Small ISV's - do you really feel like Microsoft cares about you any more?
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It used to rock being a small software developer using Microsoft tools and technology. They supported us all the way with excellent programs like MSDN Universal which for one flat reasonable price gave you every tool the big guys used. They ditched MSDN Universal and I started to notice all sorts of stuff drifting slowly out of reach. For their online mapping solution they have two plans, free for non commercial useage and eye gougingly expensive to the point you need hundreds of thousands of customers to afford. There seems to be no middle ground any more with them. I'm starting to wonder if they just haven't written off smaller ISV's assuming they use open source software and technology and moved their focus to large corporate developers. The problem with that is small ISV's are no reflection of their client base, we focus on small business and we have thousands of customers all over the globe who use our software as an integral part of their business, in fact it causes them to continually upgrade their windows and buy desktop pc's, year after year, more often than not Office to go along with it etc. If I get pushed into the arms of open source and "cloud" development and move our app entirely online Microsoft loses not merely my MSDN subscription but potentially a lot of desktop computer users and their windows licenses and Office licenses etc etc. And I'm sure as hell not going to Microsoft's Azure cloud with it's unreliable, Byzantine pricing structures and policies. (Though I don't know if anyone else is any better at this point.) Maybe as we are all shoved onto Clouds the small ISV is a thing of the past, maybe you have to have a big investment to roll out a new online app. Maybe you can't start out with a couple of guys in a garage any more.
There is no failure only feedback
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It used to rock being a small software developer using Microsoft tools and technology. They supported us all the way with excellent programs like MSDN Universal which for one flat reasonable price gave you every tool the big guys used. They ditched MSDN Universal and I started to notice all sorts of stuff drifting slowly out of reach. For their online mapping solution they have two plans, free for non commercial useage and eye gougingly expensive to the point you need hundreds of thousands of customers to afford. There seems to be no middle ground any more with them. I'm starting to wonder if they just haven't written off smaller ISV's assuming they use open source software and technology and moved their focus to large corporate developers. The problem with that is small ISV's are no reflection of their client base, we focus on small business and we have thousands of customers all over the globe who use our software as an integral part of their business, in fact it causes them to continually upgrade their windows and buy desktop pc's, year after year, more often than not Office to go along with it etc. If I get pushed into the arms of open source and "cloud" development and move our app entirely online Microsoft loses not merely my MSDN subscription but potentially a lot of desktop computer users and their windows licenses and Office licenses etc etc. And I'm sure as hell not going to Microsoft's Azure cloud with it's unreliable, Byzantine pricing structures and policies. (Though I don't know if anyone else is any better at this point.) Maybe as we are all shoved onto Clouds the small ISV is a thing of the past, maybe you have to have a big investment to roll out a new online app. Maybe you can't start out with a couple of guys in a garage any more.
There is no failure only feedback
Sadly I know exactly what you mean - I feel exactly as you do. The current MSDN setup is definitely not ISV friendly (the rampaging pricing has certainly seen to that), and neither is their partner programme, which appears to be aimed solely at partners who wish to resell MS product to their clients. Empower appears on paper to be a great idea - but the ISV competancy tests which go with it are an inflexible joke our product couldn't pass no matter what we do (it's native code, and doesn't use Office or XML Web Services. Even MS UK threw up their hands and said "we don't know" at that one). I get the impression that Microsoft's idea of an ISV is an SME with venture capital funding rather than a successful small business of the type you describe. A shame really. They're missing an opportunity, and as you say in many cases that could mean throwing away customers to the OSS stack.
Anna :rose: Tech Blog | Visual Lint "Why would anyone prefer to wield a weapon that takes both hands at once, when they could use a lighter (and obviously superior) weapon that allows you to wield multiple ones at a time, and thus supports multi-paradigm carnage?"
