Over the years I have seen MSP enabling technology companies come and go. Some technologies have gone out of business, others were purchased, and some just never really took off. 
Sometimes, it just takes a few years for certain technologies to catch on and become “mainstream”. The same could be said of SolarWinds, a company that has been around the MSP campfire for a long time but only now is getting the recognition they deserve for being a state of the art network, applications, servers, storage arrays, and virtualized infrastructure monitoring and management platform.
One of the questions I frequently get from MSP executives is whether technology vendors understand the mindset of a MSP. Is the vendor “MSP friendly” or do they merely have some slick marketing language with nothing to back it up? What is really being asked is whether the vendor has an understanding of the managed services business model, does the technology work in a managed services environment, and does the vendor have enough understanding of the MSP business model to make them a true parter and not a roadblock. Based on the number of years they have been around and the number of mature MSPs using their product, SolarWinds has been a mainstay and well kept secret within the managed services ecosystem.
Certified and audited MSP ClearPointe, based in Little Rock, Arkansas has been offering managed services to the mid-market business sector for a decade. Leveraging not one but two Network Operation Centers (one for SMB clients and another for its larger clients), ClearPointe has developed a reputation of excellence and expertise when it comes to managing Microsoft infrastructure for mid-market and large enterprise customers.
“ClearPointe has used SolarWinds as our primary network management solution for 11 years,” said Bob Longo, vice president of ClearPointe Technologies. “SolarWinds has allowed ClearPointe to remain competitive as we have continually grown our managed services practice to include very large mid-market and enterprise companies all over the world.”
ClearPointe not only uses SolarWinds for network management and monitoring, it also uses the solution to deliver a customer portal to offer managed customers a glimpse of what ClearPointe sees as their MSP. This “MSP view” underscores the value of what a managed service provider does for a client, even on a purely remote basis.
Another veteran managed services organization, Anexio, based out of Sarasota, Florida, is another SolarWinds MSP. Anexio has staked a claim as one of the leading MSPs in the Sarasota area to small and medium sized businesses and leverages SolarWinds in its managed services practice.
One of the ways MSP enabling tools get typecast is by getting a reputation for being relevant only to one market segment. For example, there are good enterprise RMM solutions and there are good SMB solutions. Rarely does an IT monitoring solution like SolarWinds get used by MSPs focusing on large and small customers alike. And yet, with two certified MSPs like Anexio and ClearPointe, you have two vastly different sets of customers, but both organizations using SolarWinds.
SolarWinds isn’t just for the smaller MSPs though; the big enterprise class MSPs also use it. Verizon is another marquee MSP that leverages SolarWinds.
In order to stand the test of time, MSP enabling technologies must be cost effective, easy to use in a managed services environment, capable of enhancing the value and function of a MSP, and in my humble opinion, they must not be competitive to the MSP channel partners who use their products. For three veteran managed services organizations like Anexio, ClearPointe, and Verizon, all three serving different end-user segments, to use SolarWinds for such a long period of time, speaks volumes about the product and the company who makes it. It is only a matter of time before the rest of the global MSP community knows what these three MSPs already know and have known for a long time.