Spiceworks Expanding into IT Product Reseller

Free RMM provider Spiceworks will use $25 million in additional funding to expand its business model to include a sourcing tool for IT products and services.

Austin, Tx-based Spiceworks announced the new financing round this week and it includes participation from new investors, Adam Street Partners and Tenaya Capital.

"The average business in the Spiceworks network spends over $275,000 annually on technology,” said Scott Abel, co-founder and CEO of Spiceworks, in a statement. “By marrying social networking, IT management and commerce, we’re transforming how businesses will discover, research, and buy products and services in the trillion dollar IT industry.”

Why does Spiceworks think it can provide this kind of service? Here’s what the company says:

• More than 25 percent of the worlds SMB IT pros use its platform, making it the "largest and fastest-growing social business network for IT."
• 1.4 million IT pros use Spiceworks to discover, buy and manage $244 billion worth of technology products and services each year.
• Over 200 top technology providers, including Microsoft, Google, Dell and Intel, use Spiceworks to connect directly with IT buyers through the company’s Vendor Pages and social marketing programs.
• Spiceworks lets IT pros create purchase lists, renew warranties, and buy cloud services from select vendors.

The plan is to grow that over the next year, Spicework says, with more social commerce capabilities, such as group purchasing and deals, integrated request for quote with the technology vendors, and purchasing of IT products and services built into the workflow of the application.

“What Groupon and Facebook are doing for commerce in the consumer market, Spiceworks is doing for IT buying in the business market,” said Jeff Diehl, partner of Adams Street Partners, in a statement. “The company’s unique blend of IT business applications, community and commerce has created a powerful social marketplace and more efficient channel for the technology industry.”