Free mgmt. software gets network smarts

Industry analysis by Beth Schultz, plus the latest news headlines.

Spiceworks this week made available an updated version of its network and system monitoring application, which IT managers can download and use for free.

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Spiceworks IT Desktop 4.0, which is the vendor’s fourteenth release in the three years since the company was founded, now incorporates network mapping capabilities to provide visual representations of IP devices across a network. Company executives say developers invested much time in adding the intelligence needed to accurately provide network mappings capabilities.

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Spiceworks this week made available an updated version of its network and system monitoring application, which IT managers can download and use for free.

20 free software favorites
9 management apps that won’t bust your budget 

Spiceworks IT Desktop 4.0, which is the vendor’s fourteenth release in the three years since the company was founded, now incorporates network mapping capabilities to provide visual representations of IP devices across a network. Company executives say developers invested much time in adding the intelligence needed to accurately provide network mappings capabilities.

“The number one request we had been getting from customers was about being able to identity hotspots, where the traffic is and how it is being consumed,” says CEO Scott Abel. “The software now has a feature that shows ‘hot views’ of the bandwidth consumption and identify the areas with congestion.”

IT Spiceworks 4.0 also includes the addition of third-party management plug-ins from Microsoft, LiveOffice, Intel and Trend Micro. The software could seem more appealing to SMB IT managers, but company officials continue to extend the product to manage “everything IT.”

“Network maps, Windows event collaboration and social IT helps the islands of IT professionals working on troubleshooting networks and identifying hotspots come together and share knowledge,” Abel explains.

For instance, Spiceworks also now integrates with Twitter and allows users to turn Windows events into social media alerts for collaborative problem-solving and to share real-time trends with the vendor’s network of more than 700,000 registered users in Spiceworks community.

Spiceworks says the updated application will be available for download from its Web site in June.

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Read more about infrastructure management in Network World's Infrastructure Management section.

Schultz is a longtime IT journalist. You can email her or find her here.