Solarwinds Observability

I am in a pickle here. The initial differentiation between HCO and SWO was a bit confusing to prospective clients... The mostly On-Prem HCO is confusing due to their use of "Observability" - but looking at it, it does not really provide Logs and Traces on-prem.  With APM (or Application Observability) - one needs to subscribe to the APM Suite which are AppOptics, PingDom and Loggly (which are SaaS based). I was told by an Account Rep that those 3 products are being sundowned/deprecated in favor of Solarwinds Observability -- Is this TRUE???

They are NOT being sunset - at least at the present time.  It's true that SolarWinds Observability contains tooling from AppOptics, Pingdom, Database Performance Monitor, and more, but presented in a holistic way. Will those products go away some day? Probably. Is that in the next year or two? All of my indicators say "no."

Each customer - and organization - has different needs at different times.  We've had customers start with the on-prem solution to then move some resources into SaaS and need want (not need) SolarWinds Observability.

It's all about ease of work.  The self-hosted solution works great. I was a customer long before joining SolarWinds, but to really tune it to my environment, I was always extending it behind its original scope.  Then I was testing new features before upgrades, then upgrading, and maintaining a SQL database I was wholly unqualified to do. Given what I know now, I would have elected for SaaS solution from jump, so I could skip a bunch of that headache.

The best scenarios are those specifically for you.  If you are all in the cloud, then SaaS is ideal, if you are all on-prem, them self-hosted is the way to go.  If you are somewhere in the middle, then the discussions need to happen to get at exactly what you want to accomplish.

For many new customers I've spoken with recently, they are starting with the hosted solution and supplementing it with the self-hosted for any legacy sites/data centers they are operating.  Then they use the cloud connector and get everything in one place.

There's no "perfect" answer for everyone or every situation.  I'm happy to help answer any questions or connect you with someone who can help.

Our account rep (for SWO) is giving us the impression it's not going to be offered "soon". We're a huge Orion shop with SAM (half exploited). We are a very legacy on-prem shop - mostly server based still (no microservices), classic 3 tier (J2EE) or dotNet frameworks. Thick database backend - Oracle on SOLARIS. We're only really after a decent APM or Application Observability. The "O" in HCO is I think a misnomer since there are no Observabilty Modules in HCO... the APM Suite is not even an ON-PREM solution set but SaaS based.  

I guess the messaging on HCO and SWO is confusing - despite a newish YT Video on Solarwinds Platform that I recently stumbled on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlHVKrz6g8s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXj4ufVF42M&t=26s

With SWO - I know it is possible to link existing ORION or HCO to SWO via Platform Connect - but very vague on what other linkages are apart from "Alert Anomaly Detection" which I trust exploits the AI/ML capabilities in SWO.

So is SWO right for us - for our On-Prem Legacy Infrastructure? Or should we just maintain our ORION/HCO and just subscribe to APM Suite of AppOptics, Loggly and Pingdom? I don;t want to throw away investments on ORION (or HCO).. 

For your situation, it sounds like you've already got your answer: stick with your self-hosted solution and supplement with either AppOptics or SolarWinds Observability.

Before I get torn apart: I don't know what any of this costs - I'm not in sales - but the flexibility that SolarWinds Observability gives you to move beyond just APM (should it be needed) makes it the frontrunner for me 

Like I said, I can only speak to the technical specifications, but my lab is running HCO linked with SaaS and I like that I can have my databases,, digital experience, and other metrics right in the SaaS portal.

Now that I'm beginning to work with k8s and docker, it's even more important to me to have as much in one place as possible.

If you'd like to speak with me further, send me a friendship request and we can PM via THWACK.

As I said earlier our primary goal is to have an APM, Full Stack if possible (including Network and Infrastructure) AND "Observable" - (Metrics, Logs, Traces).  The current "APM Suite" (Pingdom, AppOptics, Loggly) is being srongly discouraged by our account rep as he claims it is going to be made unavailable soon as SWO is the new product. We are sold on SWO (even if it is new and have some rough edges) because we already have investments on NPM, VMAN, SAM, etc - and we want those investments preserved.  SWO offers "Network and Infrastructure Observability" as a separate subscription (plus 4 other "Observability: offerings).  Since we already have on-prem Network & Infrastructure Monitoring - we do not want the SWO Observability - instead we want to have the current ORION monitoring feed into SWO.  But so far, already a year after PLATFORM CONNECT was released - there's no new information apart from "Alert Anomaly Detection" which does not even explain if it can corelate with Application Observability in SWO.

Other issues I have - in your Database Observability offering, Oracle Databases are not supported. Only Open Source DBs plus SQL Server.  Our account rep offers DPA - but can it be integrated with Solarwinds Observability?

Just sent you a friend request.

In my opinion (and as a former leader in a large SolarWinds Integrator and ex employee of SolarWinds) this is a failure of SolarWinds being transparent with their roadmap. We are trying to go all in on SWO and understand SWI's position that blending HCO with SWO is the solution in this thread but that's not what partners want. Partners want to be able to know that if they go all in on SWO, that the gaps in capabiltiy will be addressed and that there'll be more transparency on the roadmap for SWO because right now, all the reps are just point us to THWACK and it's sparse here. 

Come to the table SolarWinds, more transparency about what's coming down the line and maybe people will go all in on what we are being told is your flag ship offering/the direction we are being told to go. 

Hi Mark Boyd.  Would be happy to share the roadmap and strategic direction for both HCO and SWO with you and others.  Message me if interested or I can clarify anything for you.

Jeff

Thanks Jeff I'll hit you up. 

I spoke with the regional Sales Director over a coffee this morning and he'll chat to you he sees you too, I believe. 

My issue still remains, and it's from other partners too, that we are being pointed to a one year old dead thread here to "see the roadmap" and there is nothing here. 

Having worked for both Solarawinds and their largest partner, it's frustrating as all hell that the command and control nature of the company doesn't let their own staff talk to what is coming for an irrational fear of getting sued, because "SolarWinds is a public listed company". It's simply disingenuous, Elastic are publicly listed and they have Slack threads for their community and stuff on their forums. Why can't SolarWinds? 

Even our customers who don't see SWO in a positive light right now, are OK with it where it is if there's general information about roadmap out there.

Loosen the reigns a bit, what's there to lose? 

I don't like being or want to sound negative and I only speak for myself/anecdotally for other partners but it's silly. More frequent, more public roadmap updates would be ace.

Thanks Jeff I'll hit you up. 

I spoke with the regional Sales Director over a coffee this morning and he'll chat to you he sees you too, I believe. 

My issue still remains, and it's from other partners too, that we are being pointed to a one year old dead thread here to "see the roadmap" and there is nothing here. 

Having worked for both Solarawinds and their largest partner, it's frustrating as all hell that the command and control nature of the company doesn't let their own staff talk to what is coming for an irrational fear of getting sued, because "SolarWinds is a public listed company". It's simply disingenuous, Elastic are publicly listed and they have Slack threads for their community and stuff on their forums. Why can't SolarWinds? 

Even our customers who don't see SWO in a positive light right now, are OK with it where it is if there's general information about roadmap out there.

Loosen the reigns a bit, what's there to lose? 

I don't like being or want to sound negative and I only speak for myself/anecdotally for other partners but it's silly. More frequent, more public roadmap updates would be ace.