Open for Voting

Break the NPM/NTA license chain! Merge these products and supercharge NPM!

Hey Thwacksters,

Many of my clients use both NPM and NTA, and time and again I am amazed at how small the NTA installation is. It's tiny. Other than the requirement for a separate NetFlow database (if following best practice), I can't see any blockers standing in the way of merging NTA functionality with NPM, in effect supercharging NPM, and putting it head an shoulders above all competitors. Since the NFDB does not require an additional SQL license, all that would be needed, in most cases, as another host. It would also help avoid license confusion, as I often find myself explaining why the license level for NTA has to match NPM, even though a customer is only using a fraction of their NTA licenses.

The 'lost' revenue in NTA licensing, from SolarWinds' bean counters perspective, could be reclaimed in part by adding a percentage to the NPM licensing costs, but I firmly believe that the rest would be recouped (and then some) in new NPM sales. It really would make NPM the perfect solution for Network Performance Monitoring.

I'm interested to see how much support this idea gets, so please share it around. I would love to see SolarWinds NPM standing astride the network performance and bandwidth analysis monitoring requirements, triumphantly providing enhanced visibility of network performance to those customers who currently only have NPM, and simplifying renewal costs for those who have both already emoticons_cool.png

VM_Monitor.png

(What NPM could look like emoticons_wink.png)

silverbacksays
  • in reply to highstone351

    Thanks for the response, highstone351​!

    For me, it's not so much about the cost, as the benefit of including NTA's functionality into NPM. I'd LOVE to see it happen for no extra cost, but given SWI would then be loosing a whole income stream by removing NTA from the store, I can't see it happening gratis.

  • NPM is a good product.

    NTA is ok. There are other solutions in the market that are better.

    Integrating the two SW products is pretty much done already. the problem comes when licensing is done. If SW just integrated the two products, not raising prices, that might be ok. But, raising the price on NPM is not a good idea at all. It is getting more costly and harder to sell with management as it is. That is not to say that NPM is not good. It is. But, take it from teh perspective of the management and justification for the expense and present it to the people that fund such costs in a company and it become harder to sell. Being a techie makes it easier to see the benefit. Being a manager or VP or such who doesn't usually want to know how it works, just that such a product does work, make it harder to explain to that person.

    Nice Idea, but, I have to vote "no" at this time.

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