DreamSpark, BizSpark Programs Help Students, Startups

The DreamSpark program has added high school students to those who qualify for Microsoft professional-level developer and design tools at no charge.  Both college and high school students can chase their dreams and create the next big breakthrough in technology - or just get a head start on your career. If you know of students who qualify, send them to DreamSpark site to get starated. Students can get XNA Game Studio, Visual Studio 2008 Professional, Windows Server 2008 Standard, It Academy Student Pass for Free Training, SQL Server 2008 Developer, and more.

And for software startups, there's Microsoft BizSpark. BizSpark is an innovative new program that unites Startups with entrepreneurial and technology resources in a global community with a common goal of supporting and accelerating the success of a new generation of high-potential Startups. If your primary business is softwre development, been in business less than three years, and have less than a million dollars in annual revenue, you can qualify. Startups must also be developing a new “software as a service” solution (on any platform) to be delivered over the Internet. And one of the benefits is access to software developer tools at very very low cost.

BizSpark participants can be either the small businesses or providers of services to small businesses. For more information, see BizSpark.

And if your software business is larger than that, in my next blog post, I'll describe big discounts available for Visual Studio and MSDN subscriptions for you too.