Spiceworks Launches Cloud Partner Program

Spiceworks, developer of a free systems management, inventory, and help-desk software application for network administrators and small and midsize businesses, this week launched the Reach channel program, designed to give cloud-based service providers access to the 1 million users of the Spiceworks social IT management application.

The program includes integration APIs and services that enable vendors to make their cloud services manageable from within Spiceworks. Users then can manage both onsite and cloud-based technologies through one IT management application interface, according to Spiceworks. The software developer has built a Facebook-like community of IT professionals to support collaboration and communication, as well as the management of cloud-based and on-premises technologies.

"Our new Reach partner program offers cloud vendors a simple and effective way to make their offerings instantly available to over 20% of SMB IT professionals worldwide," said Scott Abel, co-founder and CEO of Spiceworks, in a statement. "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 partner program, unveiled during the GigaOm Structure 2010 conference in San Francisco, includes three levels of participation. The Reach program's cloud services inventory and monitoring component offers basic account and service information for cloud service offerings to ensure they can be managed and monitored by Spiceworks' 1 million users.

Through Reach, cloud services vendors can create custom plug-ins that give users granular management and monitoring capabilities. Today, there are more than 140 Spiceworks management plug-ins available for onsite and cloud technologies, according to Spiceworks. Partners include HP, LogMeIn, Rackspace, and Symantec.

Lastly, the cloud service distribution component distributes management capabilities for cloud services to Spiceworks customers by integrating the ability to add, manage, and monitor cloud services within the Spiceworks application. Using integration APIs, partners build categories of services including hosted e-mail, security, and remote management into Spiceworks.

"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 of RJ Lee Group, in a statement. "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."

Spiceworks' 1 million SMB IT professionals support about 35 million workers, manage 59 million computers and devices, and spend approximately $175 billion per year on technology products and services, according to the firm.