrastructure - but in most cases entirely worth it.
shk 12y ago
Many startups in YC actually launch during the 3 months they are here. Being successful before entering YC is only true for a small percentage of the companies.
dkarapetyan 12y ago
Pretty much all cloud providers are the same. Once you have your service topology figured out deploying to AWS, Azure, or RackSpace is the easy part.
amitparikh 12y ago
There is no prerequisite to have a "stable tech infrastructure" -- shoot, there's no prerequisite to even have an actual product! -- for admission to YC. pg has made it pretty clear that YC selects founders, not necessarily ideas. And for those that have a proof-of-concept running on some other provider(s) (AWS/Rackspace/Google), it would be a huge boon to be able to migrate and scale using Azure and the $500k credit.

nullspace 12y ago

This is incredible! 500k is a big amount. Realistically speaking most startups would get free hosting for ~3 years out of this. For the future YC batches - depending on what your company is going to be doing, it would make very little financial sense to NOT host on Azure.

onion2k 12y ago
3 years of technical investment is pretty much enough to stop you leaving unless something goes very wrong. This $500k is a small price to pay for a client who goes on to be the next AirBNB or Dropbox. Even just the prestige of having a company like that to draw on for testimonials would justify the spend. However... For a startup to choose to build on Azure they'll need staff with MSFT stack experience. 5 or 6 of those will burn through $500k in no time compared to the equivalent on a more open platform. Whether or not to use Azure is certainly NOT obvious.
- dangrossman 12y ago
  > For a startup to choose to build on Azure they'll need staff with MSFT stack experience Why's that? Azure's just another cloud hosting provider. You don't have to run any kind of Microsoft software on the servers.
  - morganvachon 12y ago
    Exactly, and Microsoft is happy to host your own custom Linux-based environment if you want complete control over your stack: http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/virtual-machines-linux-create-upload-vhd/ http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/virt... edit: looks like phonon below beat me to it by a few minutes.
- phonon 12y ago
  >they'll need staff with MSFT stack experience You can spin up bog standard Linux instances if you want. http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/virtual-machines-linux-endorsed-distributions/ http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/virt... You don't have to use a MSFT stack.

sz4kerto 12y ago

This reminds me of the old joke: Nietzsche: God is dead. God (couple of years later): Nietzsche is dead. pg: Microsoft is dead. http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html Microsoft (couple of years later): Here's some gift* for your startups. :) (*: please don't start explaining that it is not a gift, etc. -- I know. :) )

desdiv 12y ago
The last two points aren't technically contradictory if one imagine pg as a grave robber :D
cbhl 12y ago
So if they wanted to be a contender again, this is how they could do it: - Buy all the good "Web 2.0" startups. They could get substantially all of them for less than they'd have to pay for Facebook. - Put them all in a building in Silicon Valley, surrounded by lead shielding to protect them from any contact with Redmond. I feel safe suggesting this, because they'd never do it. I can't help but think that Microsoft has had quite a few acquisitions as of late, though. Minecraft (gaming), Acompli (mobile email), Sunrise (mobile calendar), and probably others.
- blumkvist 12y ago
  Microsoft has been acquiring aprox. 1 company every two months for the last 28 years...
drawkbox 12y ago
The old Microsoft (Ballmer era) is dead though. Microsoft in the last 1-2 years is like a new scrappy competitor who lost market share on hubris. They are now willing to work how developers like to work not forcing them into the corral. Azure is the new OS at Microsoft, lock in higher up the stack but actually not as lock-in as before. Microsoft went back to developer focus over biz/marketing focus and it is working like it always has.
- 12y ago

h43k3r 12y ago

I read somewhere that Satya Nadella is an active reader of Hacker News.

jameshk 12y ago
There's a quote from him about HN on YC's site.
impish19 12y ago
Microsoft employee here. Can confirm. He has mentioned HN a couple of times in talks.

