Comments on: Q&A with Scott Abel of Spiceworks

By: jmjames

jmjames — Tue, 13 May 2008 17:06:10 +0000

It also speaks to a design flaw with the software we are using on this site, each display of the comment widget should have a unique ID attached to it, to prevent double posting ("if I already posted a ocmment from this comment widget instance, reject the post").

J.Ja

By: nuCrash

nuCrash — Tue, 13 May 2008 16:43:45 +0000

By: nuCrash

nuCrash — Tue, 13 May 2008 16:43:24 +0000

I fail again… and again

By: nuCrash

nuCrash — Tue, 13 May 2008 16:42:44 +0000

Even though the application is free, I don’t like the fact that I have to register to their server to use an ad based product, which I understand, but I also for some reason have the concern of the product also being able to push some of the inventory data back. Do I really want to invite this software into my facility.

By: jmjames

jmjames — Tue, 13 May 2008 15:59:31 +0000

From my contact with Spiceworks, I beleive that they have enough integrity to not do that without making you aware of it in giant, bold letters. I suppose you can simply firewall the PC running Spiceworks and block it from sending data outside of your network, if that was a major concern.

J.Ja

By: nuCrash

nuCrash — Tue, 13 May 2008 15:54:37 +0000

By: nuCrash

nuCrash — Tue, 13 May 2008 15:50:28 +0000

By: jmjames

jmjames — Fri, 09 May 2008 20:46:41 +0000

Dre -

All good points! Speaking with Scott in the past, they’ve made it quite clear that the things you bring up are not considered "deficiencies", they are simply not part of what they intend to offer at all. They’ve talked extensively with their users (specifically, IT admins in small [100 employees or less] companies), and what it does (the 3 items you list above) are precisely its goals… which it does quite well! They have also told me that it is designed to complement, not replace, proactive tools.

J.Ja

By: dre

dre — Fri, 09 May 2008 20:40:13 +0000

I see Spiceworks as the one day answer to the questions:
1) Do we have an inventory?
2) Do we monitor the systems and network?
3) Do we have basic tools to support IT and Helpdesk operations?

Scalability and extensibility are not designed into Spiceworks from the perspective that I come from. Even for SMB, Spiceworks is only one tool in the toolbox.

Check out the Gartner Infrastructure Maturity Model:
http://www.aperture.com/solutions/dc_maturity_model.php
With the right people and process, a Level 1 or "Reactive" level can be achieved by any SMB IT/O. Spiceworks will not do this alone. You need people to run Spiceworks and you need a process to make it work with your environment. Spiceworks will make your people and processes more effective at this stage.

However, Spiceworks doesn’t provide any advantage outside of Level 1 maturity. In fact, I think it would be difficult to achieve a Level 2 maturity (i.e. Proactive) if you’re still relying on Spiceworks to be your primary tool for effectiveness in asset tracking/management or IT/O documentation. As a secondary tool, it could work — but I would rather see something like Up.Time, Zenoss, Zabbix, Ganglia, Nagios, NetNMS, or Cacti integrated with asset tracking/management.

What this really comes down to is that free or open-source software does not make an IT Helpdesk or improve IT operations. The people and the process make it. You need good people who know how to build and customize documentation and reporting around their infrastructure. You need to have a process built that the people can all agree will work. Then you can add tools to improve their effectiveness.