Rackspace Hosting, the world's leader in hosting, today announced it has joined Microsoft's BizSpark programme to help South African start-up businesses.
The programme means local small business entrepreneurs and start-up enterprises aiming to reach their markets and deliver their products and services via the Internet, using Software as a Service (SaaS), now have the opportunity to obtain free use of Microsoft development tools, production SPLA licences and Web hosting services.
The hosting services are available from Rackspace, a global partner in Microsoft's international BizSpark entrepreneurial development programme, the South African version of which was formally launched in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town last month.
Head of the platform and developer group at Microsoft South Africa, David Ives, said hosting is a critical component of BizSpark for new and existing small companies aiming to deliver their products and solutions over the Web. Rackspace's participation, not just in South Africa but also in the US, the UK and Europe, was welcomed.
“This is a great opportunity for the local entrepreneurs and the South African emerging business market in general to obtain low-cost solutions that will quickly and efficiently deliver their products and services to the market, as well as foster fresh ideas in terms of software and Web development. We believe we have the best enablement tools for this.”
Ives added that the key objective for BizSpark in South Africa is to enable and support the local software economy. “Enabling the IT sector is an area specified by the South African government for support and the encouragement of further development.”
South African entrepreneurs and start-up enterprises are encouraged to contact the BizSpark programme for assistance through Microsoft or Rackspace.
“BizSpark provides free software and through a hosting partner such as Rackspace, free hosted production SPLA licences for up to three years, subject to meeting the laid down criteria of the programme,” said Rackspace channel and strategic alliances partner Brian Garvey.
“However, the company must be privately held, be in the business of software development and have an annual turnover of less than US$1 million (about R10 million). By taking out the cost of software and Web hosting, the savings to the start-up company can be quite substantial, and it can allocate more to implementing its business plan and progress more quickly into a production environment.”
Garvey added that the BizSpark annual target is to bring up to 100 companies into the scheme and create 1 000 new jobs, while 20 companies that show real promise can enter a special “incubator” programme.
“There is no doubt that some of these start-up companies will ultimately become very substantial enterprises. The whole concept and fit is perfect for Rackspace because our services assist in achieving scalability and provide exceptionally high availability and reliability for online businesses. We also have a history and track record with start-up ventures and Web developers.”
The return on investment from the BizSpark programme is a long-term one, based on several objectives, including the development of a new pipeline of start-ups that will grow into larger enterprises using selected Microsoft operating systems, databases and application software to help build their own Internet SaaS applications.
BizSpark also aims to provide free Microsoft software to developers who learn about Microsoft software and may go on to create large hosted production scale Web applications, as well as to increase the uptake and knowledge of Server 2008, SQL 2008 and other more recent Microsoft products.
Garvey said Rackspace is involved as a global partner because start-ups are proving to be very innovative, and will create many new and exciting applications. “One of the critical needs of a start-up is a scalable and secure hosting environment. Rackspace is already home to thousands of start-up organisations, which rely on the company's ethos of 'Fanatical Support' to help them deliver to their customer base, retain customers and plan and scale new infrastructure quickly.
“More importantly, Rackspace transforms start-up upfront infrastructure capital expenditure into a single monthly manageable cost, preserving the start-up's cash and credit lines for other important tasks such as speeding up development and deployment cycles, which generate revenue through up-sell, safe in the knowledge the infrastructure is taken care of 24x7x365 by Rackspace.”
In the BizSpark programme, a start-up can download free Microsoft software for development, test and demonstration purposes and use Microsoft software hosted “production licences” free of charge for up to three years. A BizSpark network hosting partner such as Rackspace provides hosted servers onto which BizSpark SPLA software licences are installed.
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