imperialdrive 12y ago

That is some serious credit... I should share that having access to Azure MFA (formerly PhoneFactor) alone has been worth the R&D time. Their support, although a little tough to nail down 1-on-1 time with, is very friendly. I chose that word carefully, it's not super professional, but I actually had a good time going through a migration with them, for what's it's worth.

maxbrown 12y ago

Any idea on the LCV for Azure of the average YC startup? I know the average YC startup is going to be a cut above, but are a large percentage of them going to break the $500k in an early stage?

staunch 12y ago
If the next Dropbox builds on Azure, instead of AWS, it would all be worth it. From Microsoft's perspective it's a pretty cheap bet that will probably not pay off. The oldest tactic in the Proprietary Platform Handbook is giving away free stuff to hook people early on. In this case Azure can run Linux VMs, so I wouldn't worry much about using them for that. Linux lacks lock in.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
terravion 12y ago
If we got this much credit, yes, several including mine easily would.

mbesto 12y ago

Microsoft is also giving YC startups three years of Office 365, access to Microsoft developer staff, and one year of free CloudFlare and DataStax enterprise services. Free Office365 and CloudFlare are probably the best part of this announcement, since they are "easily migrate-able" by most startups. Migrating from DO/AWS/Linode isn't fun and productive. Even though they are negligible (in terms of money and value) they are the easiest "sticky" points for early stage startups. That being said - for DevOps people with experience across AWS/DO/Linode and Azure, this would be a good time to start the cold calls and sell your services to YC companies. Paying someone $5-10k on high ($2k/month) AWS bills to free services is a no-brainer. EDIT: On that note, if any DevOps people want me to do the hustling (aka sales, lead generation) for them, let me know. EDIT2: Anyone know if the $500k goes for 3-years? If it's only 1-year, then this may not beat the 1-2 years and ~$10k you get from Amazon via their platform: http://aws.amazon.com/activate/portfolio-detail/ http://aws.amazon.com/activate/portfolio-detail/

aioprisan 12y ago
"Migrating from DO/AWS/Linode isn't fun and productive." Huh? You can run more or less the same type of services on Azure that you can on AWS. I wouldn't even consider DO due to lack of load balancers and file backup services.
- vosper 12y ago
  Sure, but in practice if you have any complexity in your stack then it's going to be a PITA to from Azure to AWS (or vice-versa). If you're just running instances then maybe it's not too much work - though you're still going to have to think about backup / restore, access control, autoscaling (maybe), cost tracking / allocation, etc... I'm sure Microsoft are banking on a profitable percentage of YC companies becoming so wedded to that Azure systems that the opportunity cost of switching to AWS is too high. Edit: Typo
  - mikermcneil 12y ago
    Looks like Azure has a PaaS now though-- I mean it's no heroku, but as far as I can tell it's working.

sadfaceunread 12y ago

In addition to the Azure credit I'm interested in the CloudFlare and DataStax enterprise services value. Cloudflare at least reports an average for enterprise services at $5k/mo.

mark_l_watson 12y ago

Great offer. I was accepted into Microsoft's BizSpark program last year so I get $150/month free Azure credit. Azure is very nice to use. So far, I have just been using Ubuntu Linux VPS instances (similar to AWS EC2) and everything works similarly to other providers I use like AWS, IBM BlueMix, Digital Ocean, and Google's cloud services. Really, these are all very good services, so use the one you can get for free or at a low cost. I used to be pretty much down on Microsoft, but now they are doing a lot of stuff right in my opinion: providing solid Linux support on Azure and providing an unbelievably good deal on the family edition of Office365. It seems like they are buying themselves into the cloud market, but with all of their cash on hand, that seems like a good strategy! Anyway, if you have a business idea you want to try then look into BizSpark.

city41 12y ago
You can actually get $600/month in Azure credit. Your BizSpark account allows up to 4 users, and each gets $150/month. EDIT: correction, it looks like it's actually 5 users: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/niallsblog/archive/2014/08/22/activating-your-5-free-azure-accounts-on-bizspark.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/niallsblog/archive/2014/08/22/activa...