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Sadly I know exactly what you mean - I feel exactly as you do. The current MSDN setup is definitely not ISV friendly (the rampaging pricing has certainly seen to that), and neither is their partner programme, which appears to be aimed solely at partners who wish to resell MS product to their clients. Empower appears on paper to be a great idea - but the ISV competancy tests which go with it are an inflexible joke our product couldn't pass no matter what we do (it's native code, and doesn't use Office or XML Web Services. Even MS UK threw up their hands and said "we don't know" at that one). I get the impression that Microsoft's idea of an ISV is an SME with venture capital funding rather than a successful small business of the type you describe. A shame really. They're missing an opportunity, and as you say in many cases that could mean throwing away customers to the OSS stack.
Anna :rose: Tech Blog | Visual Lint "Why would anyone prefer to wield a weapon that takes both hands at once, when they could use a lighter (and obviously superior) weapon that allows you to wield multiple ones at a time, and thus supports multi-paradigm carnage?"
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Sadly I know exactly what you mean - I feel exactly as you do. The current MSDN setup is definitely not ISV friendly (the rampaging pricing has certainly seen to that), and neither is their partner programme, which appears to be aimed solely at partners who wish to resell MS product to their clients. Empower appears on paper to be a great idea - but the ISV competancy tests which go with it are an inflexible joke our product couldn't pass no matter what we do (it's native code, and doesn't use Office or XML Web Services. Even MS UK threw up their hands and said "we don't know" at that one). I get the impression that Microsoft's idea of an ISV is an SME with venture capital funding rather than a successful small business of the type you describe. A shame really. They're missing an opportunity, and as you say in many cases that could mean throwing away customers to the OSS stack.
Anna :rose: Tech Blog | Visual Lint "Why would anyone prefer to wield a weapon that takes both hands at once, when they could use a lighter (and obviously superior) weapon that allows you to wield multiple ones at a time, and thus supports multi-paradigm carnage?"
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It used to rock being a small software developer using Microsoft tools and technology. They supported us all the way with excellent programs like MSDN Universal which for one flat reasonable price gave you every tool the big guys used. They ditched MSDN Universal and I started to notice all sorts of stuff drifting slowly out of reach. For their online mapping solution they have two plans, free for non commercial useage and eye gougingly expensive to the point you need hundreds of thousands of customers to afford. There seems to be no middle ground any more with them. I'm starting to wonder if they just haven't written off smaller ISV's assuming they use open source software and technology and moved their focus to large corporate developers. The problem with that is small ISV's are no reflection of their client base, we focus on small business and we have thousands of customers all over the globe who use our software as an integral part of their business, in fact it causes them to continually upgrade their windows and buy desktop pc's, year after year, more often than not Office to go along with it etc. If I get pushed into the arms of open source and "cloud" development and move our app entirely online Microsoft loses not merely my MSDN subscription but potentially a lot of desktop computer users and their windows licenses and Office licenses etc etc. And I'm sure as hell not going to Microsoft's Azure cloud with it's unreliable, Byzantine pricing structures and policies. (Though I don't know if anyone else is any better at this point.) Maybe as we are all shoved onto Clouds the small ISV is a thing of the past, maybe you have to have a big investment to roll out a new online app. Maybe you can't start out with a couple of guys in a garage any more.
There is no failure only feedback
John C wrote:
Maybe you can't start out with a couple of guys in a garage any more.
