Lots of small, young companies and developers don't seem to know about the Empower offering from Microsoft. For just £260 + VAT you get:
You also get access to ISV Advisory Hours (email support) and MSDN newsgroups and concierge.
All we ask in return is that you have a website to show that you're developing a product and within 18 months of signing up get your product tested - and go on to become a Certified Partner. Once you have a market-ready app, you can qualify to be contacted by our ISV Incubation Team who are on the lookout for great partners and solutions. They can then connect you to things like the SaaS Enablement Program and introduce you to BT, and to the Emerging Business team who can help you find funding.
Worth also checking out the Empower blog that Rob started a few months back while he was managing that program for us. Now that Rob has moved on to manage the BT ISV program, Danny will be hopefully sharing more stories from Empower Land over the coming months. Sunergeo are a good example of a partner that started off in Empower and have now landed some very big enterprise customers and developed great partnerships.
The InnovateON portal is another great way for you to get access to our latest technologies so you can build, test and market 'next gen' apps with our help. From this site you can check out the benefits of Vista, Office 2007, SQL 2005, the Dynamics ERP and CRM suite and even Windows "Longhorn" Server.
Worth knowing I think....