Spiceworks (News - Alert) announced that it has added new crowd sourcing features to the Spiceworks IT Desktop. This is a free collaborative IT management application for small and medium businesses. The new features are included as SpiceLists and they enable users to develop, share and rank IT practices, products, services and reports collaboratively. This allows easy management of networks.

 

The SpiceLists would help solve problems faced by IT pros in small businesses and enable the rapid and easy connection between people including themselves for finding products, services and information required for solving their typical 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 enable IT pros to come together including several thousand small businesses. The SpiceLists provides Share Advice service which includes the ability to collaborate on best practices and daily tasks. Community members can capture, rank and rate best practices on several topics. This includes deploying Microsoft (News - Alert) Vista, the best way to back up servers besides 10 best anti-virus solutions. The service encompasses various industries, geographies and IT interest areas.

 

Best products and services can be located by the IT pros. Ratings and reviews in the Spiceworks network indicate which products or services work best and which will be most suitable for them. Spiceworks allow creation and sharing of custom reports among IT pros. Shared reports can be browsed so as to search for specific solutions besides downloading and installing the reports.

 

“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 most suitable for small and medium organizations with about 250 employees. Spiceworks users use this free IT management applications for discovering, 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 business application to embed crowdsourcing and community collaboration features directly into the workflow. This free service is supported by advertisements which are relevant to IT professionals and are non-intrusive at the same time.