Sure you can; you target Android. It just doesn't involve MS anymore. And I feel you're absolutely right on with your comments. :thumbsup:
L u n a t i c F r i n g e
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It used to rock being a small software developer using Microsoft tools and technology. They supported us all the way with excellent programs like MSDN Universal which for one flat reasonable price gave you every tool the big guys used. They ditched MSDN Universal and I started to notice all sorts of stuff drifting slowly out of reach. For their online mapping solution they have two plans, free for non commercial useage and eye gougingly expensive to the point you need hundreds of thousands of customers to afford. There seems to be no middle ground any more with them. I'm starting to wonder if they just haven't written off smaller ISV's assuming they use open source software and technology and moved their focus to large corporate developers. The problem with that is small ISV's are no reflection of their client base, we focus on small business and we have thousands of customers all over the globe who use our software as an integral part of their business, in fact it causes them to continually upgrade their windows and buy desktop pc's, year after year, more often than not Office to go along with it etc. If I get pushed into the arms of open source and "cloud" development and move our app entirely online Microsoft loses not merely my MSDN subscription but potentially a lot of desktop computer users and their windows licenses and Office licenses etc etc. And I'm sure as hell not going to Microsoft's Azure cloud with it's unreliable, Byzantine pricing structures and policies. (Though I don't know if anyone else is any better at this point.) Maybe as we are all shoved onto Clouds the small ISV is a thing of the past, maybe you have to have a big investment to roll out a new online app. Maybe you can't start out with a couple of guys in a garage any more.
There is no failure only feedback
once MS obliterates the market that an ISV operates in, why should they care ?
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It used to rock being a small software developer using Microsoft tools and technology. They supported us all the way with excellent programs like MSDN Universal which for one flat reasonable price gave you every tool the big guys used. They ditched MSDN Universal and I started to notice all sorts of stuff drifting slowly out of reach. For their online mapping solution they have two plans, free for non commercial useage and eye gougingly expensive to the point you need hundreds of thousands of customers to afford. There seems to be no middle ground any more with them. I'm starting to wonder if they just haven't written off smaller ISV's assuming they use open source software and technology and moved their focus to large corporate developers. The problem with that is small ISV's are no reflection of their client base, we focus on small business and we have thousands of customers all over the globe who use our software as an integral part of their business, in fact it causes them to continually upgrade their windows and buy desktop pc's, year after year, more often than not Office to go along with it etc. If I get pushed into the arms of open source and "cloud" development and move our app entirely online Microsoft loses not merely my MSDN subscription but potentially a lot of desktop computer users and their windows licenses and Office licenses etc etc. And I'm sure as hell not going to Microsoft's Azure cloud with it's unreliable, Byzantine pricing structures and policies. (Though I don't know if anyone else is any better at this point.) Maybe as we are all shoved onto Clouds the small ISV is a thing of the past, maybe you have to have a big investment to roll out a new online app. Maybe you can't start out with a couple of guys in a garage any more.
There is no failure only feedback
Why? 1. They have Bizspark/Website spark for new startups. 2. They have Action Pack subscription and empower for ISVs (for old ISVs) 3. Best of all they have partner program - with some customer references and a self-tested software you can get Silver partnership which gives you 25 production license for almost all MS software and 5 licenses for MSDN at a price of $2000 or so. 4. If you want 25 licenses for MSDN (an 100 general purpose licenses) just get your app tested on WinQual and get 10 customer references, you are eligible for gold partnership. This does not beat open-source development using free and open-source tools but it is a bargain if you add up all the licenses of softwares you get for free.
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It used to rock being a small software developer using Microsoft tools and technology. They supported us all the way with excellent programs like MSDN Universal which for one flat reasonable price gave you every tool the big guys used. They ditched MSDN Universal and I started to notice all sorts of stuff drifting slowly out of reach. For their online mapping solution they have two plans, free for non commercial useage and eye gougingly expensive to the point you need hundreds of thousands of customers to afford. There seems to be no middle ground any more with them. I'm starting to wonder if they just haven't written off smaller ISV's assuming they use open source software and technology and moved their focus to large corporate developers. The problem with that is small ISV's are no reflection of their client base, we focus on small business and we have thousands of customers all over the globe who use our software as an integral part of their business, in fact it causes them to continually upgrade their windows and buy desktop pc's, year after year, more often than not Office to go along with it etc. If I get pushed into the arms of open source and "cloud" development and move our app entirely online Microsoft loses not merely my MSDN subscription but potentially a lot of desktop computer users and their windows licenses and Office licenses etc etc. And I'm sure as hell not going to Microsoft's Azure cloud with it's unreliable, Byzantine pricing structures and policies. (Though I don't know if anyone else is any better at this point.) Maybe as we are all shoved onto Clouds the small ISV is a thing of the past, maybe you have to have a big investment to roll out a new online app. Maybe you can't start out with a couple of guys in a garage any more.
