1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:07,000 Hello everybody. Here we are in lovely Austin, Texas at the lovely Spiceworks World Headquarters. 2 00:00:07,000 --> 00:00:10,000 We have a guest with ourselves, as always. Would you like to introduce yourself? 3 00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:14,000 Hi, I'm Thabre Saeed. My title is Director of Products at Spiceworks. 4 00:00:14,000 --> 00:00:18,000 And what that means is I help figure out what kinds of features we're going to build 5 00:00:18,000 --> 00:00:21,000 and how we bring product out to the community of Spiceworks users. 6 00:00:21,000 --> 00:00:26,000 As we'll get into it, there's kind of a mixture of talking with the community 7 00:00:26,000 --> 00:00:31,000 and then also doing more classical product management, I guess, just figuring out what's going to be in the product. 8 00:00:31,000 --> 00:00:35,000 Right. In fact, when we get into details of it, you'll find that it actually makes my job in some ways really simple 9 00:00:35,000 --> 00:00:38,000 because we build what the community asks us to build. 10 00:00:38,000 --> 00:00:39,000 Right. 11 00:00:39,000 --> 00:00:44,000 And so that part of figuring out what it is we need to build and how we bring it out, that's not the hard part. 12 00:00:44,000 --> 00:00:45,000 Right. 13 00:00:45,000 --> 00:00:51,000 Just working with it to kind of get the right user interface and making sure that we can cater to every class of user there is 14 00:00:51,000 --> 00:00:55,000 because we've got such a large user base, you've got novice users, you've got advanced users. 15 00:00:55,000 --> 00:01:00,000 It's kind of how do we make sure that even if we add advanced features, the novice user feels comfortable 16 00:01:00,000 --> 00:01:05,000 and can get up to speed in Spiceworks very quickly and we still give the advanced users the features they want. 17 00:01:05,000 --> 00:01:09,000 For people who don't know, can you give us like a general overview of what the Spiceworks product is? 18 00:01:09,000 --> 00:01:10,000 Sure. 19 00:01:10,000 --> 00:01:15,000 Spiceworks is a comprehensive network management tool for small and medium businesses. 20 00:01:15,000 --> 00:01:20,000 So when you are an IT guy in a small and medium business, you will download Spiceworks. 21 00:01:20,000 --> 00:01:25,000 It will help you inventory your network so you have a full account of all the hardware, software, printers, 22 00:01:25,000 --> 00:01:27,000 networking devices on your network. 23 00:01:27,000 --> 00:01:29,000 You can also monitor your network changes. 24 00:01:29,000 --> 00:01:33,000 You know, somebody installed a piece of software they shouldn't have that's against your policies. 25 00:01:33,000 --> 00:01:37,000 Did a Windows event alert show up on one of the computers they need to monitor for? 26 00:01:37,000 --> 00:01:41,000 You can also do stuff like, you know, classic, you know, bandwidth monitoring. 27 00:01:41,000 --> 00:01:44,000 You're going to see how much bandwidth is being consumed by which of your users. 28 00:01:44,000 --> 00:01:48,000 But we've also incorporated a very easy-to-use help test right into the system. 29 00:01:48,000 --> 00:01:53,000 And what that allows you to do is keep integrated records on both the user requests that come in 30 00:01:53,000 --> 00:01:54,000 and the systems that are affected. 31 00:01:54,000 --> 00:01:58,000 So you can run reports that can tell you, hey, you know, we might need to upgrade that server 32 00:01:58,000 --> 00:02:00,000 because we get a lot of issues with it. 33 00:02:00,000 --> 00:02:05,000 And on top of all of this is this wonderful reporting engine that makes sure that you have all the stats 34 00:02:05,000 --> 00:02:07,000 and metrics you need to be able to do your job. 35 00:02:07,000 --> 00:02:12,000 And finally, we incorporate a great community, an active community of over 700,000 users 36 00:02:12,000 --> 00:02:14,000 who are all in the same boat. 37 00:02:14,000 --> 00:02:17,000 So basically, you can interface with other people and ask them, hey, you know, 38 00:02:17,000 --> 00:02:23,000 I'm in a healthcare facility here and we're trying to do VPN, but how does that affect HIPAA? 