Enhanced service offerings to small businesses

SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA: Supportminds, a technical support provider focused on small-businesses and consumers, has announced that it will begin using a co-branded version of the Spiceworks IT Desktop to offer enhanced technical support services to SupportMinds' Small Business customers.

The Spiceworks IT Desktop, the industry's first free, ad-supported IT management software, will be tapped to extend Supportminds' Small Business tech support offering to include additional features, such as network inventory, reporting, monitoring and troubleshooting.

Supportminds currently targets small businesses in the US and Canada with its Remote Technology IT Helpdesk services. Its help desk service covers support for five to over 50 PCs and connected devices and provides clients with an option to log unlimited web-tickets during the subscription period. Its remote and telephone assistance includes support across multiple products including PCs, laptops, scanners, printers, routers, modems and other connected devices.

The additional network monitoring services offered through its agreement with Spiceworks are available as part of Supportminds two annual subscriptions - Supportminds Business Standard and Business Lite.

The Spiceworks IT Desktop is an ad-supported IT management solution designed for small and medium organizations with networks of up to 250 devices. Core product features include the ability to automatically discover, inventory, monitor, track and report on the hardware and software running in a network while having access to an integrated help desk and IT expert community collaboration capabilities.

Commenting on the partnership with Spiceworks, Raghu Raman, vice president, Supportminds said: "We looked for the right IT management application to help us to better serve the network management needs of our customers and we found the ideal partner in Spiceworks. We believe our customers across US and Canada, many of whom don't have full-time IT staff, will benefit greatly from the proactive management capabilities the Spiceworks IT Desktop will allow us to deliver alongside our current service offerings."

Supportminds will leverage a co-branded version Spiceworks IT Desktop to discover the hardware and software on customer network including workstations, servers, routers, printers, IP-based device, and software and patches. This will assist Supportminds in identifying workstations and servers with low disk space, presence of unwanted software, status of anti-virus updates, printers with low toner and ink levels and offline servers.

Supportminds will also use the software to compare machines' configurations and spot servers running out of capacity helping to solve problems more quickly and even help prevent problems entirely.

In addition, the co-branded version of the Spiceworks IT Desktop will allow Supportminds to create warning checks against license violations or un-patched machines. Supportminds engineers will also receive email alerts about potential issues to take appropriate action. The company will also create custom reports for tracking and publish selected reports for the customer to access.

Jay Hallberg, co-founder and vice president of marketing for Spiceworks, Inc. said: "Like Supportminds, Spiceworks is focused on making IT management easier for small businesses everywhere. Our combined service offerings will provide a powerful support and management solution that will help thousands of small business networks operate more smoothly and efficiently."