In my company we had a bizspark softwares from microsoft, and as we understood that this will help us to lower our webhosting payments, and also some development software costs.
Now my issue that we have already a dedicated server, we pay for it monthly, this server contain windows server 2008 and SQL server 2005, and pay a lot monthly for both of them.
My question is, using softwares and os I got from bizspark can I replace these on the server with bizspark ones? Should I ask the hosting company and they will replace? or should I buy a new empty dedicated web hosting and then give the hosting company my bizspark softwares to install there which will decrease my payments too much?
Please advice I am really confused how to gain the most from this bizspark because it seams that microsoft is trying to help too much but we can't gain.
Also please check this URL, from ScottGu's blog, it may help.
Yes and no, some hosting providers will allow you to use your bizspark licenses...others will not. If you have a dedicated server (and have full access to it), you can just install your own licenses(and report it to MS at each year end), that is what I did. It can save you a ton of money on production licenses...at least for the first 3 years.
Access to those MSDN licenses that you get via BizSpark are worth gold. They will save you thousands of dollars annually for dev server licenses and Visual Studio licenses.
Just recently Amazon Web Services have started allowing you to add your Bizspark id and receive Windows EC2 instances for the price of the Linux ones.