SpiceWorks alarms big enterprise IT management vendors

Also announces 100,000 downloads

Software IT management vendor SpiceWorks has announced download number 100,000, along with a new version of their popular, free, advert-sponsored, IT management package, SpiceWorks IT Desktop.

SpiceWorks co-founder and marketing VP Jay Hallberg said the UK is the number two market for the package with 13,000 downloads, and that they now had 100,000 users worldwide managing 4.3 million desktop systems throughout the globe. " 100,000 downloads is kind of a psychological marker and hitting that number of users in under a year puts a stake into the hearts of the pundits who said that people wouldn't stand for adverts," he added.

The significant 100,000 download milestone for SpiceWorks, may set alarm bells ringing in the headquarters of the big three in enterprise IT management - CA, HP and IBM. Currently SpiceWorks cannot be used to manage systems over WAN links yet, and Hallberg says they have no plans to directly target the large enterprise market, but he said that one firm was managing over 2,000 devices with SpiceWorks.

Hallberg said he may consider selling the firm if the price was right and the bidder wanted to move the package forward in a takeover-to-grow mode rather than a takeover-to-kill mode.

Version 1.6 adds several features which could appeal to IT managers, including the ability to control desktops remotely over firm's internal LANs. It also now supports 21 versions of 7 anti-virus packages, and improvements have been made to the 'compare' feature which allows IT managers to check configuration differences between apparently identical systems.

With the new remote control feature IT managers can now connect and manage desktops using Microsoft's remote desktop protocol (RDP) or using the platform-independent, open source method of desktop management, virtual network computing (VNC). "With Windows systems, we turn the remote desktop feature on and when IT managers have finished 'driving' the desktop and disconnects, we turn it off – for security reasons," said Hallberg.