Spiceworks Helps 400,000 Small Businesses Share the Wisdom of the Crowds to Manage Everything IT
New â??Crowdsourcingâ? Features Connect Users to IT Management Best Practices, Reports and Advice on Products and Services
AUSTIN, Texas (July 23, 2008) –
Today at the AlwaysOn & Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP) Summit at Stanford conference, Spiceworks(TM), Inc. announced the addition of new crowdsourcing features to the Spiceworks IT Desktop, the industry’s first free collaborative IT management application for small and medium businesses. The new features – called SpiceLists – enable users to collaboratively develop, share, and rank IT best practices, products and services, and reports – making it even easier for them to manage their networks. The SpiceLists address one of the biggest problems facing IT pros in small businesses today – how to quickly and easily connect with people like themselves in order to find the products, services and information they need to solve their unique IT issues.
“Crowdsourcing has brought tremendous benefits to the consumer world and it’s now doing the same for the average small business IT manager like me,” said Martin Peverley, IT Manager, Bihler of America, Inc. “By assembling the collective experience, knowledge and ratings from thousands of IT professionals around the world and letting the best rise to the top, Spiceworks is making it easier for me to get my job done.”
The crowdsourcing features of Spiceworks put IT pros one click away from 400,000 other small businesses just like them. With SpiceLists they can:
* Share Advice: This includes the ability to collaborate on daily tasks and best practices. The SpiceLists allow community members to capture, rank and rate the best of these practices on wide range of topics, including deploying Microsoft Vista, the best ways to back up servers, and the 10 best anti-virus solutions. Over 300 groups are active in different industries, geographies and IT interest areas.
* Find the Best Products and Services: This feature allows users to find the products and services preferred most by other IT pros like them. With access to ratings and reviews of their favorites and summaries of usage in the Spiceworks network, they can easily see which products and services would best work in their environments. So far more than 5,000 reviews of products and services are available via http://community.spiceworks.com/reviews.
* Share Reports: Spiceworks ships with dozens of reports out-of-the-box, and now allows users to create and share their own custom reports with 400,000 other IT pros like themselves. Users can easily browse shared reports, search for specific solutions, and download and install these reports – all in a single click. In less than a month, beta users have more than tripled the number of reports available within the Spiceworks community.
“Sharing community brain power is part of the DNA of Web 2.0 applications,” said Scott Abel, co-founder and CEO of Spiceworks, Inc. “It’s built into the Spiceworks IT Desktop through crowdsourcing capabilities like embedded product ratings, reviews and now our new SpiceLists. Making community collaboration an integral part of the daily workflow helps ensure our users are not alone in their quest to simplify everything IT.”
The Spiceworks IT Desktop is designed for small and medium organizations with up to 250 employees. The more than 400,000 Spiceworks users worldwide use this free IT management application to automatically discover, inventory, monitor, track, report on, troubleshoot and repair the hardware and software running in their networks. It also provides a built-in help desk, remote control capability, and is the first business application to embed crowdsourcing and community collaboration features directly into the workflow. The free Spiceworks application is supported by displaying relevant, non-intrusive ads on topics that are useful to IT professionals.
The latest version of the Spiceworks IT Desktop 3.0, which includes new crowdsourcing features, is currently available for download for free at www.spiceworks.com.
About Spiceworks
Founded by network and systems management software pioneers, Spiceworks develops the first free collaborative IT management application that incorporates crowdsourcing to help over 400,000 small businesses simplify everything IT. Spiceworks makes it easy for IT pros to manage their networks, collaborate to solve technology problems, and find the best practices, products and services they need day-to-day. Spiceworks is a privately held company headquartered in Austin, Texas with funding from Austin Ventures and Shasta Ventures. For more information visit www.spiceworks.com.
###
Spiceworks is a trademark of Spiceworks, Inc. All other names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.
Media Contact:
Karl Scholz
For Spiceworks
karl.scholz@virtualprdirector.com
(512) 493-0909
Source: Spiceworks