SolarWinds' agentless application and server performance monitoring solution, SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM), formerly SolarWinds Application Performance Monitor, won Best of TechEd in the systems management and operations category at the Microsoft TechEd North America 2012 conference on June 14 in Orlando.
The Best of TechEd North America Awards, produced by Windows IT Pro, SQL Server Pro, SharePoint Pro and Dev Pro, recognize the innovative products and services showcased at Microsoft TechEd North America 2012.
More than 297 products were nominated with 46 finalists selected in 15 categories.
“We narrowed down a list of almost 300 products this year to 46 extremely deserving finalists — an honor in itself,” said Jason Bovberg, Senior Editor of Windows IT Pro. “All 46 finalists represent highly distinguished products and services in their categories. We love all these products! But through our research and show-floor interview process, we managed to choose this year’s winners."
"Our 2012 Best of Best of TechEd winners stand apart from the pack, either offering an edge in product functionality, boasting enhanced feature sets in new versions, or introducing innovative technology,” Bovberg added.
Winners were chosen based on their innovation, strategic importance to the market, competitive advantage, and exceptional value to customers.
In addition to being named the winner in the systems management and operations category, SolarWinds Virtualization Manager and SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) were finalists in the virtualization and networking categories, respectively.
SolarWinds SAM, SolarWinds Virtualization Manager and SolarWinds NPM are available to download on SolarWinds website for a free, 30-day evaluation.
The Latest
As discussions around AI "autonomous coworkers" accelerate, many industry projections assume that agents will soon operate alongside human staff in making decisions, taking actions, and managing tasks with minimal oversight. But a growing number of critics (including some of the developers building these systems) argue that the industry still has a long way to go to be able to treat AI agents like fully trusted teammates ...
Enterprise AI has entered a transformational phase where, according to Digitate's recently released survey, Agentic AI and the Future of Enterprise IT, companies are moving beyond traditional automation toward Agentic AI systems designed to reason, adapt, and collaborate alongside human teams ...
The numbers back this urgency up. A recent Zapier survey shows that 92% of enterprises now treat AI as a top priority. Leaders want it, and teams are clamoring for it. But if you look closer at the operations of these companies, you see a different picture. The rollout is slow. The results are often delayed. There's a disconnect between what leaders want and what their technical infrastructure can handle ...
Kyndryl's 2025 Readiness Report revealed that 61% of global business and technology leaders report increasing pressure from boards and regulators to prove AI's ROI. As the technology evolves and expectations continue to rise, leaders are compelled to generate and prove impact before scaling further. This will lead to a decisive turning point in 2026 ...
Cloudflare's disruption illustrates how quickly a single provider's issue cascades into widespread exposure. Many organizations don't fully realize how tightly their systems are coupled to third party services, or how quickly availability and security concerns align when those services falter ... You can't avoid these dependencies, but you can understand them ...
If you work with AI, you know this story. A model performs during testing, looks great in early reviews, works perfectly in production and then slowly loses relevance after operating for a while. Everything on the surface looks perfect — pipelines are running, predictions or recommendations are error-free, data quality checks show green; yet outcomes don't meet the ground reality. This pattern often repeats across enterprise AI programs. Take for example, a mid-sized retail banking and wealth-management firm with heavy investments in AI-powered risk analytics, fraud detection and personalized credit-decisioning systems. The model worked well for a while, but transactions increased, so did false positives by 18% ...
Basic uptime is no longer the gold standard. By 2026, network monitoring must do more than report status, it must explain performance in a hybrid-first world. Networks are no longer just static support systems; they are agile, distributed architectures that sit at the very heart of the customer experience and the business outcomes ... The following five trends represent the new standard for network health, providing a blueprint for teams to move from reactive troubleshooting to a proactive, integrated future ...
APMdigest's Predictions Series concludes with 2026 AI Predictions — industry experts offer predictions on how AI and related technologies will evolve and impact business in 2026. Part 5, the final installment, covers AI's impacts on IT teams ...
APMdigest's Predictions Series concludes with 2026 AI Predictions — industry experts offer predictions on how AI and related technologies will evolve and impact business in 2026. Part 4 covers negative impacts of AI ...
APMdigest's Predictions Series concludes with 2026 AI Predictions — industry experts offer predictions on how AI and related technologies will evolve and impact business in 2026. Part 3 covers barriers and challenges for AI ...