As networks become more complex, carrying more data, services and applications, network management becomes crucial. Tools that can help the networking professional decipher how the network is performing are a valuable ally. Unfortunately, these tools can be difficult to deploy, cumbersome to use and expensive. Orion Network Performance Monitor from SolarWinds breaks the mold of unwieldy software in an easy-to-use product aimed at the mid-market, and handily won our gold award in the network performance management category.

Product Leadership survey respondents were most impressed by Orion's logging, monitoring and reporting capabilities, with 85% of users rating the product good to excellent. Another highlight was the software's ability to identify network problems, which is paramount in any network management product. Eight-four percent of respondents rated Orion good to excellent in that evaluation criterion.

Orion offers real-time views of network performance and availability statistics including CPU and memory utilization; network latency; volume usage; bandwidth utilization; node, interface, and volume status; interface errors and discards; and buffer usage and errors. Installation can be up and running within an hour, according to the company.

As a Web-based product, Orion provides fully customizable views from a Web browser. Networking pros can select predefined views or create unique filtered views and toolbars. Despite this apparent flexibility, one survey respondent remarked, "I would like to see a more complete and user-friendly performance dashboard."

SolarWinds touts Orion as a having a low operational cost because it runs on Windows servers. Our respondents agreed with that summation; 91% rated investment ROI as fair or better, and several commented that the product was a good value. One user cautioned, however, that the product may not scale enough for a large enterprise implementation. "The product is fine for the price, but not expandable," the respondent pointed out.

Susan Fogarty, Editorial Director