AI’s Future Role in Observability with SolarWinds’ Jeff Stewart

This is Textron tv. Hey guys, thanks for the throw. We're here with Jeff Stewart, his group Vice President for product management at SolarWinds, and we're talking about 25 years of SolarWinds helping people manage it and do all kinds of interesting things and much more to come soon.

So we're gonna talk about all of that. Jeff, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Mike.

Look forward to the conversation. A quarter century. Wow.

Looking back in time, um, did you think SolarWinds would be this big a, a player back then? I mean, it seems like it was just yesterday when you guys were kind of the scrappy kids on the block just starting out. Yeah, it's, it's been a fantastic ride.

I mean, I, I've been at SolarWinds myself for 14 years and prior to that I was a end user of the, the tools and, uh, to watch the evolution and the growth of the company and how we've supported customers over those 25 years. Been really fantastic to see. So, uh, it's been a great ride so far.

One of the things I think you're well known for is that every time you do enter a space, uh, there's a common refrain, which is basically we're gonna provide 90% of the functionality at maybe 10 to 20% of the cost of what's in there already. Um, I guess my, how do you stay profitable doing that? Because it, it is clearly a volume game, but is there enough business out there to justify that?

And when do you decide to go into a market since you run products? Yeah, so, um, you know, we've been really focused on how we deliver product that, um, solves the needs of IT professionals. Um, and we've done that through being very close to our customers and our prospects and understanding, you know, specifically what problems are most important to them and focusing on those specific problems, um, to your point, to delivering value in our products at a more affordable cost.

And so, um, we've done that over the years and built a very significant base of loyal customers that have stayed, uh, with us for, um, many, many years and through, uh, different ups and downs. And so I think the value of the tools that we provide, um, for those users and, uh, you know, how we simplify their, their lives have really made SolarWinds successful. Um, and the pricing and, and competitiveness of the pricing is just kind of the, the cherry on top.

Where are we gonna go from here? I mean, looking ahead to say maybe the next 25 years, but everybody these days is talking about ai, this and AI that. And how do you think that that is gonna impact things?

'cause I feel like we're at some sort of inflection point here. Yeah, I think, um, I think there have been very significant advancements in technology at a more rapid pace over the last five plus years. Um, and that's been great, uh, for it, um, and for users that consume, uh, the services of it.

But that's also, um, introduced extreme complexity, uh, for IT professionals. Um, when we think about adoption of cloud or adoption of newer application technologies that leverage microservices and distributed technologies, um, that complexity, um, has really, um, given SolarWinds the ability to focus on new challenges for IT professionals. And so for us, um, you know, we've, we've built a really good history on, um, uh, monitoring, um, on premises infrastructure network.

And now we've kind of shifted into what I'll say is chapter two or phase two, uh, focus on our, um, cloud, uh, based observability offering, which focuses on application performance and experience monitoring of those applications. Well, you know, I, we talk to folks about observability all the time. It still feels like a lot of folks are a little unclear about the difference between monitoring and observability.

And some of the folks I talk to when, even when they understand observability, they're like, well, that sounds great, but I don't even know what questions to start asking. So Yeah, I think for, for us, uh, observability is the evolution of monitoring, um, in the, in the sense of, uh, being more con, more mature, um, with your it, uh, infrastructure and your stack. And, um, it's not just monitoring, but it's, uh, really, um, you know, we're focused on how we detect issues faster in the environment through monitoring and through observability, but then taking it to the next level of we've identified the issue now, how do we provide, um, through AI and ML recommendations on how to resolve that particular issue in the environment.

And then, you know, kind of the ultimate goal is how do we then automate that and make, uh, end users comfortable with the automation to solve those issues through, um, observing the environment, um, understanding the environment, and then, um, you know, providing resolution, uh, through that automation. It seems like there's a natural bridge from observability to AI in the sense that if I'm collecting all the data, it gives me a place to apply the algorithms to. So is a lot of that gonna shift the management of it into more of a cloud kind of service?

