Unofficial Spiceworks

So recently you may have seen a stream of tweets along the lines off “Spiceworks Launches Cloud Partner Program” and wondering what its all about and when its all going to be ready?

This new partner program is designed to bring cloud service management into one place making it easier for the 1 million SpiceHeads to manage cloud services like Rackspace email. As more services have moved into the cloud more IT pro’s have found it harder to manage there wide range of networks:

“As my company adds more and more cloud services, switching between 10 different web-based portals to monitor and provision cloud resources is not an efficient approach to cloud management,” said Justin Davison, Systems Engineer, RJ Lee Group. “With Spiceworks, I can learn about new cloud services and then manage the ones I use in the same place I manage all my in-house IT assets.”

This new program was released at the GigaOm Structure conference by Scott Abel:

“Our new Reach partner program offers cloud vendors a simple and effective way to make their offerings instantly available to over 20 percent of SMB IT professionals worldwide,” said Scott Abel, co-founder and CEO of Spiceworks. “It’s a win for them and for small and medium businesses, which represent one of the fastest growing markets for cloud computing services.”

The program is designed to help Spiceworks accomplish their mission to simplify everything IT, to try and engage as many vendors as possible they have designed 3 levels of participation:

• Cloud Services Inventory and Monitoring – This is the basic level and gives account and service information to users ready to be monitored.
• Cloud Management Plug-ins – Stepping it up a level this allows vendors to have a plug-in which provides granular management and monitoring capabilities. Over 140 Spiceworks management plug-ins are currently available for both cloud services and on-premise technology, including the Storage Advisor sponsored by EMC and the Maintenance Manager sponsored by Intel.
• Cloud Service Distribution – The most involved level, this allows people to add, manage and monitor cloud services within the Spiceworks application. Giving SpiceHeads near complete control of there cloud services. Some companies have already taken this up like Rackspace’s Cloud Email Services and LogMeIn Rescue.

There are a few more vendors planned to get involved in version 5.0 and we can’t wait to see who these are. As always as soon as we get some information we will share it.

Checkout the Spiceworks Press Release for more information.