I&#x27;m skeptical.<p>Over the past 5 years or so, Microsoft has lost developers as a core group. There are certainly interesting things happening out of their dev group, but with the rise of Cloud infrastructure, cheap (free) alternatives to WINS stacks rose tremendously in popularity.<p>I was a Seattle Techstars 2013 Founder, and the only two teams using MSFT tech were those whose founders were ex-Microsoft employees.<p>This just feels like a ploy to get developers back on to Microsoft&#x27;s platforms, then slowly bleed them dry with fees.<p>*<p>My experience with the new Microsoft: One of our major products runs on Microsoft SQL Server. Sadly, many developers&#x2F;ops folks did not realize the difference between SQL Server Enterprise, and SQL Server Standard, and opted to install SQL Server Enterprise on servers, despite not using any of the Enterprise features.<p>Not only does SQL Server Standard pricing differ compared to Enterprise, but <i>how</i> it&#x27;s price differs. Enterprise is charged based on a per-core license, requiring both a core license for <i>every</i> core, as well as a minimum of 4-core&#x27;s per physical processor.<p>During a routine Software Audit, MSFT determined we had quite a few more SQL Server Enterprise installs than we licensed, so sent us a nice fat bill. We asked for leniency. It was a mistake (ours of course), but we didn&#x27;t use any of SQL Server Enterprise features.<p>MSFT wanted no part of that.<p>So we ponied up our bill, and decided to never use MSFT tech again.<p>Contrast that with AWS. Due to developer error, we had one of our AWS keys compromised and an attacker used it to mine bitcoins. Amazon sent us the bill. We contacted them, and they gave us a one-time forgiveness.<p>*<p>The morale of this story: Use microsoft technology at your own peril. Also, having developers handle infrastructure is cool, but don&#x27;t discount the value of a dedicated infra team.