SolarWinds Buys LogicNow To Create MSP Solutions Powerhouse

SolarWinds has purchased IT services management firm LogicNow and will combine it with remote management and monitoring (RMM) competitor SolarWinds N-Able to boost capabilities and scale.

The Austin, Texas-based IT infrastructure management vendor said its acquisition of Dundee, Scotland-based LogicNow will provide it with the strongest and most complete portfolio of automation, security, network management and service management capabilities for MSPs. The combination of SolarWinds N-Able and LogicNow will be branded SolarWinds MSP, employ 750 and serve some 20,000 MSPs.

Financial terms of the deal, announced Wednesday, were not disclosed. After the deal, SolarWinds MSP has 20 offices in 11 countries, managing more than 5 million endpoints and 1 million mailboxes.

[Related: Private Equity Behemoths To Buy SolarWinds for $4.5B, Sending Stock Skyrocketing]

"The acquisition of LogicNow reflects our continued journey to becoming the IT management vendor of choice for all IT professionals regardless of organization size, complexity and where their infrastructure resides," Christoph Pfister, SolarWinds’s executive vice president of products, said in a statement. "SolarWinds is focused on delivering IT management solutions to manage today's hybrid IT infrastructure."

SolarWinds MSP will be led by former LogicNow CEO Walter Scott, with JP Jauvin, general manager of Ottawa, Ontario-based SolarWinds N-Able, reporting into Scott. Scott will report into SolarWinds CEO Kevin Thompson.

"SolarWinds MSP … will offer MSPs a complete set of IT service management solutions via the cloud and on premises delivery models," Thompson said in a statement. "SolarWinds MSP gives them everything they need to acquire and retain profitable clients, deliver outstanding levels of service and maximize their internal efficiency through standardization of their toolsets and the use of automation."

The acquisition of LogicNow was backed by a consortium of investors led by New York-based private equity giant Insight Venture Partners. Private equity goliaths Silver Lake and Thoma Bravo said in October that they had plans to purchase publicly traded SolarWinds for $4.5 billion to up its investment around cloud, hybrid and MSP environments.

SolarWinds MSP's combined powers span a broad range, according to the company, from RMM and remote control to security, backup and disaster recovery to help desk and analytics.

Choice Technologies is interested in network performance monitoring, net flow and traffic diagnostic tools beyond what LogicNow offers today, said Steve Rutkowitz, president of the Hunt Valley, Md.-based LogicNow customer. Rutkowitz said his company will particularly benefit from the network management tools SolarWinds and SolarWinds N-Able currently offer.

"I think it's exciting news," Rutkowitz told CRN. "They'll complement each other, and drive a bigger pool of products into a larger base of MSPs."

Rutkowitz said LogicNow struggles to service customers with more than 100 users, and could benefit from more centralized dashboards and economies of scale.

"With cloud, we all need to move upstream in terms of number of users," Rutkowitz said.

The deal will also likely keep one LogicNow customer from shopping for a different IT service management vendor.

"I feel lately that we've expanded beyond the typical size of their clients," said the partner executive, who didn’t wish to be identified. "We've probably outgrown them."

But given SolarWinds N-Able's focus on enterprise and midmarket customers, the partner exec is willing to reconsider, especially if the acquisition results in stronger virtualization and cloud services offerings.

"I'm excited to see what this acquisition will bring to LogicNow," the partner exec said. "I think this will pull the technology in the right direction."

ITworks previously used both SolarWinds N-Able and LogicNow, but ended up switching to AVG Managed Workplace because of subpar interface, automation and mobile compatibility offerings from both N-Able and LogicNow, said Steven Taylor, founder and CEO of the Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio-based MSP.

Taylor said early reactions to the deal among his peer group were negative. He therefore thinks the deal will result in some existing LogicNow and N-Able customers switching over to RMM competitors such as AVG.

"The overall consensus that I see online of IT business owners is that nobody's happy with this, especially those that are invested in LogicNow and its product," Taylor said. "But I don't feel that any of the RMM tools are perfect."