[mark_l_watson]

Great offer.

I was accepted into Microsoft's BizSpark program last year so I get $150/month free Azure credit. Azure is very nice to use. So far, I have just been using Ubuntu Linux VPS instances (similar to AWS EC2) and everything works similarly to other providers I use like AWS, IBM BlueMix, Digital Ocean, and Google's cloud services. Really, these are all very good services, so use the one you can get for free or at a low cost.

I used to be pretty much down on Microsoft, but now they are doing a lot of stuff right in my opinion: providing solid Linux support on Azure and providing an unbelievably good deal on the family edition of Office365. It seems like they are buying themselves into the cloud market, but with all of their cash on hand, that seems like a good strategy!

Anyway, if you have a business idea you want to try then look into BizSpark.

[city41]

You can actually get $600/month in Azure credit. Your BizSpark account allows up to 4 users, and each gets $150/month.

EDIT: correction, it looks like it's actually 5 users: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/niallsblog/archive/2014/08/22/activa...