Spiceworks' newest version of its free IT management software boasts expanded
features—including real-time SQL Server monitoring, enhanced scan scheduling,
editable network maps, help desk queues and SSL
support—designed to help users manage networks of up to 1,000 computers.
The Spiceworks IT Desktop is a free social IT management application used by
organizations to automatically inventory, monitor, troubleshoot, report on and
run a help desk for their IT networks.
Features available in this 17th release of the Spiceworks IT Desktop
software include real-time monitoring of key SQL Server performance metrics,
including transaction load, I/O throughput, disk space consumption and dynamic
scan control, allowing individual and customized scans by device, subnet and
department. Better support for remote locations is also included.
In addition, the software offers full SSL
encryption to provide greater security within organizations and for MSPs and
businesses using the software to remotely manage multiple offices and locations.
It also provides the ability to create and view multiple network maps, edit
existing network elements and add new elements, change the layout and
organization of the elements, and add annotations.
“Our user base continues to grow not only in number but in the size and
complexity of the networks our software helps manage,” said Scott Abel,
co-founder and CEO of Spiceworks. “These
larger organizations have asked us for more sophisticated IT management
capabilities typically found only in products that cost thousands of dollars
and take days or weeks to implement. Today we’re delivering several of their
most popular feature requests and look forward to adding more in the coming
months.”
Other features include help desk routing and queuing, which allows users to
group and work on help desk tickets based on the content or source of the
ticket—such as “all printer problems” or “tickets from the marketing
organization.” Rules can be based on any data attribute in the system,
including title, summary, source, severity, employee or user-defined
attributes.
The latest version also expands international support, offering translations
of the Spiceworks software in more than 10 languages, including German,
Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, Danish and Croatian. All
translations were crowdsourced by the Spiceworks user community, the company
noted.
In November, Spiceworks released a plug-in for its free social IT management
software application, which enables IT professionals to automatically regulate
the power consumption of networked computers. The downloadable Power Manager
plug-in—developed in cooperation with Intel—is designed to link everyday
network and systems management tasks with green IT initiatives. The company
estimates that if half its 800,000 users worldwide deploy the new power
management plug-in, they could save more than $500 million in annual
electricity costs and eliminate 3 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions.
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