The Planet Blog

When it comes time for a small business to take the plunge into the world of dedicated servers, one of the key deciding factors is price — especially given the current economic climate. Budgetary concerns often dictate which platforms and resources can be incorporated into a project, despite a developer’s comfort zone or personal preference. If you come from a background of doing .Net programming on a Windows 2008 server with SQL Server databases, having a CentOS budget could make the starting part of your startup pretty difficult. But now, there’s a solution.

To cut the cost factor out of the initial decision-making process for new software development companies, Microsoft started a program called BizSpark. BizSpark lowers the barrier to entry for many of Microsoft’s enterprise platforms and solutions like Visual Studio, BizTalk, SharePoint and Systems Center by providing eligible companies with free access to the software for up to three years.

Eligibility requirements, as outlined by Microsoft, are simple and direct. A company must be actively engaged in the development of a software-based product or service; the company must be privately held and in business for less than three years; and it must generate less than U.S. $1 million in annual revenue.

As we announced yesterday, The Planet joined Microsoft in the BizSpark program as a Hosting Partner, so we want to get the word out to everyone about this great opportunity. If you’ve got a qualifying company looking to control your costs while taking advantage of the Microsoft family of products, visit http://www.theplanet.com/bizspark to get details on how we can help you obtain an enterprise-level development platform in no time at all.

For additional information about the BizSpark program, check out Microsoft’s startup program guide. If you have questions about how the program can benefit your company, leave a comment here or get in touch with The Planet sales team, and we’ll get you an answer.

-Mark

Do you remember how you felt as the school year came to a close and summer peaked over the horizon?

For me, it was a strange combination of exhilaration, anxiousness and terror. The catalyst for those emotions was always a singular nemesis: the report card.

Being a bit of a nerd (please keep the commentary about this to a minimum, thank you), my report card was generally regarded as my life’s unequivocal barometer of success. My two or three months of summer could be made or broken by that piece of paper, and I have to admit that I didn’t always do well:

Yes, that is an A-. No, it is not a typo. An entire class boiled down into a single grade. How arbitrary and unfair can you get? … The other three grades were clearly thoughtful and accurate. What’s was the International Finance professor’s problem?!

No, I’m not actually that vain.

That’s an actual excerpt from my college transcript, and the grades weren’t arbitrary … I worked hard and prepared for class day-in and day-out, so my benchmark validated the time and effort I invested in each class … even International Finance.

It turns out grades are often directly correlated with preparation, and they can be extremely useful in personal development and business development if you ask the right questions.

Over the past few months, The Planet has been working with Microsoft, SmallBizTechnology.com, Nine Lives Media Inc., SMB Nation, Small Business Trends, HostSearch, Yankee Group and Georgia’s Kennesaw State University to put together a survey tool aimed at asking the right questions to small- and medium-sized businesses.

Welcome to the ITEI

The Information Technology Effectiveness Index (ITEI) is a survey that evaluates the effectiveness of an SMB IT infrastructure.

The vast majority of research from analyst firms focuses on large enterprise-type organizations with deep pockets and vast IT resources to support their businesses. In contrast, SMBs are largely ignored, despite the fact they drive our economy.

After taking the survey, you immediately receive your grade, along with prescriptive guidance and recommendations on how you can improve your IT effectiveness.

With questions about everything from business continuity and disaster recovery to change management and budgeting, the ITEI is has been built to provide relevant, helpful feedback and best practices to the SMB market.

As we gain critical mass, you can receive research on how they compete against others in your peer groups and in comparison with other types of SMB companies. We will run the survey throughout 2009, issuing periodic news on what we learn. In December, the partnership will issue an annual report about the state-of-the-state of IT effectiveness.

The survey is 12 questions long and only takes about 10 minutes to complete. So what are you waiting for?

Go get your ITEI grade!

-Kevin