Skip to main content

SolarWinds Launches New Partner Program

SolarWinds unveiled a revitalized partner program, marking a strategic evolution of how SolarWinds supports partner-led growth. 

The program introduces new benefits, enablement, and demand generation investments designed to help partners scale, compete more effectively, and deliver stronger customer outcomes.

“Our enhanced 2026 Partner Program provides a renewed foundation to drive great customer outcomes and an improved overall partner ecosystem,” said Barb Huelskamp, VP of Global Channel Sales and Alliances. “By aligning our strategy with our purpose, mission, and CARE values, we’re establishing a framework that can support predictability for our partners and scalable growth for partners and their customers.”

The refreshed program includes multiple updates that span a host of program pillars. These updates include:

  • New Tiered Benefits — As partners achieve higher program tier status, they will have access to more program benefits. This will include lucrative incentives based on metrics such as channel-initiated growth. As partners grow and invest, they will see higher discounts. To accomplish this, SolarWinds is working with distributors to cascade the benefits and requirements of the partner program to resellers, including published reseller benefits. SolarWinds will also pilot a rewards center in North America that will allow partner sellers to accrue points towards rewards such as cash and prizes.
  • Enhanced Marketing Investments — Recognizing the need to consistently build and sustain pipeline, SolarWinds is expanding its investment in partner-led demand generation. Based on program tier, partners will gain access to enhanced marketing support designed to help generate qualified demand and accelerate growth. This includes proposal-based marketing funds, co-brandable assets, and ready-to-execute campaigns in a box available through the partner portal. These enhancements reflect an opportunity for partners to provide solutions and scale for demand more effectively in their markets.
  • Elevated Enablement — Building on the 2025 program updates, such as role-based certifications, 2026 enablement opportunities will improve on that curriculum. Partners will also have access to new enablement content, and specializations based on subject matter expertise or services and verticals, including public sector.
  • A Better Partner Experience — In 2026, partners will enjoy a more innovative partner experience with an improved partner portal. This will include streamlined deal registration, lead sharing, a better NFR request process, and helpful partner onboarding/business planning checklists.

“This program reflects our serious commitment to a partner-first culture at SolarWinds,” said Sudhakar Ramakrishna, CEO of SolarWinds. “By equipping partners to help customers predict disruptions, reduce risk, and recover faster, we enable real operational resilience. These investments are focused on accelerating time to value and helping partners deliver meaningful outcomes for their customers and solve complex problems via simple, secure, and powerful solution.” 

The Latest

Two years ago, almost every customer conversation about AI started with the same questions: Which model should we use? What can it do? Is it ready for the enterprise? Today, those discussions have moved on. CIOs are far more interested in how to govern AI, integrate it with existing systems, prepare their workforce and make it part of everyday operations. The challenge is no longer to prove that AI can deliver value. It's instead about how to embed AI into the business in a way that's secure, scalable and delivers measurable outcomes ...

 

Two things happened to production incidents between 2023 and now, and they did not happen at the same speed. The first is that a class of dependency that barely existed three years ago now accounts for one incident in ten. Incidents disclosed by AI model and AI application providers rose from 1.7% of all disclosed unplanned incidents in 2023 to 10.7% in 2026 year to date, roughly a sixfold rise; that counts only incidents at AI companies themselves, so the true share is higher. The second is that the time to close an incident has not come down ...

When an AI assistant gives an incomplete or incorrect answer, teams often blame the model. They adjust prompts, switch models, increase context windows or test a new retrieval strategy. However the model may not be a problem. In many enterprise AI workflows, the problem begins inside the document-ingestion pipeline ...

If you talk to any security or observability teams right now, they're all fighting the same fire: their tooling was built to ingest X, but their sources are pumping Y and soon to be doing Z. The knee-jerk reaction is always the same: we need more platform. However, this reaction is wrong. Let me explain why, because the solution to this problem is foundational, not financial. Instead of hurling yet more money at the problem, make sure you've done what's needed upstream ...

