I spoke with some guys at the AlwaysOn show yesterday who have an interesting business model aimed at tech support professionals. Spiceworks have a radically different take on free software. They allow anybody to download their application which monitors devices on the network. It incorporates a ticketing system and also the ability to share experiences in a forum environment with other Spiceworks users.

In return for the software, Spiceworks then serve ads within the application. Shock horror you are thinking! But what's really ingenious about the ad serving part is that it's related to your specific network equipment. Not only that, if a disk is running out of free space, the system will suggest potential local suppliers for a larger one.

Squarely pitched at the SME marketplace where the IT team is 2-5 people supporting up to 250 users and who typically don't have a huge support network, they have only focussed on the US market so far. It's a fascinating mash-up of web 2.0 application, community functionality and adsense type ad serving and it's coming to an IT department near you soon...