TechValidate Research on SolarWinds


SolarWinds Case Study

Higher Education Case Study

Introduction

This case study of a educational institution is based on an October 2020 survey of SolarWinds customers by TechValidate, a 3rd-party research service. The profiled organization asked to have their name blinded to protect their confidentiality.

“SolarWinds database performance analysis is critical for us.”

Challenges

The business challenges that led the profiled organization to evaluate and ultimately select SolarWinds:

  • IT challenges their agency faced prior to implementing SolarWinds products:
    • Lack of visibility into the problems leading to network performance or capacity issues
    • Not having the tools to troubleshoot network problems or outages
    • Lack of visibility into system/server health
    • Lack of visibility into application or database performance
    • The difficulty of monitoring cloud or hybrid infrastructure
    • The difficulty of determining whether a security incident occurred and what happened during the breach
    • Inadequate automation of compliance reporting
    • The difficulty of providing end-user and systems support from a central location
    • Difficulty assessing and remediating our vulnerabilities
    • Difficulty planning for network and datacenter modernizations

Use Case

The key features and functionalities of SolarWinds that the surveyed organization uses:

  • Regular user in the following SolarWinds product areas:
    • Database Management and Performance
  • Uses SolarWinds products across whole organization
  • Agency use cases for leveraging SolarWinds products:
    • To monitor network performance
    • To troubleshoot network problems or outages
    • To resolve configuration issues
    • To monitor system/server health
    • To monitor application and database health
    • To monitor cloud or hybrid infrastructure
    • To troubleshoot across the application stack/infrastructure
    • To monitor security incidents and vulnerabilities and improve compliance
    • To support end-users and systems from a central location
    • To plan for network and datacenter modernizations

Results

The surveyed organization achieved the following results with SolarWinds:

  • Results they were able to produce using SolarWinds products:
    • Correlate network, server, and application issues to resolve performance problems
    • Improve resolution rates for networking performance and capacity issues
    • Improve configuration management
    • Improve system and application monitoring and troubleshooting
    • Provide better service levels to the organization
    • Improve log tracking and management
    • Improve NIST FISMA / RMF / DISA STIGS compliance
    • Provide planners with performance and capacity data to support modernization efforts
  • Favorite SolarWinds products:
    • Database Performance Analyzer
  • Realized a return on investment payback period of 0 to 3 months with SolarWinds products
  • Purchased their SolarWinds products because of:
    • Ease of use
    • Cost effectiveness
    • Multi-vendor support
    • Best value
    • Scalability / Able to support our growth




About This Data

This data was sourced directly from verified users of SolarWinds by TechValidate.

TechValidate verifies the identity and organizational affiliation of all participants that contribute to published research data. When research participants so desire, we also guarantee their anonymity so that they may share information honestly and freely.


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