Start-up offers free management tool

Spiceworks IT Desktop will monitor systems and nets for free, as long as IT managers don't mind ads running in the GUI.

A start-up intends to shake up the IT management market for small to midsize businesses by making its monitoring software available for free.

The catch is that customers of Spiceworks' IT Desktop have to let technology-related ads, via Google AdSense, appear on their management console screens.

Spiceworks says its software can be used to manage networks with as many as 250 devices. The agentless application provides inventory, status and monitoring data on network systems, the company says.

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A start-up intends to shake up the IT management market for small to midsize businesses by making its monitoring software available for free.

The catch is that customers of Spiceworks' IT Desktop have to let technology-related ads, via Google AdSense, appear on their management console screens.

Spiceworks says its software can be used to manage networks with as many as 250 devices. The agentless application provides inventory, status and monitoring data on network systems, the company says.

Spiceworks, founded in January by former executives of management automation software company Motive, garnered $5 million in venture funding in June. The start-up says the bulk of its revenue will come from the clickable ads featured in its IT Desktop console program. Users will see a list of clickable ads regarding the subject they are monitoring, though more than three-quarters of the screen will still be devoted to the management program.

For instance, if an IT manager is checking the status of a storage device, the links listed could point to data backup and recovery companies. When users click on the links, advertisers pay Spiceworks a fee.

"We will get paid for referring that person that clicked on the ad to the online Web site," explains Jay Hallberg, Spiceworks founder and vice president of marketing, and former vice president of product management at Motive.

About 200 users have downloaded and participated in an alpha testing program.

Spiceworks IT Desktop software installs on an IT manager's workstation and inventories systems, clients and other IP-based devices through agentless discovery methods using open protocols such as Windows Management Instrumentation and Secure Shell.

The software is best suited for SMBs, according to CEO Scott Abel, who says he saw a gap in network and system-management products available from industry veterans such as BMC Software, CA, HP and IBM Tivoli. It's not a full-blown enterprise management platform, and would more likely compete with applications from AdventNet, Alloy Software and Solarwinds.

Will Ballard, vice president and CTO of another start-up called Pluck, downloaded Spiceworks IT Desktop about five weeks ago to help him keep tabs on dynamic DNS updates - which can make a device unavailable and cause network tests to break down. Ballard supports about 40 servers, 30 workstations and 30 employees at the Web-based company, which helps traditional publishing companies adopt Web tools such as blogging, podcasting and other online community-building programs. He says he tracks application performance by monitoring response time from external sources, and relies on Spiceworks to monitor internal systems.

For Lee Colvin, network administrator at Nanocoolers, Spiceworks software helps him "generate a detailed network map including software applications installed on all machines connected to the network," which includes eight servers and 32 workstations.

Despite the unpopularity of adware - and the more malicious spyware - Spiceworks users seem unfazed by the ads populating the management interface.