Spiceworks Claims World's Largest MSP Community
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The world’s largest community of managed service providers doesn’t belong to
a major IT vendor or any of the well-established remote monitoring and
management software providers. Rather, the crown goes to Spiceworks, a provider
of free, Web-based network management tools.
At least that’s what Spiceworks claims in a press release issued today.
Austin, Texas-based Spiceworks is coming out of the shadows in the channel,
saying it has amassed a community of more than 65,000 MSPs worldwide, of which
about half reside in North America.
“This is the best-kept secret,” says Jay Hallberg, the company’s founder.
“We’ve built up a significant base, and we want to make people more aware of it
and what we can do.”
When Spiceworks launched in 2006, it was billed more as a social network or
a new media offering that primarily competed with technology and mainstream
media companies such as Ziff Davis Enterprise (Channel Insider’s parent
company), CMP and IDG for advertising
dollars. The company offers IT professionals free Web-based network monitoring
and management tools wrapped in a community of users that share information and
collaborate on problems. The service is supported by advertising that displays
in the tool’s various dashboards.
Spiceworks’ total community of IT professionals now numbers more than
700,000 worldwide—mostly of practitioners in small and midsize businesses.
Hallberg says the community is adding more than 1,000 new members a day.
From this community the Spiceworks managed services effort was born.
Hallberg says the company never set out to target MSPs; it was mostly serendipity.
About a year ago, Spiceworks started filtering its overall community for IT
service providers and discovered a growing population of MSPs. Around the same
time it started receiving requests from MSPs for features and improvements in
the platform.
If the 65,000 MSP figure rings true, Spiceworks' MSP community is
larger than any of the communities and customer bases built by the remote
monitoring and management toolmakers, such as N-Able, Level Platforms and
Kaseya. It would also be larger than all the combined users of professional
services automation (PSA) software by
ConnectWise, Autotask and TigerPaw. And it’s nearly five-and-a-half times the
size of the combined membership of the Managed Service Provider Association and
MSP Partners, the two largest associations.
“We continue to keep building up this base where nearly 10 percent of our
base is made up of small managed service providers and IT consultants,”
Hallberg says.
The claim is incredible to some, if not outlandish, in the more defined
managed services community and marketplace. While it’s not inconceivable for a
new tool company to enter the burgeoning managed services market, it’s
difficult for many people to believe that such a large community could spring
up without catching the attention of the established players.
“We never run into them,” says Dan Wensley, vice president of partner
development. “We’re in 30 different countries, and we’ve never seen them.”
“We have not heard of anyone in the general channel talking about them,” adds
Brian Sherman, director of partner development at Autotask.
Even solution providers active in the managed services and distribution
collaborative networks are scratching their heads at Spiceworks' claims. While
Spiceworks lists quotes by users such as Coleman Computer Services, Fixed by
Geeks and GFI Consulting, established managed service providers say the company
is a complete mystery.
“I have a hard time seeing it as 65,000 users,” says Lane Smith, president
of Do IT Smarter.
The Spiceworks community pages list nearly 30,000 individuals as members of the
“IT Service Providers” group, and community members are active in responding to
posts asking everything from enabling remote access to marketing a managed
service to contracting best practices.
Managed Services 
