ManageEngine launched PitStop, the user community for all IT professionals.

Beyond ManageEngine product support, PitStop offers a vendor-neutral venue for IT admins, managers, directors and other IT pros to discuss IT management issues and ideas that are germane to the entire IT community.

PitStop sets itself apart from other IT communities by providing a cascading, Facebook-like wall for users to share and discuss topics and trends with the PitStop community at large. Users can also tailor PitStop to their individual interests by subscribing to specific groups and pages, enabling them to virtually collaborate, share and engage with colleagues in their domain. To keep PitStop users engaged while on the move, mobile apps for iOS and Android are available.

"IT teams drive business success, but IT pros need to refuel every now and then," said Vidya Vasu, head of the ManageEngine community. "PitStop gives them a place to hang out and exchange ideas, tools and tweaks with peers. This type of virtual collaboration and engagement is tremendously valuable inside ManageEngine, and we want to make that value available to everybody in IT, regardless of which vendors' tools are used."

PitStop is a vendor-neutral platform for users to showcase success stories and interesting IT project implementations, discuss IT pitfalls, laugh at IT bloopers and generally liven things up. PitStop will not replace the existing forums where users discuss product-specific queries. Rather, it serves as an exclusive channel where users can discuss subjects that touch their everyday lives as IT pros. The ability to subscribe to one or more user groups lets users interact with other users who share similar interests.

For ManageEngine users, PitStop serves as an IT hub where they can access other technical resources shared by product specialists and the user community in general. It includes resources such as monitoring templates, custom scripts, an MIB repository, configuration tweaks, best practices and more. The product forums let users continue to seek clarifications or solutions to product-specific queries. The blogs feature articles and updates by ManageEngine analysts and those in the industry.

"With over 30 different IT solutions and over 50 free tools and mobile apps, ManageEngine is seeing year-on-year growth rate of over 35 percent in the number of its users," said Vasu. "A lot of that growth is coming from our free tools and solutions, and PitStop complements that trend. Now, ManageEngine users and their peers have a place where they can bring IT to the table, find solutions, follow trends and talk shop."