ANTenna Blog -- Business & E-Business

Network management provider SolarWinds continued to broaden the reach of its management platform. The company moved squarely into the log management space by acquiring the assets of New Zealand-based software maker Kiwi Enterprises. As a result, small and medium businesses now find themselves with more low cost management options.

SolarWinds is one in a growing number of companies trying to reshape the network management market. Traditional network and systems products from companies, such as CA, HP, and IBM, were expensive and required a number of network technicians to operate. SolarWinds has taken a community based approach to delivering its products, which have starting prices of a few thousand dollars.

The company has been gradually expanding its system features, and the Kiwi purchase pushes it into log management. This area has become hot recently as enterprises have tried to keep pace with a growing list of new compliance mandates. Vendors, such as LogLogic, LogRhythm, Q1 Labs, and ArcSight, have also delivered log management products.

Kiwi had developed two products. With the Kiwi Syslog Server, network engineers are able to receive and manage syslog messages from network devices; view syslog messages in multiple windows simultaneously; and filter them by host name, host IP address, priority, message text keyword or time of day. Kiwi CatTools is a desktop tool for configuration backup and management of network devices, such as routers, switches and firewalls.

SolarWinds has been gaining momentum recently, and the acquisition helps it fill a void. However the company is relatively small (less than $100 million in revenue) and the network and system management task is large and seemingly ever expanding. In addition, the company will also need to successfully integrate the KiwI staff as well its products into its organization. The acquisition should help existing SolarWinds customers as well as provide small and medium businesses with a low cost, network and systems management option.