Rapid AI adoption and the unique ways AI workloads operate is redefining the scope and structure of what these teams must deliver. This shift is forcing organizations to rethink how they manage scale, automation, and control, according to The State of SRE and Platform Engineering 2026, a new report from Dynatrace ...

AI is usually talked about as a software tool, but it also depends heavily on the network behind it. Whether a company is using AI for chatbots, automation, monitoring, analytics, or employee support, all of that information has to move across the network in a reliable and secure way. That means AI is not just an application decision. It is also an infrastructure decision. Before organizations rush into AI, they should ask a simple question: Is our network ready to support it? ...

Enterprise AI often lacks governed access to where business processes actually execute. Without that access, AI agents may be able to reason, but they cannot operate reliably across enterprise workflows. For AI agents to effectively carry out workflows, they will require integration-layer context and controls. Organizations can implement these prerequisites by providing AI with managed access to the middleware layer ...

Enterprise networks rarely behave the same way for very long. A routing adjustment in one region may unexpectedly alter application performance in another. A cloud migration may introduce hidden dependencies that go unnoticed until an outage occurs. All the while, the network is managed by several different teams, each of whom use different tool sets — and as a result, have different views of the network ... There’s usually an engineer who remembers why traffic fails over a certain way between sites, or which transparent firewall was added where. The problem is that human memory cannot scale alongside enterprise-scale networks ...

Ask an infrastructure team how confident they are in their ability to govern AI, and most will tell you they've got it handled. A recent survey of 406 IT decision-makers and platform engineering leaders found 86% expressing exactly that confidence. Ask the same group whether they have a formal written AI governance policy, and the number drops to 30%, according to Spacelift's Infrastructure Automation Report ...

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 27, Shamus McGillicuddy, EMA VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, and Parker Hathcock, EMA Research Director covering IT Service/Operations (ServiceOps), discuss observability unification in modern IT operations ... 

SolarWinds Launches New Partner Program

SolarWinds unveiled a revitalized partner program, marking a strategic evolution of how SolarWinds supports partner-led growth. 

The program introduces new benefits, enablement, and demand generation investments designed to help partners scale, compete more effectively, and deliver stronger customer outcomes.

“Our enhanced 2026 Partner Program provides a renewed foundation to drive great customer outcomes and an improved overall partner ecosystem,” said Barb Huelskamp, VP of Global Channel Sales and Alliances. “By aligning our strategy with our purpose, mission, and CARE values, we’re establishing a framework that can support predictability for our partners and scalable growth for partners and their customers.”

The refreshed program includes multiple updates that span a host of program pillars. These updates include:

  • New Tiered Benefits — As partners achieve higher program tier status, they will have access to more program benefits. This will include lucrative incentives based on metrics such as channel-initiated growth. As partners grow and invest, they will see higher discounts. To accomplish this, SolarWinds is working with distributors to cascade the benefits and requirements of the partner program to resellers, including published reseller benefits. SolarWinds will also pilot a rewards center in North America that will allow partner sellers to accrue points towards rewards such as cash and prizes.
  • Enhanced Marketing Investments — Recognizing the need to consistently build and sustain pipeline, SolarWinds is expanding its investment in partner-led demand generation. Based on program tier, partners will gain access to enhanced marketing support designed to help generate qualified demand and accelerate growth. This includes proposal-based marketing funds, co-brandable assets, and ready-to-execute campaigns in a box available through the partner portal. These enhancements reflect an opportunity for partners to provide solutions and scale for demand more effectively in their markets.
  • Elevated Enablement — Building on the 2025 program updates, such as role-based certifications, 2026 enablement opportunities will improve on that curriculum. Partners will also have access to new enablement content, and specializations based on subject matter expertise or services and verticals, including public sector.
  • A Better Partner Experience — In 2026, partners will enjoy a more innovative partner experience with an improved partner portal. This will include streamlined deal registration, lead sharing, a better NFR request process, and helpful partner onboarding/business planning checklists.

