Solving Bigger Problems with the AppStack Dashboard

On Tuesday, February 24, we released new versions of all our core systems management products, including Server & Application Monitor, Virtualization Manager and Web Performance Monitor. We also released a brand new product called Storage Resource Monitor. While this is all exciting in and of itself, what we’re most thrilled with is that all these products now have out-of-the-box integration with our Orion platform and include our application stack (AppStack) dashboard view.

The AppStack dashboard view is designed to streamline the slow and painful process of troubleshooting application problems across technology domains and reduce it from hours—and sometimes even days—down to seconds. It does this by providing a logical mapping and status between the application and its underlying infrastructure that is generated and updated automatically as relationships change. This provides a quick, visual way to monitor and troubleshoot application performance from a single dashboard covering the application, servers, virtualization, storage, and end-user experience. What’s key here is that this is all done in the context of the application. This means that from anywhere in the AppStack dashboard, you can understand which application(s) is dependent on that resource.

In addition to the immediate value we think this will have for you, our users, it also highlights a shift within SolarWinds towards setting our sights on tackling the bigger problems you struggle with on a daily basis. We’ve always sought to do this for specific situations, such as network performance management, application monitoring, IP address management, storage monitoring, etc., but the new AppStack-enabled products help solve a problem that spans across products and technical domains.

However, this doesn’t mean SolarWinds is going to start selling complex, bloated solutions that take forever to deploy and are impossible to use. Rather, by intelligently leveraging data our products already have, we can attack the cross-domain troubleshooting problem in the SolarWinds way—easy to use, easy to deploy and something that solves a real problem.

But know that the AppStack dashboard view isn’t the end. Really, it’s just the beginning; step one towards making it easier for you to ensure that applications are performing well. Our goal is to be the best in the industry at helping you answer the questions:

• “Why is my app slow?”
• “How do I fix it?”
• “How do I prevent it from happening again?”

While integrating these four products with the AppStack dashboard view is a great first step, there’s clearly a lot more we can do to reach the goal of being the best in the industry at that. Pulling in other elements of our product portfolio that address network, log and event, and other needs—along with adding more hybrid/cloud visibility and new capabilities to the existing portfolio are all areas we are considering to reach that goal.

Easy to use yet powerful products at an affordable price. No vendor lock-in. End-to-end visibility and integration that doesn’t require a plane-load of consultants to get up and running. That’s our vision.

I hope you’ll take a look for yourself and see just how powerful this can be. Check out this video on the new AppStack dashboard view and read more here.