SolarWinds Expands APM Capabilities

Why is this application running sooooo slowly? Because small and medium businesses do not want to hear that lament from their users, SolarWinds unveiled a stand alone application performance monitor and purchased a virtualization monitoring company.SolarWinds Application Performance Monitor (APM) is designed to examine how well physical and virtual servers perform and correlate that information to various business applications. The product includes more than 50 out-of-the-box monitors or custom templates developed by users on the thwack Community Content Exchange. Previously, the SolarWinds Application Performance Monitor required SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor, but that is no longer the case. Pricing for SolarWinds Application Performance Monitor starts at $2,495.

With the product, technicians gain insight into the performance of their physical and virtual infrastructure. The monitoring system features dashboards, alerts, reports, and a root cause analysis function designed to help IT technicians pinpoint performance problems. Technicians can examine application and server performance on handheld devices, including Apple iPhone, Google Android and Research in Motion Blackberry.

In addition, the network and systems management supplier acquired Hyper9, a virtualization management software provider based in Austin, TX. Its virtualization management solution, which costs $3,000, supports optimization, capacity planning, configuration and chargeback functions.

SolarWinds has been one in a growing number of vendors delivering management tools for small and medium businesses. The company has fared well recently: it reported total revenue for the third quarter of 2010 of $41.2 million, a 27% increase over total revenue in the third quarter of 2009. On a year‐to‐date basis, sales reached $111.0 million, representing a 33% increase over the first nine months of 2009. The vendor is moving into a congested marketplace with its APM solutions, but its track record in understanding and meeting customer needs has been solid to date.