Alert Management -

[Tornaritech]

Solarwinds has released a centralized management product in Beta. Love the concept. What do you think?

www.swalertcentral.com

[Marvin Rhoads]

All enterprise class NMS products should have such features.

My issue with SolarWinds is that customers thought they would be able to do this with NPM. then they thought perhaps if they add licenses for LEM. Now they're led to believe that this new product will do it. At some point they will just give up on SolarWinds - at least as their magic single pane of glass NMS.

The other challenge is that any product like this is almost useless by itself. Organizations needs to adapt their work processes to truly make the product deliver on its promise. Without that it becomes yet another zombie server, shuffling about in the data center but not doing anything to help deliver value.

[Tornaritech]

You are accurate in your description of the Single Pane of Glass concept with Solarwinds. However, after using and exploring enterprise class products, CA NSM/Spectrum and ManageEngine you cannot beat the cost. Factor in unlimited license models for NPM, SAM, NCM, NTA and LEM, your TCO is still signficantly less then the larger vendors.

As to your second point, this applies to any NMS product. I have found that this is has been my biggest challenge. Implementing the polices/process and procedures is the easy part, getting the organization or Network teams to adopt and follow these is the challenge.