AUSTIN, TX--(Marketwired - Aug 8, 2013) - SolarWinds (NYSE: SWI), an IT management leader serving over 85,000 licensed network management tools and solutions customers worldwide, today released the results of a survey exploring whether current network management or monitoring solutions offer enough value to justify the price tag. The survey results, along with four SolarWinds' customer testimonials, indicate that affordability and ease-of-use are the more favorable network management or monitoring qualities in terms of features and capabilities.
According to a recent survey* of over 100 IT professionals with a company size of more than 500 employees:
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Buyer's remorse is apparent, particularly among those respondents utilizing software from the traditional Big Four enterprise network solution vendors -- Cisco, IBM, HP and CA.
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Two-thirds of those indicate they're paying for features and capabilities they do not need or utilize.
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55 percent of respondents using solutions from those four vendors report that they would give up functionality they are not using in order to reduce their costs.
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Among customers of the Big Four enterprise software vendors, ROI on current network management or monitoring solution is not enough to justify the total cost of ownership.
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More than 50 percent claim that they need to pay for staff training in order to maximize the ROI of their Big Four technology.
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34 percent indicate that management and maintenance fees are a big inhibitor to maximizing ROI, and almost as many cite the reliance on system integrators.
"This research, along with EMA's own market analysis, underscores the importance of clearly understanding whether or not you are getting optimal value from your network management tools," said Jim Frey, VP of Research, Network Management, at EMA. "Many shops are re-evaluating their choices, and switching to alternatives such as SolarWinds that cover a broad range of management needs with products that have been specifically designed for affordability and usability."
IT Pros Rely on SolarWinds for Ease-of-use, Affordability and More
"Solarwinds has changed the way we do business -- even changing our lines of business. We now have a confident, specific software partner for network monitoring and management that we can lead with on every network project. We have specific services tied to SolarWinds and the functionality that it provides. It is easy enough for any of our customers to get started with, while being complex enough to meet advanced monitoring and reporting requirements," said Joshua Biggley, operations architect, Bulletproof Solutions Inc. "Like most people, I used HP OpenView, WhatsUp Gold and, in some test environments, Nagios. HPOV hid my data behind an archaic UI, Nagios, ever extensible, made my upfront investment too high to gather simple data, and WhatsUp Gold started off well enough, but didn't have the stamina to finish."
"We started off with HP OpenView. This proved very cumbersome as really no one knew how to use it other than a SME who was located in a different state," said Harald Wildemast, senior communications engineer. "Then, SolarWinds turned up. Straight away it was easy to use and we were starting to become more proactive rather than reactive."
"At both my current and former employer I was tasked with replacing HP OpenView, and, in both environments, SolarWinds was our solution of choice," said Mike Driskell, project lead systems engineer, Fortune 500 company. "The main issues we faced with HPOV were complexity and cost. SolarWinds is user-friendly, doesn't require a lot of agents for monitoring and can help us manage just about anything we need."
"Before we made the switch to SolarWinds, we were using HP OpenView and what a nightmare it was. We had issues configuring the different components and managing the millions of alerts being generated, not to mention the steep renewal cost," said Craigcm, thwack member. "We chose SolarWinds for several reasons, mainly for its affordability, the fact that it's truly agentless, ease-of-use, and the support from both SolarWinds and the thwack community. Life with SolarWinds is simply rosy -- the dashboard provides a single pain of glass for our operations team so they can see the entire environment at a glance and the reporting features keeps the managers all warm and fuzzy."
SolarWinds Network Management Solutions
Since SolarWinds' founding in 1999, the company's mission has been to provide purpose-built products that are designed to make IT pros' jobs easier. By working closely with and listening to SolarWinds' user-community thwack of over 125,000 IT pros, SolarWinds is able to solve the problems and challenges that specifically address the IT needs of today while offering solutions that are a user-friendly and cost-effective alternative to the unwieldy and expensive network management tools sold by the Big Four vendors.
"While most network management companies miss or overlook changes to the network domain chasing the next 'big thing,' SolarWinds' network management products have kept pace with the market, offering all the features that network engineers care about without sacrificing usability and affordability," said Sanjay Castelino, VP and market leader, SolarWinds. "By paying close attention to the needs of the IT pro and building highly useful products that solve their everyday problems out of the box, we have challenged the status quo of expensive and complicated 'framework' solutions established by most other enterprise software vendors and, in return, have earned the trust of over 85,000 customers looking for a network management tool or solution."
SolarWinds delivers powerful and easy-to-use network management functionality out of the box with the power of customization to address enterprise scale and the complexity of today's networks at a fraction of the cost. From network performance to configuration and compliance to traffic analysis and more, IT pros can deploy SolarWinds network management products to build a robust IT management system that fits their evolving needs, including:
When a customer downloads and purchases a SolarWinds product, they're not just getting the powerful and easy-to-use features that are ready to go out-of-the-box, they're also getting support, troubleshooting tips from company experts, and valuable tools and resources shared by experienced peers on thwack, SolarWinds' online IT pro community.
Additional Resources:
*The survey was conducted by IDG Research on behalf of SolarWinds from June 11 through June 20, 2013, resulting in 104 survey responses from IT professionals with a company size of more than 500 employees.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains "forward-looking" statements, which are subject to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements regarding SolarWinds' expectation to continue to advance and redefine network management solutions, and remain a leader in delivering powerful, affordable and easy-to-use IT management software that solve real-world problems for everyone from the SMB to the large enterprise. These forward-looking statements are based on management's beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available to management. Forward-looking statements include all statements that are not historical facts and may be identified by terms such as "will," "believes," or similar expressions and the negatives of those terms. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, the following: (a) the possibility that general economic conditions or uncertainty cause information technology spending to be reduced or purchasing decisions to be delayed; (b) the inability to increase sales to existing customers and to attract new customers; (c) SolarWinds' failure to integrate acquired businesses and any future acquisitions successfully; (d) the timing and success of new product introductions by SolarWinds or its competitors; (e) changes in SolarWinds' pricing policies or those of its competitors; and (f) such other risks and uncertainties described more fully in documents filed with or furnished to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. All information provided in this release is as of the date hereof and SolarWinds undertakes no duty to update this information except as required by law.
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 online community, thwack, to solve problems, share technology and best practices, and directly participate in our product development process. Learn more today at http://www.solarwinds.com/.
SolarWinds, SolarWinds.com and thwack are registered trademarks of SolarWinds. All other company and product names mentioned are used only for identification purposes and may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