jorgecastillo 12y ago

Wow amazing, I am not the biggest Microsoft fan & I would never have what it takes to be part of a YC startup, yet just reading this got me all excited. This is truly great for those startups that qualify!

pdknsk 12y ago

Makes the 1-year $100K credit by Google look not so good now. https://cloud.google.com/developers/startups/ https://cloud.google.com/developers/startups/

alwaysdoit 12y ago
It's still pretty good if you're not in YC, of course.

philip1209 12y ago

This is a smart move for Microsoft. Most companies will not utilize the credit, a few will use some but not all of the credit, and there will probably be one or two breakout companies from the batch with huge computing costs. If they snag one of these breakout unicorns, $500K in free computing is a reasonable expense.

philip1209 12y ago

efiftythree 12y ago

It will be interesting to see if Microsoft uses this to push their PaaS offerings. All too often people jump into cloud services with IaaS whereas the Azure Websites offering will provide a lower cost for run while allowing easier scale out, management, and tie-ins with other Azure services like Azure Storage (various types), HDInsight (Hadoop), and Azure Machine Learning.

aceperry 12y ago
"the Azure Websites offering will provide a lower cost for run while allowing easier scale out, management, and tie-ins with other Azure services" How do you figure that? Pricing on cloud services can be tough to compare so I really question anyone who presents blanket statements like that.
- efiftythree 12y ago
  I probably shouldn't have used such a initiative word like "will". That said scaling out PaaS compared to scaling out IaaS, specifically on Azure, is almost guaranteed to be less expensive from an infrastructure standpoint. Less actual VM's to manage also translates into less overhead from maintenance activities. At the very least it will be interesting to see if more people adopt the Azure Websites PaaS offering. I know that right now most people dip their toes into Azure with IaaS because its historically more comfortable for them.

aceperry 12y ago

Microsoft has been really trying to entice devs for the last few years. My experience with their cloud service has been terrible, although I haven't used it in a couple of years. It was seriously bad then, and some of their recent missteps haven't done much to change my mind. But MS is definitely trying, so I wonder if Google or AWS will respond to this latest move.

shiftpgdn 12y ago
Glad I'm not alone. Trying to use my account during my Azure trial period resulted in getting 500 errors. I gave up and had a DO droplet going in like 30 seconds instead.
mark_l_watson 12y ago
You might want to try again. I have been using Azure for about 6 months with no problems at all.
city41 12y ago
Azure has been doing better. I've been using them for about 15 months now and the quality, uptime, speed, etc have all steadily improved. I haven't had an issue that was Azure's fault in quite some time now.
jread 12y ago
It's much better now. Check out the new Ivy Bridge/Haswell, SSD backed D and G series VMs. They are a vast improvement over the old AMD/magnetic backed A series.
photorized 12y ago
You should give them another try. Azure has become much more stable. There was a major global outage a month or so ago, but then again that's something that had happened with other cloud providers. Overall, I find them easier to use than AWS, for example.
- jread 12y ago
  It was a multi-region, multi-hour outage on Nov 18. To my knowledge AWS has not experienced a multi-region outage. That said, they are learning from these events and improving stability.

felixrieseberg 12y ago

We have a bunch of Microsofties at YC today, but reach out to Steve or me directly at (founders@microsoft.com) if you're a Winter 2015 batch company and for some reason not at YC today. It's also worth pointing out that our $60k offer for YC companies is still around, if you're in one of the older batches.

650REDHAIR 12y ago
Not a YC company, but we'd love to buy you and Scott coffee or lunch if you're free tomorrow. We (Fanout) received a boat-load of Azure credits that haven't been used, but with all of the cool new Microsoft OSS developments recently we think it'd be great to start working on Azure. My twitter/phone# is the same as my HN handle.
- felixrieseberg 12y ago
  Do me a favor and shoot me a mail at feriese@microsoft.com - I'm sure we can set something up!

garazy 12y ago

Might help to compete against Amazon as they and Akamai have the lions share of YCombinator sites - http://trends.builtwith.com/tech-reports/Y-Combinator/hosting http://trends.builtwith.com/tech-reports/Y-Combinator/hostin...

markolschesky 12y ago

How long do companies have to utilize the $500K? In the BizSpark Plus days, your company would receive $60K of hosting but could only use it to pay 100% of your bill in the first year of BS+. In the second year, you could use it to pay 50% and then in the third year you were paying full price for Azure. It was a pretty good deal, but if you are already spending $30-60K (or $250-$500 K) on infra in your first year or two, you're in a select breed of companies.

