Spiceworks, the online community for IT professionals, is pushing far deeper into cloud-based IT monitoring and network management tools. The new Spiceworks offerings will let IT pros "inventory network assets, investigate connectivity issues, and spot internet outages within a matter of seconds," the company asserts.
The initial offerings are available in standalone mode, but will soon be "integrated to deliver more advanced network inventory, monitoring, and troubleshooting functionality," the company said. Spiceworks didn't say whether multi-tenant capabilities for MSPs are on the way.
Spiceworks Monitoring, Management Tools
The Spiceworks offerings, unveiled at Spiceworld 2016, include:
- IP Scanner discovers the devices on organizations’ networks, including laptops, desktops, mobile devices, printers, and other IP-enabled devices. The application details devices’ hostname, IP address, MAC address, and operating system. IT professionals can use the IP Scanner to map their IT infrastructure, find missing networked devices, or discover devices that shouldn’t be connected to their network, the company said.
- Internet Outage Heatmap pinpoints geographically where an Internet outage or service interruption exists and assigns colors to show various levels of latency in regions across the globe, Spiceworks said.
- Traceroute details the Internet connectivity path between a device and a specified endpoint, such as a server, application, cloud provider, or Internet service provider (ISP). Users can troubleshoot latency issues and identify where a connection is slow or broken, the company said.
- Website Down Checker identifies if a website is generally unavailable or just unavailable on a specific network.
- SSL Checker helps IT professionals maintain secure web traffic to corporate websites, the company said.
Spiceworks recently released additional networking applications, including Connectivity Dashboard, IP Lookup, Port Scanner and Tester, and Blacklist Check, that can also be used as standalone solutions or used together for more advanced functionality, the company said.
Spiceworks Business Model Evolution
Spiceworks originally was an online community with some IT management capabilities. The Spiceworks IT Desktop a free IT management application designed for small and medium organizations with up to 250 employees, dates back roughly a decade or so.
But by June 2016, the company began to pivot toward cloud-based management tools. At the time, Spiceworks confirmed some layoffs while also describing its move toward more purpose-built IT management tools.
