It’s official. IT management
software developer SolarWinds is formally setting its sights on managed service providers (MSP) following an announcement recently that it’s releasing software
targeted specifically at the services crowd.
A long-time favorite among MSPs,
SolarWinds produces a downloadable suite of products for application and
server, network, storage resource, virtualization and log management. Leveraged
by a range of organizations from the SMB set all the way up to Fortune 500
enterprises, SolarWinds’ tools had already been deployed widely within MSP
environments. Overall, the company boasts 100,000 customers worldwide.
"For years, our members have
been singing the praises of SolarWinds as an MSP-friendly software
provider," said Charles Weaver, co-founder and president of the MSP
Alliance. "That said, SolarWinds has been largely flying under the
radar."
Released last week, SolarWinds’ new
MSP platform builds on that momentum with additions that will give MSP partners
better control over customers’ networks, applications, virtualization and
storage infrastructure. MSPs will be able to deploy standalone or multiple
servers across a distibuted network and the platform will come with
out-of-the-box functionality to generate performance and capacity reports for
end-customers, along with customization options for both reports and
dashboards.
According to Evan Marks,
infrastructure manager at MSP COCC, Inc., his company already uses SolarWinds
to monitor multiple IT services at 150 financial institutions. He says that it
has given COCC the power to more proactively address issues within customer
systems and that it is using it as a value-add to its services.
"We are deploying it to our
clients as a free enhancement to our managed WAN service," Marks says. "Clients can now access the Orion portal
to view real time information about their routers and circuits and to access
critical alerts about these services."
In addition to added monitoring
capabilities, SolarWinds has built in branding opportunities into the platform
to give MSPs the ability to keep a high profile where the system directly touches
end users.
According to Suku Krishnaraj, senior
vice president of product strategy for SolarWinds, the company is working to
make itself the most affordable solution for MSPs on the market by keeping the
on-boarding cost for new customers low. The platform bills itself as highly
scalable to account for dynamic MSP needs as customers’ networks expand or
management requirements shift.
A publicly traded company,
SolarWinds has been a darling of Wall Street of late, with its shares
increasing by 44.9 percent over the last year and its price hitting a 52-week
high this week.