Recently, I say down with Tabrez Syed of Spiceworks to go over their most recent version, Spiceworks 4.0. In introducing himself, Tabrez speaks to the mixed role he has at Spiceworks, a combination of traditional product management and the newer practices of community management. As we discuss Spiceworks more, it's interesting to see how these two roles play out. To that end, I ask Tabrez to give us an overview of Spiceworks itself. More than just the asset discovery, monitoring, help-desk, and reporting, Spiceworks also incorporates the thriving community (over 700,000 users) around the product.

Focusing in on the community aspects, I ask Tabrez to characterize the folks in the community: what types of IT shops and organizations are they? Being in the small and medium business category, these folks are often balancing both the technical requirements and small pools of cash and time.

We then go over the new features in Spiceworks 4.0. Starting with help desk improvements., Tabrez goes over the workflow changes to enable better colloboration and covers the email "command line" functionality they've added so that users can work with tickets on their phones. He also goes over the user-centric portal that Spiceworks 4.0 offers, giving the start of a knowledge base and a way to encourage self-service IT. Finally, we go over one of the most highly requested features, the network map which shows a visual network topology.

Also, check out the demo.

Disclosure: Spiceworks is a client.