Freeware Increases RJ Lee's Management Efficiency

Faced with rapid growth and increases in the amount and complexity of data and its IT operations, RJ Lee Group went looking for a way to simplify its computing infrastructure. The company ended up selecting Spiceworks as an alternative to adding staff or spending a lot of money on network and system management software.

"By moving to Spiceworks, we were able to manage our infrastructure more effectively without increasing our expenses," says Justin Davison, senior systems engineer at RJ Lee Group. In business since 1980, the company is an industrial forensics laboratory offering specialized materials characterization, forensic engineering and information management services. For example, it helped the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) develop a method to analyze asbestos.

The company's research-based services chew up a lot of IT resources. It has 30 Tbytes of data stored on a storage area network (SAN), and servers primarily running Microsoft's Windows operating system. The 300-person operation works mainly in Monroeville, Pa., but has spread its wings to more than half a dozen satellite locations, including New York and Quebec City.

The small IT staff oversees the dispersed computing infrastructure. Traditionally, this group relied on each component's (server, router) inherent management functions to ensure that its applications were up and its network connections were functioning well.

By 2008, that approach was proving to be inadequate. "Our applications and IT infrastructure were growing and becoming more dispersed," says Davison. Consequently, tasks such as determining what might be causing a slowdown on a network link were taking more time to complete. "We needed a tool that would automate some of our routine administrative tasks," he says.

There was no shortage of options available, but the company wanted to keeps its expenses as low as possible. Davison started searching on the Web for free management tools, and Spiceworks emerged as an intriguing option because of its all-encompassing nature. Although it began life in 2006 as a basic network inventory and scan tool, the offering has grown into a full-fledged help desk and IT support community with more than 1.5 million users. To stand out from the competition, it uses an advertising-based model: Customers do not pay for the product but are exposed to Google-like advertisements.

"Spiceworks is like a Swiss Army knife for system and network management," notes Davison. The product includes a series of modules that can be used autonomously or in conjunction with one another.

After making the decision to go with Spiceworks in the spring of 2008, RJ Lee had the product up and running in a few weeks. "Spiceworks includes an intuitive user interface, so the initial configuration was straightforward," he says.Once the tool was installed, the company streamlined a few of its management functions. The product's core management features automatically track configurations and report any changes, so technicians no longer had to manually enter that information. A network monitoring feature correlated network activity so the staff had more insight into any performance issues.

While some companies may view the ads as annoying, Davison has found them helpful. His company has purchased more than half a dozen products after seeing various ads.

Another benefit from the freeware is its substantial use of social networking to encourage users to interact with one another. "The Spiceworks community gives me a million people I can reach out to and ask for and share advice," says Davison. The community has become an ad hoc extension to the firm's IT department, offering advice that has remedied a handful of problems that the staff could not figure out on its own.

In the spring of 2010, RJ Lee augmented its use of the system through Spiceworks' Reach program, which enables cloud services vendors to create custom plug-ins so customers can add, manage and monitor cloud services within its software. Hundreds of management plug-ins are available from vendors such as HP, LogMeIn, Rackspace and Symantec. "With Spiceworks, we don't have to work with different Web-based portals to monitor and provision any of our cloud resources," Davison says.

Next on the agenda is to create a portal so employees can submit trouble requests. Spiceworks IT Help Desk Portal's trouble ticket module organizes and prioritizes tickets based on customized criteria, such as due dates. A project management function will enable RJ Lee to delegate, prioritize and track time spent on various initiatives.

To date, the management tool has been a good fit for the company. One potential concern is the possible lack of the scalability and features midsize and large companies want in a management tool. Also, as a relatively new player in the management space, Spiceworks may encounter skepticism about its long term viability, especially since it has a non-traditional business model.

However, RJ Lee has no qualms about the vendor or its product. "Companies do not need to be scared off from free software," says Davison. "We have found one that meets our needs."

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