1. SMB IT Pros Sound Off Reginald Herde Director of Marketing regh@spiceworks.com Ashley Connell Marketing Coordinator ashleyc@spiceworks.com Jason Bagby Director of Sales jasonb@spiceworks.com Nicole Tanzillo IT Marketing Manager nicolet@spiceworks.com
3. IT circa 2006 “What information do I need and where do I find it?” “Which tools do I use?” “What do I have?” “Is it all working?”“How do I fix it?” “Where can I find anexpert to help me?” “What products should I buy?”
4. IT with Spiceworks Vendors Purchasing Free IT Apps Commerce Manage People Online Media, Newsletters, Sponsorships & Vendor Pages RFQs Discussions Manage Networks Advice Community
14. Q: What mail and web security solutions are being used? On-premise or hosted? What were the most important decision criteria?
15. Q: Are the mail and web security being managed in house, or managed by a partner / managed service provider?
16. Q: Are you looking at outsourcing your email infrastructure, such as moving to Office 365 or something similar? Why or why not?
17. Q: Do any of you currently use or are thinking about deploying a unified comms platform or video conf? (e.g. Skype, G-Talk, Microsoft Lync) If so, why do you believe this will be beneficial to you and how do you measure the true ROI of this investment?
18. Q: If you could name one thing that would make the decision to deploy video conferencing within your company easier to make, what would it be?
19. Q: Peripherals (mice, keyboards, webcams, headsets) for your employees.:Do you see a value in ergo-nomically-correct peripherals, letting employees choose their own colors or any of these enhancing overall productivity? If so, what brands come to mind?
20. What’s New? What’s Next? Vendor Plug-ins & Integrated Features Vendor Pages + Dashboard IT Spiceworks Mobile Purchase Lists & RFQs Innovations for Users Innovations for Vendors Community Social Feeds SpiceCorps & Spiceworks University
25. Spiceworks Mobile Your typical IT Pro is never “off the clock.” Currently the #2 Business App on iTunes (free or paid)
26. Local Meetups: SpiceCorpsConversations for IT Pros and Vendors Meetings scheduled, often with vendors User group membership targeted by geo Sales conversations at scale, continues online
27. Local Training: Spiceworks UniversityDrives Usage, Ecosystem, and Sponsor Revenue Trainers apply from and are rated by community Classes targeted by geo and skill Spiceworks and sponsored content drives usage and $
State of SMB IT Report – coming out on March 30th.Budgets increasing by 8% for 2011. The largest growth in 18 months. Forecasting a lot of new spend around ‘emerging’ technologies such as Hybrid IT and Cloud solutions. Additionally, 1-in-3 are looking to add more IT staff to their teams.
Multiple, disconnected tools for managing a network The challenge of reaching like-minded SMB IT pros for answers to everyday and challenging IT questions IT information overload is disjointed, sourced from many locations. Some bad. Some good. The products are out there – but finding the right ones for a specific need is a constant and consistent challenge.Then along came Spiceworks… the world’s largest social business network for IT.
Kevin joins us from Southern California and made the enviable drive up here to share his Spiceworks experiences with us.
Justin hails from Pittsburgh and is one of the first SpiceHeads to step up as an official trainer in the Spiceworks University program. More on that later.
Zak makes the journey all the way from Arkansas and is one of few IT professionals in that state NOT dedicated to supporting Wal-Mart’s IT infrastructure.
Aaron is essentially the local IT pro here. Aaron lives and works at the Sacramento News and Review. Notice I said lives there too…
(in terms of increased sales, improved productivity, decreasing travel costs?)
We can’t always bring them to you.You CAN go to them.Where they work.While they do their jobBringing IT professionals, your customers, here is just one of the ways we drive direct engagement with some of the over 1.4 million using Spiceworks.You have to engage. It starts with raising your levels of conversation. Elevating your position on the social graph.
With features like Integrated Purchasing, we continue to increase the functionality and make Spiceworks truly indispensable for SMB IT pros.The constant challenge of reaching a buying audience at the moment of purchase decision, again, in the workflow of their job is aided significantly by Spiceworks.And there are dozens of these categories for doing this – warranty renewal, hosted email & apps, AV software and services – the list goes on and on.
As we mentioned, the Community grew rather organically out of the users using the Application.Hooks into the Community from the Application, and vice versa, are demonstrating how they have become inseparable and how Spiceworks is the first truly social business app for IT.
Follow your Followers Gauge your competition Track conversations Measure market shareAt a minimum, we’re expecting that all technology companies looking to market to IT pros will set up their Vendor Page. Much like company pages on Facebook or LinkedIn, the Vendor Pages give companies the opportunity to set up camp inside Spiceworks, sharing tools and resources and elevating their position on the social graph.Vendor Pages are only about a month old and we’re already adding something newer to the mix. Vendor Page Dashboards that allow you to create measurements of your Spiceworks presence. Last year, we also introduced MarketView to give customers insight into those 1.4 million IT pros. Anonymously collected and aggregated in real-time, MarketView provides insight into what SMBs are using – or not using – as companies continue to get smarter about how they reach customers.We’re weaving the MarketView technology into the Vendor Page Dashboard, providing a single destination for marketers like you to measure your social graph and view real-time statistics on your market share, right at your fingertips. (Call out Follower tracking) (View numbers on Competitive Followers) Wall activity Featured conversations (Findability?)
Your typical IT Pro is never “off the clock”We give them the tools they need at their workplace, to do their job but also in the field (or away from their desk) to keep them updated and in touch with their network and the IT Community.Android application coming…
Our users are what drives the popularity and functionality of Spiceworks. As you heard, they have great things to say.The Spiceworks team is doing more and more with 1:1 interactions with users than ever before. SpiceWorld, our yearly conference of users has swelled to over 300 attendees this year, with more than 13 vendors showcasing their products and services.Local meetups like SpiceCorps are popping up everywhere, often giving vendors the chance to get that face-time not available at typical industry trade shows.
Held for the first time yesterday, Spiceworks University is teaching a new crop of SpiceHeads how to get the most out of Spiceworks.
