Sometimes it’s hard to believe SolarWinds turned 20 this year. That’s eons to survive as an independent software company, much less to have grown into an industry leader. But there’s a simple reason for it. SolarWinds is that rare example of what happens when …
Even after all these years in technology, I remain in awe of IT pros. Watching my kids’ classes, it seems everyone—including elementary school students and other civilians—is practicing truly geeky, hands-on-keyboards arts. We’re also seeing more casual administrators—people with a keen interest in spending …
While we all know mergers and acquisitions are common in competitive markets, end users often don’t get insight into the reasoning behind the purchase or takeover. While these decisions sometimes make sense when the companies involved are related in terms of the products or …
While it’s inevitable that new technologies usually create new business opportunities, they also often create new problems for IT pros to solve. It’s a natural cycle for operations with which we’ve become reasonably comfortable. We look at a new platform/protocol/architecture/interface/tool, search a bit on …
Have you registered for THWACKcamp™ 2018? What are you waiting for? This year’s event offers multiple sessions from both industry experts and SolarWinds Head Geeks™ on topics important to you, including mapping, logging, security, and more. I’m lucky to join SolarWinds director of engineering …
It’s almost that time of year! We’re in full preparation mode for THWACKcamp™ 2018 and can’t wait for you to experience our sessions. Covering everything from network monitoring and management, virtualization, logging, and more, this year’s lineup goes further into making sure you hear …
Perhaps the best part of being an IT pro—of being a technology professional in general—is that you don’t really have a choice. It’s an irrepressible self-nomination to a task force of incredibles, who prefer to wield their powers out of sight, but hope the …
When the IT Show Comes to Town In the past, I’ve compared the logistics of tech conferences, tradeshows, and user groups to moon landings, touring companies, and polar expedition planning. Common to all of these is the anticipation of the journey, of meeting new …
I think we’ve all had that moment at 3:00 a.m. over the weekend when we wish our monitoring and management systems would just shut up. The UPS in rack 4’s battery life is at 40%, we GET it. But we’ve also had that moment …
Retracing an intractable alert hairball today, I’m reminded of how critical, and often critically broken, alerting actually is in many environments. You can be a department of one with only a handful of systems sending occasional advisory messages, or a large IT team with …
