SolarWinds announced it's adding transformative artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities to its IT service management (ITSM) solutions. The new AI features include a virtual agent to help users solve everyday IT problems and guided incident resolution to empower agents with the information they need to effectively resolve complex issues.

The new SolarWinds Service Desk additions are designed to reduce ticket volume by enabling users to remediate easier-to-solve issues so IT practitioners can focus on the complex issues requiring their expertise. The Service Desk AI virtual agent can answer user questions and support troubleshooting. By constantly learning based on interactions with users, the virtual agent adapts over time to provide the most helpful and relevant information and help solve issues based on each customer's specific needs.

The cloud-native SolarWinds Service Desk solution is highly regarded in the industry for being easy to use and effective for users and agents while providing quick time to value. Automated ticket routing, AI-powered smart suggestions, and the new virtual agent within Service Desk all help ensure agents can efficiently deliver services across the organization. Customers can also enhance and personalize Service Desk through integrations with over 200 popular cloud applications.

"Digital transformation, application modernization, and the move to the cloud have dramatically increased the complexity of digital services," said Cullen Childress, GVP of product management at SolarWinds. "This means the number of potential problems impacting user experience has also increased substantially. Our ITSM solutions are a significant focus we're investing in. This includes Service Desk, which enables teams to focus more on important business priorities rather than mundane, time-consuming tasks. By leveraging advanced AI and powerful automation, SolarWinds makes users more productive, supports agents more efficiently, and helps ensure companies are more successful."

SolarWinds solutions are rooted in the company's deep connection with tech professionals. The company engaged directly with customers through THWACK, its community of over 180,000 users, to develop and test the new AI capabilities and ensure they make it easier for IT pros to do their jobs. A recent survey of SolarWinds customers found the new Service Desk AI features enabled IT teams to reduce ticket resolution time by 24% and save an average of 23 hours per week. Surveyed Service Desk customers have also reported a reduction in downtime of 21% on average and a 24% average increase in progress toward achieving service-level agreements (SLAs).

Teams can customize SolarWinds Service Desk to provide an efficient and intelligent ticket management system and service request workflows for other business groups beyond the IT department. This enables human resources, legal, finance, sales, marketing, and other departments to become more responsive and enhance their service delivery capabilities. Managing employee requests through one system and automating workflows helps these departments deliver better and faster services to colleagues. Later this year, SolarWinds is planning to launch a new enterprise service management (ESM) solution designed to allow multiple departments within a single organization to have their own service portal, ticket management system, and service catalog within one platform to allow better cross-department workflows while ensuring data from different departments is appropriately segregated.

The new AI-powered ITSM upgrades are the latest significant solution enhancements from SolarWinds. SolarWinds released cloud-based and hybrid observability solutions and a new partner program in the past year. By investing in the AI-powered SolarWinds Platform, the company is blending observability and service management to consistently deliver simple and secure solutions for IT Ops, DevOps, SecOps, and CloudOps professionals.