SoftServe, Inc., provider of software consulting, development, testing and lifecycle services to IT decision-makers, today announced that it recently joined with Microsoft for the BizSpark Incubation Week for Windows Azure. The event was held at the Microsoft Technology Center in Atlanta, Ga. from Nov. 9-13, 2009, with the goal of promoting entrepreneurial evangelism through the development of new applications in the cloud. Incubation Week consisted of brief training, active prototype/development time, and a final day for packaging/finishing and reporting out to a panel of judges for various prizes.

The economic downturn has put many entrepreneurs under increasing pressure, making it critical to locate new resources and ways to reduce costs and inefficiencies. Microsoft BizSpark Incubation Week for Windows Azure was designed to offer assistance to entrepreneurs in multiple ways:

• Helping them learn and build new applications in the cloud or use interoperable services that run on Microsoft infrastructure to extend and enhance existing applications with help of on-site advisors and off-shore development teams;
• Providing entrepreneurs with coaching from guest speakers and a panel of industry experts;
• Generating marketing buzz for participating brands;
• Creating opportunity to be highlighted at upcoming launch.

Microsoft invited seven promising start-ups from the Georgia region to participate in the event. SoftServe was invited as a development partner to help these companies. The SoftServe team included Dmytro Ivanov, software engineering director (on-site) and an offshore team in Lviv, Ukraine, joining Microsoft in conducting this BizSpark session. The team assisted in building around 20 prototypes showcasing the possibilities of Azure over the course of the week.

SoftServe successfully supported six start-up companies during the event (FandomU, LessMeeting, CoreMotives, Izenda, EyeMail and ChasingSavings.com). During only three days of active development, the SoftServe team performed and successfully finished approximately 20 mini-projects, an average of more than three mini-projects per start-up at a rate of more than one mini-project per start-up per day.

This cooperation demonstrated the strength of SoftServe team’s technical consulting capabilities and overall confidence, as well as the ability to understand client needs quickly and to provide support within the short period of time, receiving warm appreciation from the start-up participants and recognition that their support was helpful to achieving their goals for the event.