MatthewMcDonald 12y ago
>How long do companies have to utilize the $500K? 3 Years

reagan83 12y ago

"The relentless nagging from partners to grow faster we throw in for free." Is this sentence constructed poorly or did a private comment slip in?

jameshk 12y ago
I think it's meant to be in there.

rjurney 12y ago

"ITS A TRAP!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F4qzPbcFiA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F4qzPbcFiA

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

bobbles 12y ago

Ahh suddenly it all makes sense. I wondered why my company after 18 months of effort to get going on AWS with certain apps has had a shift to get on Azure 'without compromise' in 2 months. I doubt these sort of offers are only going to start ups, Microsoft is taking on web services hard core.

nathangrant 12y ago
This is something we may start to see. I think they are aggressively targeting AWS customers with lower pricing and getting companies (including my employer) to begin the move to Azure.

milesf 12y ago

How is this any different than their previous "free" access to server products for a few years? The idea being build it at low cost, then flip the company?

higherpurpose 12y ago

Figures that the HN server would die at the same time of an Azure announcement. Azure isn't exactly best known for its uptime.

photorized 12y ago
True, Azure did have a major outage in November 2014, significantly more than the other popular providers: http://www.networkworld.com/article/2866950/cloud-computing/which-cloud-providers-had-the-best-uptime-last-year.html http://www.networkworld.com/article/2866950/cloud-computing/... That's can't be the only reason to choose (or ignore) a particular platform, because: - 100% is not commercially feasible - with rare exceptions, a little downtime won't kill you

bolonomciz 12y ago

mucrosoft goin ham

aledalgrande 12y ago

When a free HoloLens?

aledalgrande 12y ago
Hater apparently doesn't want a HoloLens

hinicholas 12y ago

I'm not sure how Azure intends to compete in this space. I've used Amazon, Rackspace, Google Cloud, Azure, and a bunch more. Professionally, for simplicity I'd choose Rackspace or Google. For Scalability and price I'd choose Amazon. For personal projects I love Digital Ocean. I dislike Azure's control panel and VM setup, and find their VMs slow. I'd only really consider them if I planned to implement a project that required leveraging the entirety of the Microsoft technology stack. I can't see technology companies embracing Virtual Windows Server RTs and MSSQL Servers. Startups enjoy technologies that are easy to manage and scale with smaller teams. Enterprise level companies still need inhouse dedicated hardware for security. Azure is kind of an oddball in the virtual hosting space.

