SolarWinds Snaps up N-able, Strengthens MSP Portfolio

Network management software maker SolarWinds has been on a bit of a buying spree of late, and just yesterday bought its way into the remote monitoring and management (RMM) market by snapping up N-able. Or at least there is a definitive agreement on the table for the $120 million acquisition.

The deal fires up SolarWinds MSP engine and allows it to deepen its push into the MSP space.

“Upon completion of the acquisition, the addition of N-able to the SolarWinds family gives us the opportunity to respond to a growing need in the IT industry. As more and more small businesses begin exploring ways to deploy and efficiently manage IT and SaaS-based technologies to drive their businesses, MSPs are stepping up with cloud-based services designed to help ensure that IT environments are maintained and employees have the access and device support that they need to get their jobs done. We’re excited to expand into another highly complementary branch of IT management that we believe is ripe for our disruptive go-to-market model,” said Kevin Thompson, SolarWinds’ president and CEO.

Besides network management, SolarWinds offers application management, help desk, mobile management, patch management, security, and systems management. Of course, this is all before N-able is added the fold.

And last time I checked in with SolarWinds, it had well over 75,000 customers, not counting everyone that uses its free stuff.

N-able’s main tool, meanwhile, is N-central, which takes over much of the grunt work involved in network management. N-central is console-based, and from that single view can manage multiple networks at multiple locations.

N-able is popular amongst MSPs because with it, they can reach out to client locations easily. In fact, it is largely sold as a service through partners, although the company recently began promoting an on-premise option.

N-able also offers MSPs service automation tools.

“The functionality provided by the N-able acquisition serves a critical need for MSPs tasked with providing supplemental or complete IT services, via the Cloud, to small and mid-sized businesses, such as user support and device and application monitoring and troubleshooting. N-able has a proven track record of helping MSPs standardize and automate the setup and delivery of these IT services in order to achieve true scalability,” SolarWinds said.

Want to hear (and see) directly from N-able? Check out this TMC video interview.