'cause ultimately I gotta get all that data somewhere where I can apply the algorithms to it. Yeah, and that's, that's one of the things, uh, with, with observability and especially start talking about full stack observability and, um, the newer technologies is, is we're, um, collecting tons of data from different sources. And that's where, where, where AI can really play, um, its part is is helping us interpret that data, uh, because humans aren't able to, to interpret that level of data, especially across the stack.

Um, and so leveraging AI and ML technologies to do that for us, um, is how I see us using those technologies in it. One of the ways I see us using the, those technologies in it moving forward, um, some of that is easier to do if you are, uh, storing that data in the cloud, but I think we'll also start to see the ability for those technologies to also work on premises. And so, um, while cloud is, is naturally more scalable today and, and makes it easier, um, we still have demand for, um, doing that, that kind of activity on premises.

Everybody of course, is playing around with LLMs and it's still early days yet, but it seems to me we're moving quickly beyond just generating code per se. We can also start using these things to orchestrate tasks and uh, the prompts might be much more automated and the whole thing would become accessible because I will just say to the, um, platform, maybe build me a website and it will structure all the courting pieces that are required and we'll go execute that and probably play out in the next year or so. But is the way we think about managing it just gonna fundamentally change, Change, I think, um, I think we're going to become more efficient with how we manage it.

Um, when I think about, um, you know, the variations of ai, I think we've gotta keep in mind that, that that is a tool to enable us to do our jobs better. It is not a replacement of IT professionals. And so leveraging the tools in your, in your, uh, tool belt, um, think about that just like, um, you know, previous technologies that we leveraged and so vantage of that standing how to apply it in the right ways, um, I do believe is gonna make IT professionals jobs, um, uh, easier for them and they'll be able to focus on different activities that they need to.

So ultimately, we started out with this conversation, but IT environments are complex. There's a lot of toil, there are a lot of security issues, and let's be honest, there's a lot of stress. I think we're gonna like reduce the stress load for folks and maybe you, you know, call, go back and have a reasonable life That that's the idea.

And that's really where SolarWinds is focused, right? Um, how do we enrich the lives of the, the folks that we serve is is one of our, um, key fundamental things. And so, um, we'll continue to um, you know, build great product that is focused on doing that and giving time back to IT professionals so they're not, uh, on call 24 7 or worried about the next time their cell phone beeps with a text message about something going wrong.

Do you think we will restructure IT operations or will we just bring them closer together with all the different fims? And I'm asking the question because well, uh, you know, there's been DevOps for a long time and there's been ITSM and there's different methodologies and, uh, I'm just curious if you think we're coming to some sort of convergence. I think I think we will start to, um, be more converged.

I think, you know, historically we've been somewhat siloed and, um, had different, um, groups within it, but I think, um, what we're seeing here at SolarWinds is that it is becoming more and more important to the business overall and, uh, to supporting the business on how they get to their business outcomes. Um, the way that we're serving customers has certainly, um, shifted, uh, over the last five to 10 years, and that has put more importance on, um, having, uh, you know, critical IT staff and IT infrastructure to really ensure that the business operates smoothly. So what's your best advice to folks as we kind of have all these, uh, I would argue there's more change in the system than, than any time in recent memory, and it's clearly faster than any time in a recent memory.

So how do I kind of get myself and my team prepared for this? Yeah, I think, um, you know, focusing on the, the large problems, the immediate problems first, but also taking the time to enable yourself on some of these newer technologies. I think there's, you know, free enablement out there on, on these newer technologies, and so, um, ensuring that you're doing your part to really understand how to leverage those as, as tools that can support you, uh, and your team and the business moving forward, um, is definitely something that I recommend for folks to pay attention to.

Folks, you heard it here as great as the last 25 years have been, and changes in the years ahead are gonna be truly mind blowing. So stay tuned. Hey Jeff, thanks for being on the show.

Thanks for having me. All right. And back to you guys in the studio.