SolarWinds, a leading provider of powerful and affordable IT management software, recently unveiled a broad refresh of its IT operations management portfolio, which are designed to improve support for monitoring critical IT services and extend support for monitoring private cloud and converged infrastructures.

In this refresh, the company announced an updated version of its Database Performance Analyzer (DPA 12.1), which now includes machine learning-enabled database anomaly detection and an automated management API.

To learn more about the new offerings and the impact they may have on SolarWinds customers, I spoke with Joe Kim, executive vice president and global chief technology officer, SolarWinds.

VMblog:  SolarWinds latest announcement includes broad and extensive systems portfolio enhancements.  Can you give a brief overview of the updates and any specific areas to highlight?

Joe Kim:  The most notable enhancement in the portfolio refresh is DPA 12.1, an updated version of Database Performance Analyzer, to include Intelligent Anomaly Detection. The machine learning-enabled database anomaly detection and automated management API are designed to help customers save time by automating anomaly detection to quickly find, visualize, and alert when database wait times become abnormal, and leverage machine learning capabilities to monitor behavior patterns and gain insight into what is expected versus an anomaly. The DPA management API decreases database professionals' time spent on redundant tasks, allowing customers to automate instance management (e.g., registration, licensing, annotations, and more) and programmatically scale for large and dynamic environments. 

Within our IT operations management portfolio, SolarWinds also announced updated versions of the following products: Server & Application Monitor (SAM) 6.8; Virtualization Manager (VMAN) 8.4; Storage Resource Monitor (SRM) 6.8; Server Configuration Monitor (SCM) 1.1; and Log Analyzer (LA) 2.0, which was formerly known as Log Manager for Orion.

VMblog:  What pain points are the updates in DPA 12.1 designed to address?

Kim:  The new anomaly detection capabilities of DPA 12.1 help DBAs more accurately identify and respond to performance incidents. Manually-intensive approaches to managing large environments consumes time, can be slow to yield actionable insights, and requires historical knowledge of baseline performance. With DPA 12.1, customers can save time by not only automating anomaly detection to more quickly find, visualize, and alert when database wait times deviate from the expected, but by leveraging machine learning capabilities to monitor behavior patterns and gain meaningful insight into what is expected versus an anomaly. 

VMblog:  How do updates to SolarWinds IT operations management portfolio help SolarWinds customers better manage their hybrid environments overall?

Kim:  SolarWinds continues to expand its IT operations management product portfolio as organizations transition from on-premises into both private and public cloud infrastructures, as adapting their IT monitoring and management capabilities can pose a significant challenge. SolarWinds has updated its product portfolio to deliver improved support for monitoring Active Directory and extended infrastructure monitoring capabilities with additional support for VMware environments, and added monitoring support for Cisco UCS converged infrastructure. These improvements are designed to help technology professionals easily extend their monitoring across their increasingly complex and expanding IT environment.

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Joe Kim is the Executive Vice President of Engineering and Global Chief Technology Officer at SolarWinds, responsible for the overall technology strategy, direction, and execution for SolarWinds 30+ IT management products and systems. Previously, Kim was the General Manager of Hewlett-Packard Enterprise's Transform business unit responsible for product strategy, management, engineering and execution of five new, innovative products in the IT Operations Management (ITOM) space, and the CTO for HP Software's Application Delivery Management (ADM) and ITOM businesses responsible for leading the development of transformational technologies and forward-thinking ideas. He has held other executive leadership roles at General Electric, Berkshire Hathaway, and several start-ups. Kim holds a Bachelors in Computer Science, and Criminology and Law Studies from Marquette University.