Spiceworks

The company’s network is growing.  The number of PCs and servers is growing.  Keeping track of the various systems and installed software is becoming difficult.  Not to mention what versions of the software is on what computers.

The cost for the company’s business software is expensive.  Most of the business software we use also requires a maintenance contract.  The business software is pretty easy to the value to the company.  While the network and PCs are obviously valuable, a lot of the I.T. support software is hard to explain to the business managers.  Saying that we need expensive I.T. support software is a difficult sell.

WSUS, Windows Server Update Services, is Microsoft’s product for managing Windows Updates on company networks.  WSUS doesn’t cost anything after the first server license.  It does the job of making the Windows Updates manageable for the PCs, servers and laptops I’m responsible for.

Spiceworks is a package that Jacob found while doing research.  Advertising supports Spiceworks.  It is free.  It is not a perfect solution but it seems to do what we need.  To be honest I have only looked at it for tracking versions of software.  There’s still a lot more to Spiceworks we haven’t explored.