SolarWinds, an IT management software company based in Austin, Texas, has released the latest version of its Network Performance Monitor (NPM), called SolarWinds NPM 12.
NPM is a product that tens of thousands of IT departments rely on, says Mav Turner, director of product strategy at SolarWinds. NPM gives performance management insight into a network, and its main goal is to make sure the network is running and to make sure users know how to get it working again.
SolarWinds distinguishes its product from others in a variety of ways. SolarWinds NPM 12 is downloadable, providing quick access to network monitoring, and it can combine with other products, which an entire IT department can use.
There are also two features, NetPath and Network Insight, which provide a visual insight into networks, both on-premises and in the cloud, bridging the gap of hybrid IT, Turner says.
NetPath is made for hybridized use and shows the path that a user took to get to an application, so if there is a problem, it can show users exactly where it occurred. It achieves this by visually mapping hybrid network paths, giving IT professionals whose companies use any kind of cloud-based applications, to visually identify the performance issue and insights for a resolution.
NetPath allows visibility and actionable insights into a company’s own network or a cloud vendor’s network as well such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure.
Network Insight deals with load balancers, which even out network traffic, and are critical for delivering web applications to the right place, Turner says. Network insight is currently available for F5 environments.
“Monitoring load balancers can make sure that users are accessing services properly,” Turner says. “The problem is that there are so many things that can go wrong with load balancers, and people are interested in making them better but not as much in monitoring the issues, which is why SolarWinds has addressed the issue.”
SolarWinds is focusing on hybrid IT because most enterprises have networks on-premises and also in the cloud, Turner says. According to the most recent SolarWinds IT Trends Report, 87 percent have migrated some infrastructure to the cloud, yet 60 percent state they will likely never transition all of their services offsite, giving NPM for hybrid IT the most potential.
SolarWinds says monitoring the performance of networks either on-premises or offsite, regardless of who owns it, has been impossible with a single tool because traceroute tools are typically blocked from accessing service provider networks, and cloud monitoring tools don’t have proper visibility into on-premises infrastructure performance.