Extraordinary Deal for ISVs from Microsoft

I joined the Microsoft "Empower Program for ISVs" this morning. I was already a Microsoft Action Pack subscriber, which is an extraordinary deal for any small IT services company. I'm starting a move toward being an ISV... actually, I've been starting it for a while, as previously noted here, taking small steps. The Empower program is the biggest step so far, because it makes a contractual committment to Microsoft to develop a product based on their technology. It will be IBM-related, because that's my specialty, but it will definitely use Microsoft technology.

The Action Pack deal is just incredible: $399 for a whole raft of Microsoft Software, with valid internal use licenses for most Microsoft servers and ten CALs for each, plus ten licenses for most Microsoft operating systems and productivity applications... including Project and Visio. The Empower program is an even better value. For $375, you get internal use and development license for one MSDN Universal Subscription, plus licenses and CALs for W2K and W2K3 servers, Exchange 2K, SQL Server 2K, and SharePoint Portal, plus 5 client operating system and Office licenses. Certainly, between the two programs, you get just about everything you could possibly need to start doing serious Microsoft work -- including of course integrating Microsoft and IBM technologies.