39 00:02:23,000 --> 00:02:25,000 Should I be worried about those kinds of things? 40 00:02:25,000 --> 00:02:30,000 And this community of users is one of the greatest assets of Spice Girls is that they're able to interface with each other 41 00:02:30,000 --> 00:02:33,000 and kind of bring the power of the network to help you do your job. 42 00:02:33,000 --> 00:02:37,000 Key points I forgot to mention, which is pretty important, is that it's a free network that's in software. 43 00:02:37,000 --> 00:02:38,000 That's right. 44 00:02:38,000 --> 00:02:40,000 So I have to make that point. 45 00:02:40,000 --> 00:02:43,000 Like you're saying, you guys sell into the small and medium area. 46 00:02:43,000 --> 00:02:48,000 But, like, what--so, like, how would you characterize the community exactly? 47 00:02:48,000 --> 00:02:54,000 Can I give you a background of the kinds of people it may be best to take examples of the folks who are active in our community? 48 00:02:54,000 --> 00:02:59,000 We have Scott Allen Miller, who's a managed service provider out of New York. 49 00:02:59,000 --> 00:03:04,000 And he, you know, works with, you know, customers all over the world because his company is distributed 50 00:03:04,000 --> 00:03:06,000 and they've got locations all over the world. 51 00:03:06,000 --> 00:03:09,000 We've got folks who work in a healthcare facility in Colorado. 52 00:03:09,000 --> 00:03:11,000 It's a two-person IT shop. 53 00:03:11,000 --> 00:03:16,000 And they're a nonprofit, so, you know, they're always trying to make the most of what they've got. 54 00:03:16,000 --> 00:03:19,000 And then we've got folks who run co-location facilities and data centers. 55 00:03:19,000 --> 00:03:24,000 And this one gentleman I was talking to, you know, he has to manage terabytes and terabytes of data. 56 00:03:24,000 --> 00:03:29,000 You don't necessarily think of them as small, medium business, but they run the gamut of everybody from a smaller shop 57 00:03:29,000 --> 00:03:31,000 all the way to some of the most sophisticated IT. 58 00:03:31,000 --> 00:03:35,000 What makes all of this interesting is that they come with a wide variety of backgrounds. 59 00:03:35,000 --> 00:03:39,000 So you have folks who have all the certifications you can probably imagine, 60 00:03:39,000 --> 00:03:42,000 including people who've written certification exams for other people to take. 61 00:03:42,000 --> 00:03:45,000 And you've got folks who are completely self-taught. 62 00:03:45,000 --> 00:03:48,000 So it's a wide, diverse, you know, background. 63 00:03:48,000 --> 00:03:52,000 And that's what makes the community interesting is because they not only help you answer questions like, 64 00:03:52,000 --> 00:03:54,000 hey, I see this error message. 65 00:03:54,000 --> 00:03:55,000 What do I do about it? 66 00:03:55,000 --> 00:03:59,000 But more importantly, they help you answer questions like, I don't have the resources. 67 00:03:59,000 --> 00:04:01,000 I need to solve this problem. 68 00:04:01,000 --> 00:04:02,000 And this is my situation. 69 00:04:02,000 --> 00:04:04,000 What are the options for me? 70 00:04:04,000 --> 00:04:08,000 And that's where some of the beauty of the community comes up because it's less about prescriptions 71 00:04:08,000 --> 00:04:11,000 that say you should go buy vendor X's product and do Y. 72 00:04:11,000 --> 00:04:16,000 It's more about, well, here are the five solutions that can kind of get you there without breaking the bank. 73 00:04:16,000 --> 00:04:17,000 Right. 74 00:04:17,000 --> 00:04:19,000 Here's how you can make the best of it. 75 00:04:19,000 --> 00:04:23,000 And so in that sense, the best practices of doing IT in small and medium business, 76 00:04:23,000 --> 00:04:28,000 which is just challenging in an endeavor, not only because you're balancing like the technical requirements, 77 00:04:28,000 --> 00:04:35,000 but you're also balancing what the resource levels and kind of the commitments from your management are. 78 00:04:35,000 --> 00:04:37,000 Again, pulling that off is going to be very complicated. 