Free Spiceworks IT mgmt s/w for larger firms

AUSTIN, USA: Spiceworks Inc. announced that the Spiceworks IT Desktop, the industry’s first free crowdsourced IT management application for small and medium businesses, is now able to support organizations with 500 devices, double the previous recommended limit.

With new capabilities, such as improved performance, granular network scans, and integration with other network management tools such as Nagios, larger organizations can now use the Spiceworks IT Desktop to manage more of their day-to-day network and system management needs.

“More than 20,000 organizations with over 250 devices already rely on Spiceworks to handle many of their IT management tasks,” said Scott Abel, CEO of Spiceworks. “The new capabilities we’ve added today at their request will make it easier for them to use Spiceworks to do even more for free.”

Some of the big improvements made to the Spiceworks IT Desktop include the ability to handle the increased uptime and performance requirements that larger organizations require as well as the thousands of help desk trouble tickets they generate. In addition, users can now prioritize and customize scans of their networks at the subnet level, allowing IT pros who manage more complicated networks to better control their scans.

The new capabilities are part of the most recent release of the Spiceworks IT Desktop version 3.5 with features for organizations of all sizes including:

Nagios Integration and External Alert Processing: Organizations using the Nagios open source platform and other network management tools to manage real-time monitoring of servers and other critical devices can now receive alerts from those tools through their Spiceworks IT Desktop workflow. This single integrated view of their network and systems alerts reduces the number of tools users have to learn and bounce between in order to monitor their IT environments.

Custom SQL Reporting and Widgets: Users can now create custom SQL reports with a built-in SQL editor. Reports can include graphical displays and be exported as widgets on any Spiceworks Dashboard page. Users can also share widgets and reports with other members of the Spiceworks community to help them improve IT operations.

Network Bandwidth Analyzer: This feature allows users to track bandwidth usage for individual network devices. Graphs include summaries of incoming and outgoing traffic for devices over a period of time allowing IT professionals to identify network bottlenecks and solve bandwidth problems within Spiceworks.

The Spiceworks IT Desktop is a free IT management application designed for small and medium organizations with up to 500 devices. More than 500,000 IT professionals worldwide use the Spiceworks IT Desktop to automatically inventory, monitor, troubleshoot, report on and run a help desk for their IT networks. It is the first business application to embed crowdsourcing and community collaboration features directly into an IT professional’s daily workflow.

The latest version of the Spiceworks IT Desktop is available for free at www.spiceworks.com.