Last month, SolarWinds completed the purchase of VividCortex, a database performance monitoring solution for popular open source systems such as PostgreSQL, MongoDB, MySQL, Amazon Aurora, and Redis. I was fortunate to visit Austin about a week after the purchase. During my visit I met with members of the VividCortex team. We had deep discussions about the future of the VividCortex product as well as Database Performance Analyzer.
I can’t begin to tell you how excited I am for the opportunity to work with the VividCortex team.
Well, maybe I can begin to tell you. Let’s review two data points.
In 2013, SolarWinds purchased Confio Software, makers of Ignite (now known as Database Performance Analyzer, or DPA) for $103 million. That’s where my SolarWinds story begins, as I was included with the Confio purchase. I was with Confio since 2010, working as a sales engineer, customer support, product development, and corporate marketing. We made Ignite into the best of breed monitoring solution loved by DBAs globally.
The second data point is from last month, when SolarWinds bought VividCortex for $117.5 million. One thing I want to make clear – SolarWinds just doubled down on our investment in database performance monitoring.
Anyone suggesting anything otherwise is spreading misinformation.
Through all my conversations with members of both product teams one theme was clear. SolarWinds is committed to providing customers with the tools necessary to achieve success in their careers. We want happy customers. We know customer success is our success.
Another point made clear is the VividCortex product will complement, not replace DPA. We are expanding our database performance monitoring portfolio in a meaningful way. Sure, there is some overlap with MySQL, as both tools offer support for that platform. But the tools have some key differences in functionality. Currently, VividCortex is a SaaS monitoring solution for popular open-source platforms. DPA provides both monitoring and query performance insights for traditional relational database management systems and is not yet available as a SaaS solution.
This is why we view VividCortex as a product to enhance what SolarWinds already offers for database performance monitoring. We’re stronger today than yesterday. And poised to grow stronger.
This is an exciting time to be in the database performance monitoring space, with 80% of workloads still Earthed. If you want to know about our efforts regarding database performance monitoring products, just AMA.
I can’t wait to get started on helping build next-gen database performance monitoring tools. That’s what VividCortex represents, the future for database performance monitoring. And it is why this acquisition is so full of goodness. Expect more content in the coming weeks from me regarding our efforts behind the scenes with both VividCortex and DPA.
Why didn’t SWI just add PostgreSQL support to DPA first? Hybrid Cloud is our environment and will be for many other large customers for the foreseeable future. Why does SolarWinds keep thinking that on-prem is totally different than “Cloud”? I see this argument from a network perspective (Public -vs- Private IP) , but we are talking databases. SWI proved this point 6 years ago when it was launched in DPA in the AWS Market Place.
We have a large opportunity for PostgreSQL performance monitoring (and a little bit of SQL Server) maybe Visual Cortex will fit the bill, but our use case is perfect for DPA if it just supported PostgreSQL.
If you still have my phone number please give me a call sometime, would love to catch-up it has been way to long Tom!