WillItSurvive
Cloud and infrastructure providers · subsidiary of Turn/River Capital · United States

SolarWinds

solarwinds.com ↗

SolarWinds sells IT and application monitoring software to 300,000 mostly on-prem business customers.

Protection under test
Assessed 21 July 2026 · Evidence as of 21 July 2026
Something worth protecting exists and is being tested right now.
On the recordSince 21 July 2026 · Checkable from 2026 · Every call on the record Checkpoint: 2026 AI roadmap deadline for Incident Correlation, Runbook Execution, and Knowledge Base Generation features
The call

SolarWinds keeps cashing in on locked-in customers while cloud-native rivals grab new business and its new private-equity owner decides whether to invest or squeeze.

SolarWinds sells software that helps companies watch and fix their computer systems and networks. The company makes steady money from long-term customer contracts, but it is growing very slowly. Rivals like Datadog and Dynatrace are winning new customers who prefer cloud-based tools instead, and artificial intelligence is starting to do the troubleshooting work that SolarWinds employees used to do by hand. The company is now owned by a private investment firm as of April 2025, so we cannot see its recent financial results, and the real question is whether the new owners will invest in new features like AI tools or just cut costs and harvest profits from the existing customer base.

Why
01
AI pressure: Agentic AI troubleshooting tools plus SolarWinds' own SW1 AI Agent. AI can automate the manual log-digging and triage work customers paid SolarWinds staff and tools to do, cutting perceived value. Could AI do the core job? Only partly.
02
Bigger players: Datadog, Dynatrace, and Microsoft Azure Monitor. Cloud-native rivals win new cloud deployments while SolarWinds leans on old on-prem and hybrid customers who have not moved yet. Could a giant copy it? Yes, easily.
03
What protects it. Deep integration into 300,000 customers' existing IT setups makes ripping out SolarWinds slow, risky, and expensive.
What would change this call
SolarWinds' Q-over-Q revenue growth turns flat or negative in any disclosed post-buyout figures. Would indicate installed-base churn to Datadog/Dynatrace is outpacing new subscription gains.
2026 AI roadmap items (Incident Correlation, Runbook Execution, Knowledge Base Generation) ship on schedule or slip. Shipping shows Turn/River is investing; slipping suggests harvest-mode cost cutting.
Datadog or Dynatrace announce a credible on-prem or hybrid deployment option within the next year. Would show cloud-native rivals directly targeting SolarWinds' remaining lock-in advantage.
Key numbers
  • $796.9M revenue, up 5% year over year (2024-12-31)
  • $263.8M free cash flow, up 3.6% year over year (2024-12-31)
  • Turn/River paid $18.50/share, about $4.4B total (2025-02-07)
Named risks
  • Private-equity cost-cutting under Turn/River could reduce R&D and product velocity. Severity: high
  • No public financials disclosed since FY2024, limiting external visibility into post-buyout performance. Severity: medium
  • Installed-base churn to faster-growing cloud-native rivals (Datadog, Dynatrace). Severity: high
  • AI-driven commoditization of core manual troubleshooting and alerting value-add. Severity: medium
  • Conflicting third-party headcount figures suggest workforce instability or measurement uncertainty. Severity: low
Rivals, as read in July 2026
RivalDirectionEvidence
Datadoggaining onCited as larger, faster-growing cloud-native observability rival winning greenfield deals, per June 2026 review
Dynatracegaining onGrouped with Datadog as faster-growing incumbent taking new observability workloads, June 2026
ManageEngine (Zoho)contestingNamed most direct like-for-like on-prem network management alternative to SolarWinds, June 2026
Microsoft Azure Monitorgaining onFlagged as adjacent platform threat expanding into observability space
Open-source tools (Zabbix, Prometheus/Grafana)contestingCommoditizing low-end network monitoring, cited June 2026
Questions people ask
Is SolarWinds still a public company in 2026?
No. SolarWinds was taken private by Turn/River Capital in an all-cash deal at $18.50/share (~$4.4B enterprise value), which closed April 16, 2025, delisting it from the NYSE (ticker SWI).
Who owns SolarWinds now?
SolarWinds is owned by private-equity firm Turn/River Capital, which completed its acquisition on April 16, 2025. Prior owners Thoma Bravo and Silver Lake, who had taken it private in 2016 and re-IPO'd it in 2018, held about 65% of voting shares and approved the sale.
Is SolarWinds profitable?
Last public figures (FY2024, before going private) showed revenue of $796.9M, up 5% YoY, with 94% recurring revenue and unlevered free cash flow of $263.8M. No financials have been disclosed since the April 2025 Turn/River buyout.
Could AI replace what SolarWinds does?
AI threatens SolarWinds' core manual troubleshooting and alert-triage work, prompting it to launch its own AI Agent (October 8, 2025) and SW1 agentic teammate (April 15, 2026) to automate incident diagnosis, while rivals like Datadog and Dynatrace ship similar AI features.
Who is SolarWinds' biggest competitor?
Datadog and Dynatrace are the most-cited faster-growing cloud-native rivals winning new deployments, while ManageEngine (Zoho) and PRTG (Paessler) are the closest like-for-like on-prem alternatives, per competitor-comparison sites as of June 2026.
Is it safe to take a job at SolarWinds right now?
SolarWinds became PE-owned under Turn/River Capital in April 2025 and has not disclosed financials since. Employee counts are disputed across sources (2,107 per 2024 SEC filing vs ~2,823-2,851 by mid-2026 third-party estimates), reflecting uncertainty typical of new PE ownership.
Timeline
  • 2026-04-15Launched SW1, an agentic AI teammate built on a proprietary Agentic Framework
  • 2025-11-20SEC voluntarily dismissed SUNBURST cybersecurity lawsuit with prejudice
  • 2025-10-08Unveiled SolarWinds AI Agent tech preview in Observability SaaS
  • 2025-04-16Turn/River Capital completed acquisition, SWI delisted from NYSE
  • 2025-04-02Launched Squadcast-based Incident Response product and AI enhancements
  • 2025-03-03Acquired Squadcast, rebranded as SolarWinds Incident Response
  • 2025-02-07Turn/River agreed to acquire SolarWinds for $18.50/share, ~$4.4B EV
  • 2024-12-31FY2024 revenue reported at $796.9M, up 5% YoY
  • 2018-10Re-IPO'd on NYSE after 2016 Thoma Bravo/Silver Lake take-private
  • 2016-01Thoma Bravo and Silver Lake took SolarWinds private for $4.5B
Revision history
21 July 2026
First assessed. Protection under test. The text above is fixed as of this date and is not edited afterwards.
In the same band
BrowserStackDigitalOceanHashiCorp
More in Cloud and infrastructure providers →
Sources