“This program reflects our serious commitment to a partner-first culture at SolarWinds,” said Sudhakar Ramakrishna, CEO of SolarWinds. “By equipping partners to help customers predict disruptions, reduce risk, and recover faster, we enable real operational resilience. These investments are focused on accelerating time to value and helping partners deliver meaningful outcomes for their customers and solve complex problems via simple, secure, and powerful solution.” 

The Latest

Two years ago, almost every customer conversation about AI started with the same questions: Which model should we use? What can it do? Is it ready for the enterprise? Today, those discussions have moved on. CIOs are far more interested in how to govern AI, integrate it with existing systems, prepare their workforce and make it part of everyday operations. The challenge is no longer to prove that AI can deliver value. It's instead about how to embed AI into the business in a way that's secure, scalable and delivers measurable outcomes ...

 

Two things happened to production incidents between 2023 and now, and they did not happen at the same speed. The first is that a class of dependency that barely existed three years ago now accounts for one incident in ten. Incidents disclosed by AI model and AI application providers rose from 1.7% of all disclosed unplanned incidents in 2023 to 10.7% in 2026 year to date, roughly a sixfold rise; that counts only incidents at AI companies themselves, so the true share is higher. The second is that the time to close an incident has not come down ...

When an AI assistant gives an incomplete or incorrect answer, teams often blame the model. They adjust prompts, switch models, increase context windows or test a new retrieval strategy. However the model may not be a problem. In many enterprise AI workflows, the problem begins inside the document-ingestion pipeline ...

If you talk to any security or observability teams right now, they're all fighting the same fire: their tooling was built to ingest X, but their sources are pumping Y and soon to be doing Z. The knee-jerk reaction is always the same: we need more platform. However, this reaction is wrong. Let me explain why, because the solution to this problem is foundational, not financial. Instead of hurling yet more money at the problem, make sure you've done what's needed upstream ...

Rapid AI adoption and the unique ways AI workloads operate is redefining the scope and structure of what these teams must deliver. This shift is forcing organizations to rethink how they manage scale, automation, and control, according to The State of SRE and Platform Engineering 2026, a new report from Dynatrace ...

AI is usually talked about as a software tool, but it also depends heavily on the network behind it. Whether a company is using AI for chatbots, automation, monitoring, analytics, or employee support, all of that information has to move across the network in a reliable and secure way. That means AI is not just an application decision. It is also an infrastructure decision. Before organizations rush into AI, they should ask a simple question: Is our network ready to support it? ...

Enterprise AI often lacks governed access to where business processes actually execute. Without that access, AI agents may be able to reason, but they cannot operate reliably across enterprise workflows. For AI agents to effectively carry out workflows, they will require integration-layer context and controls. Organizations can implement these prerequisites by providing AI with managed access to the middleware layer ...

Enterprise networks rarely behave the same way for very long. A routing adjustment in one region may unexpectedly alter application performance in another. A cloud migration may introduce hidden dependencies that go unnoticed until an outage occurs. All the while, the network is managed by several different teams, each of whom use different tool sets — and as a result, have different views of the network ... There’s usually an engineer who remembers why traffic fails over a certain way between sites, or which transparent firewall was added where. The problem is that human memory cannot scale alongside enterprise-scale networks ...

Ask an infrastructure team how confident they are in their ability to govern AI, and most will tell you they've got it handled. A recent survey of 406 IT decision-makers and platform engineering leaders found 86% expressing exactly that confidence. Ask the same group whether they have a formal written AI governance policy, and the number drops to 30%, according to Spacelift's Infrastructure Automation Report ...

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 27, Shamus McGillicuddy, EMA VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, and Parker Hathcock, EMA Research Director covering IT Service/Operations (ServiceOps), discuss observability unification in modern IT operations ...