Industry observer Alison Diana noted recently that Spiceworks (News - Alert), which developed a free systems management, inventory, and help-desk software application for network administrators and small and midsize businesses, launched the Reach channel program.

The program is "designed to give cloud-based service providers access to a million users of the Spiceworks social IT management application," Diana says.

The program "includes integration APIs and services that enable vendors to make their cloud services manageable from within Spiceworks," she writes, adding that users "then can manage both onsite and cloud-based technologies through one IT management application interface."

Evidently the software developer has built a Facebook (News - Alert)-like community of IT professionals to support collaboration and communication, as well as the management of cloud-based and on-premises technologies.

Spiceworks' 1 million SMB IT professionals "support about 35 million workers, manage 59 million computers and devices, and spend approximately $175 billion per year on technology products and services," according to company officials.

'Our new Reach partner program offers cloud vendors a simple and effective way to make their offerings instantly available to over 20 percent of SMB IT professionals worldwide,' said Scott Abel, co-founder and CEO of Spiceworks. 'It's a win for them and for small and medium businesses, which represent one of the fastest growing markets for cloud computing services.'

The Reach program, company officials say, is "part of Spiceworks mission to simplify everything IT. This includes helping its worldwide community of IT professionals to more easily find new technology products and services and manage their hybrid cloud-based and on-site IT environments through a free easy-to-use management application."

The partner program is described as including "a variety of ways for cloud services vendors to differentiate their offerings and more efficiently distribute them to SMBs around the world."

Early Spiceworks Reach program partners include Rackspace, HP and Symantec (News - Alert).