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Revision as of 20:22, 2 April 2009

SolarWinds is a developer and marketer of network management software.

The company sells downloadable software products that maintain, monitor and troubleshoot IT networks. It also provides several free tools relating to its core commercial products, and hosts an online community of more than 20,000 users at www.thwack.com.

In early 2008, the company filed an S1 document indicating its plans to go public with an IPO of $259 million.

History

SolarWinds was founded in 1998 by two brothers, Dave and Don Yonce in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The company was conceived to create faster, easier network management tools. It was profitable its very first year in business.

SolarWinds moved to Austin, Texas in 2006 and has had aggressive growth ever since. From 2005 to 2007 the company more than doubled its revenue, growing from $27.9 million to $61.7 million annually.

In 2007, SolarWinds raised funding from Austin Ventures, Bain Capital and Insight Venture Partners to fuel “strategic acquisitions.” Following the funding, SolarWinds acquired several companies including Neon Software and ipMonitor Corp. and opened a European sales office in Ireland.

In late 2008, SolarWinds established a presence in the Asia Pacific region (APAC) with an APAC headquarters in Singapore that provides multilingual sales, support and services to Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore and Taiwan.

In early 2009, the company acquired the assets of New Zealand-based network monitoring company Kiwi Enterprises for an undisclosed sum. The company integrated the Kiwi Syslog Server and CatTools into its product line and plan to use the technology to expand its free tools and core software products.

Items & Services

SolarWinds’ products are all downloadable and the company’s primary method of product support is its large online community at www.thwack.com, which allows users to help each other and add and share custom functionalities, templates and plug-ins.

In 2008, the company announced a free Cisco NetFlow tool, a free tool to monitor a single VMWare server and, in June, marked the anniversary of thwack.com by releasing a free SolarWinds Exchange Monitor.

Free Tools

• Advanced Subnet Calculator - compute addresses for IP subnets
• SolarWinds Exchange Monitor - continuously monitor Exchange in real time
• Kiwi Syslog Server - receive, log, display and forward syslog messages from network devices
• Kiwi CatTools - manage and backup the network
• NetFlow Configurator - configure NetFlow v5 via SNMP on supported Cisco devices
• Real-time NetFlow Analyzer - capture and analyze traffic on your network
• TFTP Server - upload and download executable images and configurations to network devices
• VM Monitor - continuously monitor a VMware ESX Server and its virtual machines
• Wake-on LAN - remotely power up network PCs

Fault and Performance Monitoring

• Orion Network Performance Monitor (NPM) - fault and network performance management platform
• Orion Application Performance Monitor (APM) - extends Orion NPM's monitoring capabilities to give visibility into the performance of applications and the underlying operating systems and servers
• Orion NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA) - provides visibility into network traffic
• Orion VoIP Monitor - creates customized network management software
• Orion Wireless Network Monitor - extends Orion NPM's monitoring capabilities to wireless access points and associated wireless clients and sessions
• Orion Enterprise Operations Console (EOC) - consolidated command center for unified visibility into remote Orion deployments
• Orion Scalability Engines - scales the fault and performance management capabilities of Orion NPM
• ipMonitor – up-down monitoring for network, server and application availability

Configuration and Compliance

• Orion Network Configuration Manager (NCM) (formerly Cirrus Configuration Manager) - change and configuration management
• Engineer’s Toolset - 49 desktop tools for managing, monitoring and troubleshooting networks
• LANsurveyor - automatically discovers LAN or WAN and produces comprehensive network diagrams that can be exported into Visio
• LANsurveyor Express - LANsurveyor Express integrates with Microsoft Visio 2007 to perform network mapping from within the Visio application

External Links

• SolarWinds Redefines Network Configuration Management, ChannelInsider
• SolarWinds Expands Thanks to Thriving Community, Windows IT Pro
• Solarwinds SNMP Guide

References

1. ^ Denise Dubie, Network World. “SolarWinds marks 'Thwack' anniversary with free tool release.” June 11, 2008. Retrieved on January 6, 2009.
2. Dennis Drogseth, Network World. “SolarWinds is doing something right.” August 18, 2008. Retrieved on January 6, 2009
3. Chris Morrison, VentureBeat. “Is Network Management Growing? SolarWinds Picks up Kiwi Enterprises.” January 6, 2009. Retrieved on January 6, 2009.
4. ^ Kenson Website. “SolarWinds Products.” Retrieved on January 6, 2009.
5. ^ Austin Business Journal. “SolarWinds Raises $7.5M.” February 5, 2007. Retrieved on January 6, 2009
6. Chris Morrison, VentureBeat. “Is Network Management Growing? SolarWinds Picks up Kiwi Enterprises.” January 6, 2009. Retrieved on January 6, 2009.
7. Maxwell Cooter, TechWorld. “Solar Winds Finally Blows into Europe.” October 9, 2007. Retrieved on January 6, 2009.
8. Company Release. “SolarWinds Establishes Operations in the Asia-Pacific Region.” November 11, 2008. Retrieved on January 15, 2009.
9. Company Press Release. “SolarWinds Acquires Assets From New Zealand-based Network Monitoring Company, Kiwi Enterprises.” January 5, 2008. Retrieved on January 6, 2009.
10. Michael Vizard, Ziff Davis. “Network Management Gets Virtual.” October 15, 2008. Retrieved on January 6, 2009.
11. Denise Dubie, Network World. “Analyze Cisco's NetFlow for free.” August 4, 2008. Retrieved on January 6, 2009.