NETSCOUT vs SolarWinds

About SolarWinds

SolarWinds sells monitoring, observability and service management capabilities on a platform offered in self-hosted and SaaS deployment models. Customers running self-hosted Orion modules on version 2022.2 or later are using the SolarWinds Platform. The Orion Platform was an infrastructure monitoring and management platform restricted to self-hosted deployment. Through Platform Connect, SolarWinds Observability, the SaaS-delivered observability solution, can consume data from self-hosted Hybrid Cloud Observability. SolarWinds offers a choice of self-hosted, SaaS or hybrid deployment.^[3][5][9]

SolarWinds Observability SaaS is an observability solution built to connect data from web applications, their services, and cloud and hybrid infrastructures. The application performance monitoring solution collects metrics, logs, traces and user experience data. AIOps capabilities are part of SolarWinds Service Desk, SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted and SaaS. Self-hosted observability can be deployed behind a firewall or self-hosted in AWS, Microsoft Azure or GCP. SolarWinds AI works across the portfolio to deliver intelligence, automation and optimization. Root Cause Assist provides users with context and concrete starting points for investigating and resolving issues. Alert clustering groups related alerts and identifies common root causes. Customer data submitted to SolarWinds AI features is not used to train or fine-tune underlying third-party foundation models.^[6][7][8]

Avior is built on the SolarWinds platform. Users set goals and guardrails for Avior, which carries out work while the team governs the outcome. Avior can take action to reduce alert noise, close compliance gaps, automate backups and remediate config drift. SolarWinds ingests alerts and tickets from SolarWinds Observability, Service Desk and 200+ third-party tools and correlates them into one incident.^[3]

SolarWinds Security Event Manager is an on-premise SIEM tool built with threat feeds designed to automatically detect and respond to user, application and network threats. Security Event Manager comes with hundreds of pre-built connectors that gather logs from various sources, parse their data and put it into a common readable format. SEM has hundreds of built-in correlation rules that watch the network and piece together data from the various log sources to identify potential threats in real time. Security Event Manager can automate responses when correlation rules are triggered, including blocking IPs, changing privileges, disabling accounts, blocking USB devices and killing applications. Security Event Manager has built-in File Integrity Monitoring capabilities to monitor and alert on suspicious or potentially malicious activity in sensitive files. Security Event Manager includes a built-in USB defender for file and USB activity. SEM provides hundreds of out-of-the-box reports for HIPAA, PCI DSS, SOX, ISO, DISA STIGs, FISMA, FERPA, NERC CIP, GLBA, GPG13 and more. SolarWinds sells Server & Application Monitor, Web Performance Monitor, Security Event Manager, Patch Manager and Access Rights Manager.^[1][9]

SolarWinds Service Desk brings incident management, service request management, ticket routing, approvals, agentic AI and SLA management together in one workspace. SolarWinds Service Desk software connects IT asset management with configuration management. SolarWinds Service Desk centralizes the information teams use to manage IT assets across their lifecycle. SolarWinds Service Desk tracks hardware, software, licenses, contracts, vendors, warranties, assigned users, locations and related ticket history. SolarWinds Service Desk includes a service portal, service catalog, knowledge base and Virtual Agent capabilities. SolarWinds Service Desk supports ITIL-aligned incident, workflow automation, problem, change and release management practices with configurable workflows. SolarWinds AI generates a short summary of the comments and communication on a ticket. The Service Desk AI virtual agent can answer user questions and support troubleshooting. Relevant infrastructure alerts can be turned into Service Desk tickets. SolarWinds Service Desk can be used across the entire organization as an enterprise service management solution.^[7][10][11]

SolarWinds sells Network Performance Monitor, NetFlow Traffic Analyzer, IP Address Manager, Network Configuration Manager, Log Analyzer, Virtualization Manager and Storage Resource Monitor. NetPath is used to visualize critical network paths. SolarWinds offers monitoring for the performance of applications running in DigitalOcean Droplets. The SolarWinds Deployment Service program is valid for 60 days from purchase, with the option to extend. Deployment packages are offered for lite (up to 5 hours), small (DS Level 1, up to 30 hours), medium (DS Level 2, up to 75 hours) and large deployments (DS Level 3, up to 125 hours). SolarWinds Certified Service Providers deliver partner-led professional services and premium support add-ons in EMEA, APJ, LATAM and North America. Federal deployment work is delivered by U.S.-citizen engineers with security clearances and complies with federal and defense regulations.^[9][12]

SolarWinds holds ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification for the information security management system supporting development, maintenance, operations and support of its products and services. SolarWinds shares compliance reports such as SOC 2 and ISO 27001 upon request. SolarWinds conducts regular external penetration tests using independent, accredited third-party firms. SolarWinds follows U.S. federal guidelines for secure software development described in the National Institute of Standards & Technology Secure Software Development Framework (SSDF). The federal government is a customer of SolarWinds.^{[1][3][8][10][12][13]}