_delirium 12y ago
> find their VMs slow I've found the network drives to be oddly slow, but the machines otherwise to perform well. So they can be performant if you can run I/O-intensive stuff off the ephemeral local storage, especially on one of the SSD instances.
hudo 12y ago
I compared mid-size VM on Azure and AWS, and I got almost 50% better hdd and cpu perf on azure. And with Win Server, I run ASP.NET and PHP and Node, it works nice. Db (pg) is on linux.
- VSpike 12y ago
  I recently had to compare AWS and Azure for my company. I limited my comparison to AWS c3 and c4 class instances versus mid-range A and D class instances. I did some of my own quick benchmarks here http://browser.primatelabs.com/user/82525 http://browser.primatelabs.com/user/82525 For comparison, on-demand prices are (Linux / Windows):- * AWS c3.xlarge - $0.239 / $0.376 * AWS c4.xlarge - $0.264 / $0.430 * Azure Standard A3 - $0.24 / $0.324 * Azure Standard D3 - $0.46 / $0.732 I also did some quick disk benchmarks https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B096UguGrNHAfmZjM1VQMFd3SURqRXlaX3hDazNuUUVnTVJjT2Z3b1VpZVNPYkpiajZqTmc&usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B096UguGrNHAfmZjM1VQ... My tests are very limited I realise, but it looks to me like the AWS boxes represent better value for the money there, even in the on-demand range. Azure used to offer 6-month and 12-month plans but they removed those. Now you need an enterprise agreement to get anything other than published rates, and you need a big spend to qualify for that AFAICT. AWS reserved instances therefore make their instance rates even more competitive, if those make sense for you. I sent all this to the company trying to push Azure to us hoping they would have better data to refute my simple benchmarks, but they didn't really have any coherent response beyond talking about the "other advantages" of Azure. I also looked at:- * https://cloudharmony.com/reports/editions/state-of-the-cloud-compute/premium/state-of-the-cloud-compute-0714.pdf https://cloudharmony.com/reports/editions/state-of-the-cloud... * http://windowsitpro.com/cloud/microsofts-unwanted-win-cloud-downtime http://windowsitpro.com/cloud/microsofts-unwanted-win-cloud-... Beyond that I looked at the excellent data at https://cloudharmony.com/cloudscores https://cloudharmony.com/cloudscores (great site by the way). Their service is not live yet, so I scraped the data into Google Sheets and compared it there. AWS seems to beat Azure on most cases. You can see my sheet here:- https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19jltGybjXN3-PnKXAwQXtuS6AyMYd_K2yKf1J8QcIwE/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19jltGybjXN3-PnKXAwQX... (Data entirely owned by Cloud Harmony). Sorry, I can't find a way to let viewers change the filter on the data. As far as "other advantages go":- * If you use Win Server 2012 + HyperV in house then there's a good reason to use Azure because of tight integration. * If you're using SQL Server it's potentially a good fit too. (MySQL on Azure is recommended via a DB as a service they offer from a 3rd party which seems very pricey). * If you're starting out and are using Visual Studio tooling then the tight integration with Azure Websites, Web Roles and Worker Roles would be pretty nice since the build/test/deploy process would be pretty slick. Re-engineering an existing system to fit the PaaS could be hard, depending on your architecture (it would be for us).

dlu 12y ago

I'm surprised Dropbox or someone similar hasn't tried this already

grandalf 12y ago

This is pretty cool but I'd still prefer to use Google Apps and Gmail. The MS office web apps are pretty poor in comparison and unless you're a dedicated windows shop or have a lot of ex-finance people there is little benefit to the office suite.

bratsche 12y ago
But you also get access to the non-web versions of the office apps, which are not poor.
- grandalf 12y ago
  True if you're in the 1% of users who need features that go beyond what Google Apps does and prefer to manually deal with the versioning mess using some ad-hoc convention.

eob 12y ago

This would be against the spirit of the offer, but I wonder if there is any easy way to arbitrage that credit into cold hard cash with low effort. E.g., boot up a bitcoin mining cluster (though this particular idea would obviously yield low return since it would be running on off the shelf hardware)

photorized 12y ago
Build a startup quickly, then sell it. :)

photorized 12y ago

This is huge for Microsoft, because this is how Azure is finally starting to get accepted by the startup/VC community. They never had difficulty selling Azure to the enterprise, but for startups - AWS had always been the default choice.

rl3 12y ago

I wonder if Azure competitors will increase their free offerings to YC companies as a result of this. The PaaS front is of particular interest. For example, it's not immediately evident that Heroku even offers anything similar, beyond a small free tier available to anyone.