79 00:04:37,000 --> 00:04:39,000 And that's what I find amazing about the community is how they work. 80 00:04:39,000 --> 00:04:43,000 So speaking of the community, we were talking about some of the new, 81 00:04:43,000 --> 00:04:47,000 or some of the enhancements in 4.0, which recently came out. 82 00:04:47,000 --> 00:04:52,000 And it sounded like, you know, at some time, at some points the community gets to be so active 83 00:04:52,000 --> 00:04:57,000 that you're sort of, you have to kind of put back in features that you guys have removed, right? 84 00:04:57,000 --> 00:05:00,000 There's a pretty strong pull from the community for things that they really like. 85 00:05:00,000 --> 00:05:06,000 The things we do at Spiceworks right from the beginning to the end is we involve the community all the day at various phases. 86 00:05:06,000 --> 00:05:13,000 So for example, in 4.0, all said and done, in the Spiceworks 4.0 group, there were about 3,000 people involved. 87 00:05:13,000 --> 00:05:18,000 And what basically happened was we started, even before we wrote a single line of code, 88 00:05:18,000 --> 00:05:21,000 kind of putting out our ideas and mock-ups and stuff like that. 89 00:05:21,000 --> 00:05:28,000 And it's amazing the level and the, you know, the strength of feedback we get back. 90 00:05:28,000 --> 00:05:33,000 One example was, in one of the mock-ups, we had kind of moved a feature so it wasn't just one click away, 91 00:05:33,000 --> 00:05:34,000 it was like two clicks away. 92 00:05:34,000 --> 00:05:39,000 And then we got all these responses that said, you know, I'm in Dallas and Austin's not that far away, 93 00:05:39,000 --> 00:05:44,000 I'll drive down and kind of camp out until you guys will, you know, put that feature back one click away. 94 00:05:44,000 --> 00:05:45,000 Right. 95 00:05:45,000 --> 00:05:48,000 And it's that level of engagement because it's a tool they use every day. 96 00:05:48,000 --> 00:05:52,000 And it's great for us because we know exactly how strongly they feel 97 00:05:52,000 --> 00:05:54,000 because it seems like a good aesthetic move to move it, 98 00:05:54,000 --> 00:05:58,000 but the workflow implications come out best when people kind of look at it who use it every day. 99 00:05:58,000 --> 00:06:02,000 And so we have involvement right from the beginning in defining mock-ups 100 00:06:02,000 --> 00:06:08,000 to even some of the earlier alpha builds, you know, builds that are just kind of barely tested by internal tests 101 00:06:08,000 --> 00:06:11,000 and we get this build out and people test it all the way through beta. 102 00:06:11,000 --> 00:06:14,000 We get great responses before we release the actual software. 103 00:06:14,000 --> 00:06:18,000 So in this 4.0 release, like, you know, speaking of the way you sort of farm features, I guess, 104 00:06:18,000 --> 00:06:23,000 what are the major features that you got and things that you guys have put into this 4.0? 105 00:06:23,000 --> 00:06:27,000 So Spiceworks 4.0 is definitely the latest and greatest of the Spiceworks desktop versions. 106 00:06:27,000 --> 00:06:35,000 And what we did in this release is we've expanded the feature coverage in some areas that our users have already been using. 107 00:06:35,000 --> 00:06:41,000 For example, in Help Desk, one of the things our users wanted is the ability to collaborate with multiple users on a ticket. 108 00:06:41,000 --> 00:06:46,000 So essentially, you know, you get a request from somebody that says, "I need an upgrade." 109 00:06:46,000 --> 00:06:52,000 Well, now you can include their manager on the same ticket, get their approval recorded so you have one comprehensive way to be able to do that. 110 00:06:52,000 --> 00:06:55,000 So we've added the ability for you to collaborate with other users on Help Desk. 111 00:06:55,000 --> 00:07:00,000 Another big request was the ability to work a Help Desk ticket when you're on the go. 112 00:07:00,000 --> 00:07:06,000 So, you know, you were working with the user, and then you headed off to the remote office, and then a response comes back. 113 00:07:06,000 --> 00:07:08,000 You still should be able to work the entire ticket. 114 00:07:08,000 --> 00:07:12,000 And so now you can drive a complete ticket over email. 115 00:07:12,000 --> 00:07:14,000 You have those little hash commands. 116 00:07:14,000 --> 00:07:15,000 That's right. 