The Hoffman Agency

AUSTIN, TX -- (Marketwire) -- 01/05/09 -- Much has changed on the IT landscape in the last 10 years, but one thing has remained consistent -- the need for powerful, and easy-to-deploy, network management solutions. From free tools to enterprise-wide management products, SolarWinds has become a trusted network monitoring and management partner for more than one million network engineers and IT professionals around the world. 2008, SolarWinds' 10th anniversary, was a banner year for the company, highlighted by a number of key product releases and widespread industry recognition.

"SolarWinds started with a mission to provide an easy to use, yet comprehensive toolset for network engineers. Over the past 10 years, we have remained true to that vision by continually expanding our product set to include advanced fault and performance monitoring, configuration and compliance products, and more tools that are essential to the daily needs of engineers," said Mike Bennett, chairman and CEO, SolarWinds. "We take a lot of pride in knowing that more than 60,000 customers, including 350 of the Fortune 500, rely on our products to manage the increasingly complex systems and processes that make up their business critical networks."

The ability to easily manage the network is a critical challenge for businesses of all sizes. Ensuring optimal network performance while managing and troubleshooting the proliferation of new devices is paramount for business continuity. As budgets begin to tighten, IT professionals are looking for affordable tools and solutions that are designed to integrate seamlessly and scale as their needs and networks continue to evolve.

The Year of Orion

The Orion family of products allows network engineers to monitor, collect and analyze data from SNMP and WMI-enabled devices, providing a comprehensive and easy to understand view of their network's health. Users can view the real-time statistics and availability of their network from any Web browser, providing a convenient way for administrators to in tune with their networks at any time, from any place. In 2008, SolarWinds focused on making the suite of products even stronger by increasing functionality, interoperability, and scalability. The latest Orion offerings easily tackle the challenge of distributed, multi-vendor network environments without adding to the complexity -- making it the most powerful and robust version of Orion ever offered.

-- Orion Network Performance Monitor (NPM) -- delivers comprehensive fault and network performance management that easily scales with network growth and network monitoring needs. Enhancements to Orion NPM include intuitive web administration, Universal Device Pollers, and the ability to monitor thousands of VMware ESX servers, as well as associated virtual machine instances, and VMware® VirtualCenter.

-- Orion Application Performance Monitor (APM) -- extends Orion NPM's powerful monitoring capabilities beyond network devices, giving users visibility into the performance of applications and the underlying operating systems and servers they run on. The latest version offers expanded out-of-the-box monitoring, SolarWinds' AppBuilder Wizard(TM), end-user experience monitoring and deeper integration with the Thwack Community Content Exchange.

-- Orion Network Configuration Manager (NCM, formerly Cirrus) -- allows network engineers to proactively monitor multi-vendor, enterprise-wide configuration health indicators, in real-time, alongside key network performance statistics. The new release offers deep integration into Orion NPM and provides an intuitive web-based interface.

-- Orion Enterprise Operations Console (EOC) -- offers a consolidated command center from which users can monitor the entire enterprise network through a single dashboard. Engineers can track as few as a hundred to more than several hundred thousand network interfaces, consolidating information from remote Orion servers running Orion NPM and any of its related modules.

-- Orion NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA) -- enables network engineers to capture flow data from continuous streams of network traffic and convert those raw numbers into easy-to-interpret charts and tables that quantify exactly how the corporate network is being used and by whom. New features include extended device support via NetFlow v9 and sFlow v5, Port Application Grouping, Network-wide Top Talkers, and Top Applications which help network engineers quantify network-wide bandwidth usage.

SolarWinds' products continue to earn industry accolades, and the Orion family is no exception. Most recently, Orion NPM swept past HP OpenView® to secure Redmond Magazine's 2008 Readers' Choice ISV winner title and Orion NCM earned a "positive" ranking in Gartner's recent "MarketScope for Network Change and Configuration Management."

More Tools!

Given the importance of the SolarWinds community, SolarWinds continues to listen to their needs and develop free tools as a way to show thanks for their enthusiasm and loyalty. In 2008, the company released three new free tools based on community feedback and requests, resulting in broader adopted of SolarWinds technology by a wider audience of networking professionals. The free tools allow new and existing users to test-drive some of SolarWinds' most popular features and join SolarWinds' other free tools, like TFTP Server and Advanced Subnet Calculator:

-- SolarWinds Exchange Monitor -- allows users to continuously monitor Microsoft® Exchange to deliver real-time insight into Exchange services, mail queue sizes, and host server health.

-- SolarWinds Real-time NetFlow Analyzer -- determines the types of traffic on the network, where it's coming from, and where it's going, taking the guesswork out of diagnosing traffic spikes and storing up to one hour of NetFlow data.

-- SolarWinds VM Monitor -- provides real-time monitoring of ESX health indicators by continuously monitoring a VMware® ESX Server and its virtual machines.

Industry Accolades Abound!

In 2008, SolarWinds received the greatest amount of industry recognition in the company's 10-year history, nearly doubling the amount of awards won last year.

-- SolarWinds' Exchange Monitor was recently named "Runner-Up" in MSExchange.org's Readers Choice Awards.

-- SolarWinds' Head Geek, Josh Stephens, was named one of Network Products Guide's 2008 Most Valuable Players for his contributions to the networking world.

-- Deloitte Texas Technology Fast 50 acknowledged SolarWinds for the second straight year and the company was also ranked on the Deloitte Technology 500.

-- SolarWinds was named to Austin Business Journal's Fast 50 for the second year.

-- SolarWinds made its second appearance on the "The Software 500," a ranking of the world's largest software and service providers. The company was also named one of the Top 10 companies in the $50-100 million revenue category.

-- On the Inc. 5000, SolarWinds leapfrogged 381 spots, up to 1979.

-- Engineer's Toolset v9 Administrator Guide was recognized with and APEX Award of Excellence

-- Engineer's Toolset was named a gold medal winner of the "2008 Editor's Choice Awards" in the Networking Category by Penton Media's Windows IT Pro®.

-- WindowsNetworking.com readers voted ipMonitor the winner in the Network Monitoring Category

-- Orion NPM awarded Gold in Network Monitoring by SearchNetworking.com's Product Leadership Awards.

-- ipMonitor awarded Silver in Applications and Network Management by SearchNetworking.com's Product Leadership Awards.

-- ipMonitor won Network World's "Best of the Tests '08" honors.

For more information on SolarWinds and SolarWinds' products, please visit www.solarwinds.com.

About SolarWinds

SolarWinds provides downloadable, enterprise-class network management software that is affordable, easy to use, and guided by a large and growing user community. Focused on the real-world needs of network professionals, SolarWinds products are simple to try, simple to use, and simple to maintain, while providing the power, scale, and flexibility needed by companies of all sizes. More than 50,000 customers from small businesses to the largest enterprises rely on SolarWinds products to take the complexity out of managing their networks. Learn more today at http://www.solarwinds.com.

SolarWinds, SolarWinds.com, Thwack.com, and Orion are registered trademarks of SolarWinds. All other company and product names mentioned are used only for identification purposes and may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.