Nux 12y ago

How do you call a startup running on Windows? A shutdown. LOL!

forgotAgain 12y ago

If you have the money, it's a great way to prevent being voted off of the front page of hacker news.

pallian 12y ago

Just FYI - the $60k/year Azure offer is technically available for any startup just willing to ask nicely (not limited to just incubators). My company, http://trippeo.com http://trippeo.com just qualified for it last month (we get $5k/mo free hosting).

bravo22 12y ago
That's a great tip! How do you ask "nicely"? Is there a rep you contact or contact just general billing/support?
- pallian 12y ago
  I just emailed a developer evangelist at Microsoft - tons of them around and more than willing to help startups, especially new ones with under $1M in funding.
  - icelancer 12y ago
    Is there a list for these? I have seriously had problems trying to redeem any offers from Microsoft / Bizspark. I run a sports science startup and would love to look into this.
    - pallian 12y ago
      Pick a few of these folks and email them directly: https://www.linkedin.com/title/developer-evangelist-at-microsoft https://www.linkedin.com/title/developer-evangelist-at-micro...
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
czbond 12y ago
For others interested, Softlayer does too. I like their competitive stack compared to AWS.
- 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

orliesaurus 12y ago

This smells like desperation from 100 miles away

moe 12y ago

Is there anything in the fineprint to stop the startups from reselling those credits? Passing them on at a 20% discount would make for a sweet ~$400k runway extension.

jameshk 12y ago
Interesting question.
mmahemoff 12y ago
Considering MS's long track record of offering discounts and freebies to startup (in the form of BizSpark and many other programmes), we can happily assume Redmond's considerable troupe of lawyers has anticipated that loophole.

rajacombinator 12y ago

That's a pretty impressive offer. As an AWS user, it would get me to look at Azure at least.

gregimba 12y ago

Bitcoin mining startups?

err4nt 12y ago
What a colossal waste of electricity though, think about the impact mining leaves on the world, is it worth the digital gold?

rjurney 12y ago

Company scrip http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip

whyaduck 12y ago
That doesn't seem like a germane comparison. Scrip was given in lieu of compensation - I don't think that describes the deal MS is offering here. Without this program, YC companies wouldn't otherwise be receiving anything of value from MS, would they?
- rjurney 12y ago
  Just saying, it isn't free. There is lock-in, and with Microsoft... do you really want to be locked in?
  - blumkvist 12y ago
    You are not just saying. You are just hating.

forrestthewoods 12y ago

I hope all startups are made aware of Microsoft BizSpark. You get a pretty spectacular line up of freebies. And freebies that stay free even after you graduate. Free copes of Windows, Windows Server, SQL Server, Visual Studio, Office, etc. It's damn near everything. A++++ would recommend. http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/default.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/default.aspx

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
robotnoises 12y ago
Note: for anyone interested in this program, make sure you have the following before applying (in addition to a well-written proposal for your business) 1.) A working website, at least a landing page explaining your product/idea. 2.) An email address @ the same domain as the aforementioned website If you have those two things you have a pretty solid shot at getting approved.

hristov 12y ago

Does Azure offer Linux images nowadays?

grennis 12y ago
Do you want me to bing that for you?

andhofmt 12y ago

Azure also offers a small business "BizSpark" program. http://www.devfactor.net http://www.devfactor.net is hosted on Azure thanks to BizSpark, where it gets $150/mo for three years. It was enough to handle the front page of Reddit.

empressplay 12y ago

In case anyone here missed this, Microsoft gives a bunch of free stuff (including an MSDN subscription) to any new startup through their BizSpark program: http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark

icelancer 12y ago
I have had no end of problems getting signed up for this for my startup. It was a month of back and forth arguing then I eventually gave up and paid $200/month on Digital Ocean and stuck with Linux. Very frustrating. Anyone to talk to there that can help outside of generic customer support?
- klausjensen 12y ago
  I signed up two companies recently, and it was literally a matter of filling out the form (<5 mins) - and waiting 3-5 days for a "WELCOME" e-mail. Not saying you did not have a bad experience, just offering mine. :)

rebootthesystem 12y ago

If Microsoft truly wants to transform they need to launch an intensive secret project. Let's call it "Project Redmond". The goal of the project would be to develop "Quantum", the next Microsoft OS. Quantum aligns MS with Linux by effectively building Windows on top of Linux as well as all the tools necessary to, as automatically as possible, migrate existing Windows code into Quantum. With a move like this Microsoft becomes THE Linux company as the millions of non-tech and tech businesses who are Windows based migrate to Quantum over time. They could make the underlying souped-up Linux OS FOSS and sell the Quantum OS layer (or whatever works). I am thinking in terms of the next 50 years, not 5. In the long term I just don't see how the existing MS model can prevail. A move like this Quantum OS concept would instantly align them with web development and provide a solid alternative to Apple on developers desktops and perhaps even Ubuntu at the server level.