There is no failure only feedback
To be honest, I feel that MS's licensing model is now being driven by a lunatic with an axe. Sadly he's got a real grudge and he's pissed.
I'm not a stalker, I just know things. Oh by the way, you're out of milk.
Forgive your enemies - it messes with their heads
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once MS obliterates the market that an ISV operates in, why should they care ?
Well thankfully they haven't done it to us...yet. I'd like to see them try though, our app has been honed over a decade to fit perfectly with the customers who need it. Unless they outright copy us (and many do) it's going to be some time before they can compete.
There is no failure only feedback
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Why? 1. They have Bizspark/Website spark for new startups. 2. They have Action Pack subscription and empower for ISVs (for old ISVs) 3. Best of all they have partner program - with some customer references and a self-tested software you can get Silver partnership which gives you 25 production license for almost all MS software and 5 licenses for MSDN at a price of $2000 or so. 4. If you want 25 licenses for MSDN (an 100 general purpose licenses) just get your app tested on WinQual and get 10 customer references, you are eligible for gold partnership. This does not beat open-source development using free and open-source tools but it is a bargain if you add up all the licenses of softwares you get for free.
Rama, I'm coming at this from the perspective of someone who has been in the biz for over a decade. I *know* what they used to offer and I know what they offer now and there is no comparison. I'm also coming at this as an ISV, a small one. What the hell would a small ISV do with 25 MSDN licenses? If you think that's small you must work for Microsoft. :) Don't even mention Bizspark, it's a slap in the face to experienced shops like ours who have stood the test of time. In fact any business that offers a special deal to new customers and not to their existing ones deserves a slap in the face as well. People are smarter than that, treating them like fools is not good for business. The partner program is a pale shade of the MSDN Universal. If no other company cares more then it's no wonder open source is so popular.
There is no failure only feedback
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Why? 1. They have Bizspark/Website spark for new startups. 2. They have Action Pack subscription and empower for ISVs (for old ISVs) 3. Best of all they have partner program - with some customer references and a self-tested software you can get Silver partnership which gives you 25 production license for almost all MS software and 5 licenses for MSDN at a price of $2000 or so. 4. If you want 25 licenses for MSDN (an 100 general purpose licenses) just get your app tested on WinQual and get 10 customer references, you are eligible for gold partnership. This does not beat open-source development using free and open-source tools but it is a bargain if you add up all the licenses of softwares you get for free.
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Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
empower for ISVs (for old ISVs)
"Important Program Change The Empower for ISVs program is closed to new subscribers"[^]
There is no failure only feedback
But now Action Pack includes some stuff from MSDN which is also good news.
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Why? 1. They have Bizspark/Website spark for new startups. 2. They have Action Pack subscription and empower for ISVs (for old ISVs) 3. Best of all they have partner program - with some customer references and a self-tested software you can get Silver partnership which gives you 25 production license for almost all MS software and 5 licenses for MSDN at a price of $2000 or so. 4. If you want 25 licenses for MSDN (an 100 general purpose licenses) just get your app tested on WinQual and get 10 customer references, you are eligible for gold partnership. This does not beat open-source development using free and open-source tools but it is a bargain if you add up all the licenses of softwares you get for free.
