computer science

SolarWinds

SolarWinds is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand SolarWinds rather than just read about it. In short: SolarWinds Corporation is an American company that develops software for businesses to help manage their networks, systems, and information technology infrastructure. It is headquartered in Austin, Texas, with sales and product development offices in a number of locations in the United States and several other countries.

Key takeaways

SolarWinds belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect SolarWinds to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of SolarWinds from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

SolarWinds Corporation is an American company that develops software for businesses to help manage their networks, systems, and information technology infrastructure. It is headquartered in Austin, Texas, with sales and product development offices in a number of locations in the United States and several other countries. The company was publicly traded from May 2009 until the end of 2015, and again from October 2018. It has also acquired a number of other companies, some of which it still operates under their original names, including Pingdom, Papertrail, and Loggly. The company had about 300,000 customers as of December 2020, including nearly all Fortune 500 companies and numerous agencies of the US federal government. A SolarWinds product, Orion, used by about 33,000 public and private sector customers, was the focus of a U.S. federal government data leak in 2020. The attack persisted undetected for months in 2020, and additional details about the breadth and depth of compromised systems continued to surface after the initial disclosure. In February 2021, Microsoft president Brad Smith said that it was "the largest and most sophisticated attack the world has ever seen".

History SolarWinds began in 1999 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, co-founded by brothers Donald Yonce (a former executive at Walmart) and David Yonce. SolarWinds released its first products, Trace Route and Ping Sweep, earlier in March 1998 and released its first web-based network performance monitoring application in November 2001. In 2006, the company moved its headquarters to Austin, Texas, where about 300 of the company's total 450 employees were based as of 2011. The company was profitable from its founding through its IPO in 2009. During 2007, SolarWinds raised funding from Austin Ventures, Bain Capital, and Insight Venture Partners. SolarWinds completed an initial public offering of US$112.5 million in May 2009, closing at higher prices after its initial day of trading. The IPO from SolarWinds was followed by another from OpenTable (an online restaurant-reservation service), which was perceived to break a dry spell during the Great Recession, when very few companies went public. Both Bain Capital and Insight Venture Partners backed the IPO and used the opportunity to sell some of their shares during the offering. Analysts and company executives anticipated continued expansion post-IPO, including several acquisitions. In 2010, Bennett retired as CEO and was replaced by the company's former chief financial officer Kevin Thompson. In May 2013, SolarWinds announced plans to invest in an operations hub in Salt Lake City, Utah. It was named by Forbes as "Best Small Company in America, citing high-functioning products for low costs and impressive company growth." By 2013, SolarWinds employed about 900 people. Acquisition by private equity technology investment firms Silver Lake Partners and Thoma Bravo, LLC. was announced in late 2015, and by January 2016, SolarWinds was taken private in a $4.5 billion deal. At the time, the company had 1,770 employees worldwide with 510 based in Austin, and reported revenues of about half a billion dollars a year. In November 2017, SolarWinds released AppOptics which integrates much of its software portfolio, including Librato and TraceView, into a single software-as-a-service package. AppOptics included compatibility with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. In September 2018, SolarWinds filed for a public offering again, after three years of being owned by private equity firms. SolarWinds completed its public offering on October 19, 2018. On December 7, 2020, CEO Kevin Thompson retired, to be replaced by Sudhakar Ramakrishna, CEO of Pulse Secure, effective January 4, 2021. On January 8, 2021, the company hired former CISA director Chris Krebs to help the company work through the recent cyber attack. In July 2021, SolarWinds separated its managed service provider (MSP) business from the main company. The new separately-traded public company is named N-able. In February 2025, the company announced that it would be acquired by private equity firm Turn/River Capital for $4.4 billion; the deal received approval from Thoma Bravo and Silver Lake, SolarWinds' majority shareholders with a combined 65% of the outstanding voting securities. The deal was closed on April 18, 2025 for $18.50 per share and the company delisted from the New York Stock Exchange.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with SolarWinds

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what SolarWinds claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to SolarWinds before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about SolarWinds ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of SolarWinds

In research: SolarWinds appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses SolarWinds in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: SolarWinds is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1999 establishments in Oklahoma, 2009 initial public offerings, 2015 mergers and acquisitions, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for SolarWinds outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study SolarWinds in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what SolarWinds means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain SolarWinds out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is SolarWinds in simple terms?

Why does SolarWinds matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study SolarWinds?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on SolarWinds.