guardian5x 12y ago
You describe Embrace, Extend, ... I don't think Microsoft has to stop doing Windows. Its fine to just be open to everything out there as well.

patternpaul 12y ago

Reach out to me if you need help with the PaaS side of things for Azure. I am currently a DevOps lead at my company and we deploy approximately 35+ micro-services to Azure about a few hundred times a day. I'd love to talk!

anonbanker 12y ago

The fact that HN doesn't view Microsoft's known complicity with NSA programs (partner of PRISM data collection since before 2007, _NSAKEY[1] before that) as a human rights violation is troubling, to say the least, but it's absolutely unnerving that anyone would trust them (including YC members) to store sensitive data post-Snowden. Does anyone actually trust cloud services in Five-eyes jurisdictions anymore? Is there a company in those jurisdictions that people could use that is more dangerous to trust than Microsoft? 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY

vyrotek 12y ago

Azure has been great for our start-up (http://iactionable.com http://iactionable.com). We've been with them for over 4 years. There have been ups and downs but we're fans of C#/.NET and it was a great fit for our team. We store and crunch a lot of real-time data with ServiceBus Queues and SQL Server. It has scaled well so far. We also went through the BizSpark program which REALLY helped jump start things. We were invited up to Redmond in the past to meet with teams from various Azure services and participate in private previews of some cool features. They're really working hard to make a great platform. Satya, please don't have them mess things up with the next portal release! The whole sideways scrolling gives me a headache.

theuri 12y ago

May be helpful to clarify/reword - sounded like $500k total from the headline, but is actually $500k per company. Sweet deal...

theuri 12y ago

May be helpful to clarify/reword - sounded like $500k total from the headline, but is actually $500k per company. Sweet deal...

ing33k 12y ago

Our Startup is part of BizSpark and I have no doubts in saying that its great ! . Big win for MS and Equally a good deal for YC Startups.

kriro 12y ago

Free stuff is great but I wonder if there'll be any subtle nudges to use this for the next badges. "Your hosting estimates seem high, why don't you just use Azure"? "Well we considered it but long term we'd rather use another hoster for reasons X,Y,Z"..."Well yeah but 500k more runway is a lot." I'm probably worried over nothing since YC investors are smart and tend to leave tech choices to the founders but I'd like to hear some feedback on this from people that pitch in the future. Either way Microsoft seems to make pretty good decisions lately (from my humble POV). Seems like they are essentially playing the same power law as (other) investors, hoping that the next XXX will be run on Azure. On a somewhat realted note...I worked in IT in Africa for a bit and it was pretty strange how locked into Microsoft server stuff they (Africa is big but it was true for all countires I had work relations in) are. I naively assumed that Linux/BSD would be more wide spread there but my very subjective conclusion is that MSxx-certificates are really widespread there and piracy is kind of tolerated so it's easy to learn. It was a little bit harder than expected to find Linux admins for example. I've always wondered if this was active corporate policy or just an "accident".

gadders 12y ago

I'm applying to YC next year. My startup is offering Azure hosting at a discount. Not sure how long we will last though...

zongitsrinzler 12y ago
Great idea!

greatabel 12y ago

Ms has a terrible records of abandoning Ms-related tech followers by technology renewal: vb->.net，wp7 !-> wp8. To many developers,ms is irrelevant. And after using onedrive/Office365 for a long time, the experience is poor:sometimes even on a wp/lumia,bugs like file loss and page broken is usual。