On the surface, yes. But the terms of schemes like Empower (which is closed to new subscribers now, BTW) are incredibly rigid if you want to actually obtain a tested and certified product at the end. That's where we gave up - our product quite simply couldn't pass their tests because it didn't use any of the "new and shiny" technologies (Office, XML Web Services or .NET) which were a mandatory requirement of the testing (a fact that wasn't at all obvious at the outset). Even MS UK couldn't unravel the bureaucratic mess the programme entailed, so what chance did we have? Action Pack isn't what we need; we're not eligible for Bizspark and the Partner Programme seems to assume we want to flog Windows and Office to our customers. That leaves us thinking "Why bother?" about the Partner Programme. I only bother renewing it now because they send me a reminder once a year - we certainly don't seem to obtain any benefit from it.
Anna :rose: Tech Blog | Visual Lint "Why would anyone prefer to wield a weapon that takes both hands at once, when they could use a lighter (and obviously superior) weapon that allows you to wield multiple ones at a time, and thus supports multi-paradigm carnage?"
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Rama, I'm coming at this from the perspective of someone who has been in the biz for over a decade. I *know* what they used to offer and I know what they offer now and there is no comparison. I'm also coming at this as an ISV, a small one. What the hell would a small ISV do with 25 MSDN licenses? If you think that's small you must work for Microsoft. :) Don't even mention Bizspark, it's a slap in the face to experienced shops like ours who have stood the test of time. In fact any business that offers a special deal to new customers and not to their existing ones deserves a slap in the face as well. People are smarter than that, treating them like fools is not good for business. The partner program is a pale shade of the MSDN Universal. If no other company cares more then it's no wonder open source is so popular.
There is no failure only feedback
John C wrote:
, I'm coming at this from the perspective of someone who has been in the biz for over a decade.
Same here! One of the things I did was to drastically reduce the software licensing cost of my company. We were paying around $30,000 for various Microsoft software fr 25 people company. I made the company a MS partner and we got the same software for around $2000. I don't think you have ever tried to become a partner, otherwise you would have known its value.
John C wrote:
The partner program is a pale shade of the MSDN Universal.
Really! MSDN Universal was around $2500 and for only 1 developer. The partner program is around $2000 (new price old one was $1450) for 1-25 developers and guess what - the MSDN subscription from the partner program is the MSDN ultimate. So even for 1 developer company, partner program rocks!
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On the surface, yes. But the terms of schemes like Empower (which is closed to new subscribers now, BTW) are incredibly rigid if you want to actually obtain a tested and certified product at the end. That's where we gave up - our product quite simply couldn't pass their tests because it didn't use any of the "new and shiny" technologies (Office, XML Web Services or .NET) which were a mandatory requirement of the testing (a fact that wasn't at all obvious at the outset). Even MS UK couldn't unravel the bureaucratic mess the programme entailed, so what chance did we have? Action Pack isn't what we need; we're not eligible for Bizspark and the Partner Programme seems to assume we want to flog Windows and Office to our customers. That leaves us thinking "Why bother?" about the Partner Programme. I only bother renewing it now because they send me a reminder once a year - we certainly don't seem to obtain any benefit from it.
Anna :rose: Tech Blog | Visual Lint "Why would anyone prefer to wield a weapon that takes both hands at once, when they could use a lighter (and obviously superior) weapon that allows you to wield multiple ones at a time, and thus supports multi-paradigm carnage?"
Anna-Jayne Metcalfe wrote:
- our product quite simply couldn't pass their tests because it didn't use any of the "new and shiny" technologies
My application passed the tests even when it was using old technologies (MFC/DCOM anyone?). In fact testing is now more relaxed from this year. The cost of testing is $0 (self test). In fact with the new terms I got my partnership renewed faster and easier than ever before. The best thing to happen to my company was to become a MS partner.
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John C wrote:
, I'm coming at this from the perspective of someone who has been in the biz for over a decade.
Same here! One of the things I did was to drastically reduce the software licensing cost of my company. We were paying around $30,000 for various Microsoft software fr 25 people company. I made the company a MS partner and we got the same software for around $2000. I don't think you have ever tried to become a partner, otherwise you would have known its value.
