SPLA Resellers: Grow Your Business with New Opportunities and Greater Incentives

As a Services Provider Licensing Agreement (SPLA) reseller you play an integral role in the success of Microsoft’s Windows web hosting platform. Alongside the launch of Hosting University (Hosting U.), Microsoft has made a significant investment in growing your business by improving its products and offering better licensing options that you can pass along to your customers.

Now Microsoft’s new productivity program for resellers provides greater incentives for your business and better solutions for your SPLA customers.

Growing Market for SPLA Resellers

Millions of .NET developers already use Windows Web Server, and now you can reach more customers by running both ASP.NET and PHP on the Windows Platform. Currently, nearly 250,000 web developers influence over two million Web servers. Over a quarter of them use PHP and need only two servers or less. Forty percent of WebVAPs self-host and will consider switching to Windows if it offers PHP support and greater visibility for their business.

Additionally, Microsoft has registered over 12,000 Web developers through its BizSpark program BizSpark program and another 9,000 in our recently launched WebsiteSpark program. These partners will bring new web services to market and will require licenses from companies like yours.

Improved Licensing Options

In addition to SPLA, Microsoft’s licensing program now offers another way to license Microsoft products: SPLA Essentials, a simplified and affordable licensing option with limited program rights. With SPLA Essentials you can target small to mid-sized hosting organizations, Web developers. and WebVAPs.

SPLA Essentials offers the same pricing and usage rights as SPLA, but with a streamlined online enrollment and a single Web resource to manage your licenses, report monthly usage, and place orders. (Note that reselling SPLA Essentials requires you to opt-in by selecting the relevant option in your online tool.)

New Commission Model for Increased Account Reporting

In addition to a bigger market and tailored licensing options, you can now receive greater rewards for increasing your productivity, calculated as the ratio of your accounts to the number of your accounts reporting revenue.

By increasing the number of your SPLA customers reporting revenue, you can qualify for additional rebate points in addition to the current 10% rebate for timely reporting and payment.

Better Services for Your Customers

As a SPLA reseller you are your SPLA account’s first resource for content on how to build out the Microsoft hosting infrastructure. Microsoft Hosting University (Hosting U.) helps you provide better solutions for your SPLA customers in an integrated Web resource where your SPLA customers can learn how to build, manage, and scale their hosting infrastructure on the Windows Web Platform.

Hosting University (Hosting U.) is a free educational resource for the SPLA community. At Hosting U. your SPLA customers can learn how to customize open Windows solutions to their needs, build for specific scenarios like PHP on Windows. And your SPLA customers can build solutions with specific Microsoft products and technologies including Windows 7, ASP, IIS and Silverlight –step-by-step from scratch.

In the coming weeks, Hosting University will offer a new module dedicated to the SPLA reseller curriculum. Stay tuned.