SolarWinds has launched Avior, a standalone agentic AI system designed to help managed service providers (MSPs) and IT teams move beyond reactive alert management toward automated, goal-driven IT operations.
The system uses specialized AI agents to handle routine tasks, including alert correlation, compliance monitoring and configuration management, while maintaining human oversight of high-risk actions.
For MSPs, SolarWinds says Avior could reduce technician workloads, improve service delivery efficiency and help providers demonstrate measurable improvements in customer environments.
SolarWinds Avior shifts MSPs from alerts to operational goals
Krishna Sai, Chief Technology Officer at SolarWinds, told Channel Insider ahead of the launch that most MSP delivery today is built around the queue: monitor, alert, ticket, triage, fix, with speed as the measure of success.
“Avior changes the unit of work from the alert to the goal,” Sai said. “A provider defines goals, such as fewer compliance violations, configuration backups with full coverage, or headroom on capacity. Avior pursues those predefined goals within clear guardrails and auditable workflows, creating a repeatable path from insight to action for MSPs.”
Deterministic, agentic AI allows teams to focus on more strategic work, while specialized agents handle routine tasks, Sai added. MSPs can spend less time working through alerts and more time addressing the conditions behind them, with progress measured by how well they meet the provider’s operational goals.
“When AI exists in mission-critical IT work, enterprises need this technology to graduate from virtual assistant to trusted teammate,” said Sai. “Avior grounds probabilistic models in deterministic execution, so operators stay in control of high-risk decisions. That is how IT shifts from managing alerts to orchestrating resilient, goal-driven operations.”
“This goes beyond model access,” Sai continued. “It is operational context and governed execution. Twenty-five years of understanding how these environments actually behave is encoded in the goals, skills, and tools inside Avior.”
The system features risk-tiered autonomy so potentially dangerous actions always require explicit human approval while operating within strict security guardrails.
“As Avior takes on more repetitive, first-line work, technicians can spend more time setting goals, defining guardrails, approving high-risk actions, and reviewing the agent’s reasoning,” Sai said. “Avior shows its reasoning in language an operator can read and audit, so technicians can assess what it is doing and why, while remaining in control of high-risk decisions.”
Agentic AI targets configuration drift, compliance and capacity
Further, Avior gives IT teams a more controlled and repeatable path from insight to action that allows organizations to:
- Reduce alert noise: Correlate related events into a single actionable incident, so teams work the problem instead of the queue.
- Reduce compliance violations: Continuously audit devices against a policy baseline and surface gaps with a record of every change.
- Remediate configuration drift: Detects out-of-band changes and restores the last known good configuration on the devices that matter most.
- Ensures configuration backups: Provides a snapshot and archives running configurations on a set schedule and flags any device that falls out of coverage.
- Manages capacity and cost: Tracks utilization and spend against the headroom the team wants to maintain, and flags issues that need attention before they become incidents or invoices.
- Manages the asset lifecycle: Retires ghost entities that no longer exist but still clutter dashboards and trigger alerts, and tracks inventory, firmware versions, and end-of-life exposure.
Human approval and audit controls govern AI actions
Avior is anchored in AI by Design, an AI framework that SolarWinds applies across its portfolio. The system safeguards customer environments while keeping humans in the loop through granular audit trails, goal tracking, automated rollback support, data masking, and strict least-privilege access to tools.
“Clear permissions, approval controls, and audit trails are essential for MSPs managing multiple customer environments,” Sai said. “Each customer has different policies and requirements, and an action that is appropriate for one may not be appropriate for another. Providers need to control what an agent can do in each environment and be able to trace its actions.”
Automation could help MSPs scale without proportional hiring
“IT operations have long been measured by how quickly teams can respond,” said Cullen Childress, Interim CEO and Chief Product Officer at SolarWinds. “But as environments become more complex, distributed, and noisy, reaction time alone is no longer enough. Organizations need to move proactively, reduce operational risk, and build resilience into the way IT work gets done.”
Childress added: “Avior was designed to meet this moment, helping teams shift from managing alerts to orchestrating outcomes with clear goals, guardrails, and control.”
With routine work handled through automation, an MSP can focus on adding customers, Sai explained, without adding headcount at the same rate, while technical teams can spend more time on strategic projects, advisory work, and escalations.
“That could improve margins by reducing the time needed for technicians to support each customer,” Sai said. “The extent will depend on the provider’s service mix and how much work can safely be automated. Providers should measure whether they’re spending fewer hours on routine tasks within an agentic AI system while maintaining service quality.”
Measurable IT outcomes could reshape MSP customer contracts
Sai said differentiation will depend on combining AI capabilities with operational context, customer knowledge, and appropriate governance. Avior incorporates SolarWinds’ experience managing IT environments, while MSPs contribute their understanding of individual customers’ critical systems, priorities, and change requirements.
Together, these elements can help providers demonstrate improvements in operational risk and reliability.
“The durable advantage will not come from access to a model. It will come from the operational context behind its decisions and the controls governing its actions,” Sai said. “Avior draws on 25 years of SolarWinds experience managing IT environments through its goals, skills, and tools. MSPs bring their own knowledge of each customer’s critical systems, priorities, and change requirements.”
“Providers that combine that knowledge with strong governance and clear reporting can show customers how their services are reducing operational risk and improving reliability, even as access to AI becomes commonplace,” Sai continued.
Sai also pointed to measurable operational goals as a way for MSPs to demonstrate the value of their services. Tracking progress can help customers see whether compliance gaps are closing, configuration backup coverage is complete, and capacity headroom is being maintained.
“When work is tracked against measurable goals, customers can see whether compliance gaps are closing, configuration backup coverage is complete, and capacity headroom is being maintained,” Sai said.
“Monitoring and incident response still matter, but the focus shifts toward how that work reduces operational risk and improves reliability. I expect customer conversations and contracts to follow, with more emphasis on resilience, compliance posture, and operational outcomes,” Sai said. “Providers who can show those results will stay competitive.”