SolarWinds has introduced SW1, a development in its observability and IT management software aimed at supporting changes in how IT operations are managed. SW1 is described as an agentic AI system intended to assist IT teams in moving from reactive responses toward more predictive and automated operational approaches. It is designed to work across on-premises data centres, private cloud environments, and hybrid infrastructures.
As IT environments become more complex, with increased use of multi-cloud and hybrid architectures, organisations are placing greater emphasis on visibility, faster detection of issues, and automation to support operational management.
SW1 integrates with both SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted and SaaS platforms, allowing users to interact with systems using natural language queries. It aims to provide consolidated views of system performance and operational data, with an emphasis on AI-assisted analysis and decision support, aligned with SolarWinds’ “AI by Design” approach focused on governance and controlled outputs.
SolarWinds has also outlined planned enhancements for SW1, which include improvements to service reliability, predictive identification of potential issues affecting service levels, onboarding of assets into monitoring systems, and reduction of alert noise through correlation and filtering. Additional features are intended to support governance and compliance through configurable controls.
As IT roles evolve, the 2026 IT Trends Report referenced by SolarWinds indicates that a majority of surveyed IT professionals report a shift in responsibilities toward interpreting AI-driven insights and designing automated workflows. SW1 is positioned within this context as a tool intended to support those changes in operational responsibilities.
Overall, SW1 is presented as part of a broader effort to support more automated and coordinated IT operations across increasingly distributed and hybrid infrastructure environments.