John C wrote:
The partner program is a pale shade of the MSDN Universal.
Really! MSDN Universal was around $2500 and for only 1 developer. The partner program is around $2000 (new price old one was $1450) for 1-25 developers and guess what - the MSDN subscription from the partner program is the MSDN ultimate. So even for 1 developer company, partner program rocks!
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Sorry but it doesn't add up. I was renewing my MSDN for far less than 2000 and a 25 developer company is hardly a small ISV in my mind.
There is no failure only feedback
John C wrote:
Sorry but it doesn't add up. I was renewing my MSDN for far less than 2000
I was using MSDN, tenterprise (or ultimate I forgot what it was called then), and it was close to $3000 or so. How many devs do you have? If you have more than 1 dev you could not possibly get MSDN Universal for $2000 (legally anyway)? Note old cost for partnership program during the days of MSDN universal was $1450.
John C wrote:
a 25 developer company is hardly a small ISV in my mind.
So what? You are getting 25 licenses you may use for 1 or 5 devs it does not matter. In my company I use it for 3 devs right now.
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John C wrote:
Sorry but it doesn't add up. I was renewing my MSDN for far less than 2000
I was using MSDN, tenterprise (or ultimate I forgot what it was called then), and it was close to $3000 or so. How many devs do you have? If you have more than 1 dev you could not possibly get MSDN Universal for $2000 (legally anyway)? Note old cost for partnership program during the days of MSDN universal was $1450.
John C wrote:
a 25 developer company is hardly a small ISV in my mind.
So what? You are getting 25 licenses you may use for 1 or 5 devs it does not matter. In my company I use it for 3 devs right now.
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Anna-Jayne Metcalfe wrote:
- our product quite simply couldn't pass their tests because it didn't use any of the "new and shiny" technologies
My application passed the tests even when it was using old technologies (MFC/DCOM anyone?). In fact testing is now more relaxed from this year. The cost of testing is $0 (self test). In fact with the new terms I got my partnership renewed faster and easier than ever before. The best thing to happen to my company was to become a MS partner.
Is that the Platform Test[^]? If so, it states you have to pass at least one elective test component - none of which are used by our product. This is the same problem as previously - unless you have a newer link?
Anna :rose: Tech Blog | Visual Lint "Why would anyone prefer to wield a weapon that takes both hands at once, when they could use a lighter (and obviously superior) weapon that allows you to wield multiple ones at a time, and thus supports multi-paradigm carnage?"
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John C wrote:
Sorry but it doesn't add up. I was renewing my MSDN for far less than 2000
I was using MSDN, tenterprise (or ultimate I forgot what it was called then), and it was close to $3000 or so. How many devs do you have? If you have more than 1 dev you could not possibly get MSDN Universal for $2000 (legally anyway)? Note old cost for partnership program during the days of MSDN universal was $1450.
John C wrote:
a 25 developer company is hardly a small ISV in my mind.
So what? You are getting 25 licenses you may use for 1 or 5 devs it does not matter. In my company I use it for 3 devs right now.
it still comes down to how many devs you have and what level you're using MSDN at. If you renew yearly the breakeven point is 3 or 4 devs at the baseline subscription levels (Professinal with MSDN Essentials, 549; Professional with MSDN $799), if you're using premium or ultimate it's a no-brainer. If you've decided a subscription is worthless and it's only worth buying MSDN for a new VS iteration then over the last decade you'd've bought MSDN 4x, or once every 2.5 years. At that point you need 5 or 6 devs to break even ($799, $1199) unless you're using premium or higher, in which case it's again a no-brainer. Depending on your workflow you can easily do without all the stuff in premium or higher so it still a bad fit for the smaller shops. I know MS wants to get you hooked on their advanced tools, but not everyone wants/needs the stuff they do.
3x12=36 2x12=24 1x12=12 0x12=18