117 00:07:15,000 --> 00:07:18,000 So any email client, BlackBerry, iPhone, whatever, you get a ticket back. 118 00:07:18,000 --> 00:07:24,000 You just reply and say, "Okay, I work five minutes on this, reassign to this person, and close it as this." 119 00:07:24,000 --> 00:07:26,000 And you can drive the entire ticket directly from the phone. 120 00:07:26,000 --> 00:07:30,000 Along the Help Desk line, what we did was we also extended our user portal. 121 00:07:30,000 --> 00:07:38,000 So the user portal is where users will go and interface with the Help Desk system to submit tickets or see the status of their tickets and those kinds of things. 122 00:07:38,000 --> 00:07:43,000 So in this release, we expanded the Help Desk to actually make it like an IT intranet. 123 00:07:43,000 --> 00:07:51,000 So now you can have multiple pages, you can start writing knowledge articles, or you can have stuff like, you know, top things to check before you ask a VPN question. 124 00:07:51,000 --> 00:07:54,000 All of that kind of mini knowledge base stuff will start to show up. 125 00:07:54,000 --> 00:07:58,000 You can also customize it extensively to match your company's brand. 126 00:07:58,000 --> 00:08:02,000 You can host widgets in there from Google to, you know, whatever widget you want to find. 127 00:08:02,000 --> 00:08:03,000 Wherever widgets may come from. 128 00:08:03,000 --> 00:08:04,000 Exactly. 129 00:08:04,000 --> 00:08:06,000 And so you can do all of those kinds of things. 130 00:08:06,000 --> 00:08:11,000 And now you can, you know, get some of the benefits of having a full intranet very easy to use. 131 00:08:11,000 --> 00:08:14,000 So you don't have to go install a comprehensive solution for it. 132 00:08:14,000 --> 00:08:16,000 You can just get started with the Spicebook solution. 133 00:08:16,000 --> 00:08:19,000 Another highly requested feature that we released in beta was the network map. 134 00:08:19,000 --> 00:08:20,000 Right. 135 00:08:20,000 --> 00:08:24,000 So with the network map, we give you a visual overview of your network. 136 00:08:24,000 --> 00:08:32,000 We also show you connections between the different devices and allow you to kind of find the bandwidth consumption within the various links. 137 00:08:32,000 --> 00:08:37,000 And so that's our first version of the network map showed up in Spiceworks 4.OS. 138 00:08:37,000 --> 00:08:40,000 We also cleaned up the UI quite a bit. 139 00:08:40,000 --> 00:08:48,000 What we did was continually at Spiceworks, our goal was to make sure that everybody from the novice users to the expert users can find the information quickly. 140 00:08:48,000 --> 00:08:56,000 And so the UI was also re-geared so that you can get to things very quickly and it's a lot cleaner and it can allow us to scale into some of the other features we'll be adding in the future. 141 00:08:56,000 --> 00:09:02,000 Right, there's a certain grouping around sort of working with the rest of the company. 142 00:09:02,000 --> 00:09:06,000 You know, working with the users of the IT that Spiceworks users are managing. 143 00:09:06,000 --> 00:09:12,000 So it's kind of, you know, there's an interesting theme of taking care of the user's users, if you will. 144 00:09:12,000 --> 00:09:22,000 A lot of it kind of falls out naturally from where the product is because basically what users do is they show us how they're using it and we go, well, we get it. 145 00:09:22,000 --> 00:09:27,000 So, like, the user portal we had previously was all about kind of working tickets, but users were using it for a lot more. 146 00:09:27,000 --> 00:09:28,000 Right. 147 00:09:28,000 --> 00:09:30,000 They were sticking chat widgets in there and communicating with their users. 148 00:09:30,000 --> 00:09:35,000 They were trying to create, like, these fancy JavaScript stuff to put a little mini knowledge base stuff in it. 149 00:09:35,000 --> 00:09:37,000 And it's like, that makes sense. 150 00:09:37,000 --> 00:09:38,000 That's where the need is. 151 00:09:38,000 --> 00:09:39,000 Let's kind of help you get there. 152 00:09:39,000 --> 00:09:41,000 And so that's kind of our philosophy and it works pretty well. 153 00:09:41,000 --> 00:09:42,000 Right. 154 00:09:42,000 --> 00:09:43,000 That makes sense. 155 00:09:43,000 --> 00:09:44,000 Well, great. 156 00:09:44,000 --> 00:09:45,000 Well, let's check out a demo of this stuff.