SolarWinds Opens Network Engineers' Eyes to App-Centric

AUSTIN, TX--(Marketwired - Jul 30, 2014) - Is it the network or the application? SolarWinds ( NYSE : SWI ), a leading provider of powerful and affordable IT management software , today announced it's helping network engineers answer this business-critical question with its latest release of SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM). The company's flagship and award-winning network performance monitoring solution has added new, enterprise-class deep packet inspection (DPI) and analysis technology to troubleshoot network performance on application latency. Finally, network engineers at any size organization can afford to quickly and easily identify network and application response time issues for improved end-user quality of experience and continuity of business operations.

• IT organizations rely on a complex environment of business-critical applications to increase productivity, efficiency, and to ultimately drive revenue.
• Many popular modern applications like Skype®, YouTube® and Microsoft® Lync® are not identifiable on a network through the standard flow-based technologies alone, thereby sending network engineers to chase individual applications to troubleshoot performance.
• Previously, DPI and analysis technology has not been readily available to a vast number of IT organizations due to the complexity and cost of current offerings. SolarWinds now offers surprisingly affordable network performance monitoring plus DPI and analysis for a fraction of the traditional enterprise cost, starting below $3,000.
• According to Gartner, one of the leading information technology research and advisory companies, "at an estimated $1 billion, the Network Performance Monitoring and Diagnostics (NPMD) market is a fast-growing segment of the larger network management space ($1.8 billion in 2012), and overlaps slightly with aspects of the application performance monitoring (APM) space ($2 billion in 2012)."*

What's New in SolarWinds NPM 11.0 With the addition of the new out-of-the-box DPI and analysis sensors, SolarWinds NPM provides a comprehensive view of network fault, performance, availability, traffic, and latency allowing network engineers to more effectively IDENTIFY, PRIORITIZE AND RESOLVE network issues before they impact application performance, end-users and the business by:

• Continuously monitoring packets across the wire
• Inspecting, identifying and classifying application traffic for over 1,200 applications such as Skype, YouTube and Microsoft Lync
• Displaying network and application response time in easy-view charts and graphs
• Complementing the power of flow-based technologies like NetFlow, sFlow® and J-Flow with DPI technology

In addition to providing insight into how the network impacts application performance, SolarWinds offers a host of integrated products to help IT Pros connect the dots between the full application stack -- the connections between the application and all of software, middleware, and extended infrastructure that the application requires for performance, including:

• SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor - agentless application and server monitoring
• SolarWinds Virtualization Manager - virtualization management for Hybrid IT
• SolarWinds Storage Manager - heterogeneous storage performance and capacity management

Supporting Quotes "Applications are placing more and more demands on the network, increasing traffic and requiring IT Pros to get smarter about how to manage them," said Chris LaPoint, vice president product management, SolarWinds. "With SolarWinds NPM 11.0, we continue to respond to the evolving needs of our community of IT Pros and their requests to help simplify troubleshooting. Now with the new DPI technology and just a few clicks, network engineers have the power to go above and beyond network fault and availability monitoring to quickly identify, classify and analyze whether it's the network or the application to determine the root cause of poor user experience."

According to Gartner analyst Jonah Kowall, et al., "The network team has always been blamed for issues with applications. This is partially because of the current state of the network being constructed of well-defined protocols providing rules of engagement, which other infrastructure and software components do not follow. The network packet data is an excellent source of information on misbehaving components, performance metrics and other sources of insight. Even with the so-called 'blame game' occurring, the network provides an invaluable lens in which to view application behavior and performance."

Criteria for the New Magic Quadrant for Network Performance Monitoring and Diagnostics (NPMD, Jonah Kowall et al, July, 29, 2013.

"Have you ever worked in IT? Everything is always blamed on the network. If an app is slow, people jump right to blaming the network," said Jake H., a systems administrator for a Tribal Government. "Now with SolarWinds NPM's application-aware functionality, we can tell within a matter of seconds if it is indeed the network or if it's the app causing the issue, and instead of looking down both paths, we can focus on one or the other and reduce resolution time."

Pricing and Availability SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor pricing starts at $2,675 USD, including one network packet analysis sensor, 10 server packet analysis sensors and the first year of maintenance. For more information, including a downloadable, free 30-day evaluation, visit the SolarWinds website or call 866.530.8100.

Additional Resources

• Video: SolarWinds' VP of Product Management Chris LaPoint Talks SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor 11.0
• Video: Overview of Deep Packet Inspection and Quality of Experience Dashboard in SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor 11.0
• SolarWinds Lab: Deep Packet Inspection Comes To NPM - July 30 at 1 p.m. CDT
• Webcast: Quality of Experience Monitoring with Deep Packet Inspection and Analysis from SolarWinds - August 7 at 11 a.m. CDT
• Customer testimonial: Guy Watkins, IT Facilities Director, Checkered Flag Motor Car Company

*Gartner NPMD Magic Quadrant

About SolarWinds SolarWinds ( NYSE : SWI ) provides powerful and affordable IT management software to customers worldwide from Fortune 500 enterprises to small businesses. In all of our market areas, our approach is consistent. We focus exclusively on IT Pros and strive to eliminate the complexity that they have been forced to accept from traditional enterprise software vendors. SolarWinds delivers on this commitment with unexpected simplicity through products that are easy to find, buy, use and maintain while providing the power to address any IT management problem on any scale. Our solutions are rooted in our deep connection to our user base, which interacts in our thwack ® online community to solve problems, share technology and best practices, and directly participate in our product development process. Learn more today at http://www.solarwinds.com/ .

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