Spiceworks Expands into Enabling Purchasing for SMBs

Spiceworks (News - Alert), which provides free network management software for small and medium businesses, is expanding into new areas. That includes providing solutions that help make Spiceworks users’ buying processes easier, Nicole Tanzillo, IT marketing manager, told TMC (News - Alert) today at the ITEXPO event in Austin.

The five-year-old company has built a business by outfitting IT professionals and small business IT providers/VARs/MSPs with software to manage phones, PCs or anything with an IP address. The software enables IT types to do 80 percent of the tasks they need to do related to network and device management and inventory, and people management, according to Tanzillo.

The software is free; Spiceworks makes its money by selling and placing ads within the management dashboard. Networking companies such as Dell (News - Alert), Intel and Rackspace that want to reach the sometimes-elusive SMB IT staff are among the advertisers, Tanzillo said.

The hook for this solution is it provides IT folks, which may have small or one-person IT operations, a community of IT professionals with which to share ideas and get advice. The Spiceworks software has seen more than 1.6 million downloads and a big community of IT folks has collected around it.

And now Spiceworks software also sends alerts if, for example, the toner on a particular printer within the business is low, said Tanzillo. Spiceworks in the future plans to expand that capability by enabling its software to send a purchase order or a request for proposals for that toner ­­– or whatever product (be it a printer cartridge, a new PC, a server, etc.) is needed.

Version 5.1 of the Spiceworks software has tools that automate quotes for proposals to vendors, and those requests can be sent anonymously. Additional related functionality will be available in version 5.2 of the software, which is slated for release in the next month or two.

To find out more about Nicole Tanzillo and Spiceworks, visit the company at ITEXPO West 2011. To be held Sept. 13-15 in Austin, TX, ITEXPO (News - Alert) is the world’s premier IP communications event. Tanzillo is speaking during “Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Cloud: Top 10 Reasons SMB’s Need Not Fear the Cloud.” Don’t wait. Register now.

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