Grabbing the silver in our applications and network management category is ipMonitor from SolarWinds, an all-in-one network, server and applications monitoring product designed for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with limited IT resources. This low-cost, low-maintenance solution even includes a database and Web server.

Aimed at folks running Windows, ipMonitor comes with more than 50 preconfigured monitors for routers, switches and servers, and applications like Exchange, SQL Server, and Active Directory. It also recognizes Oracle, Dell and HP servers, as well as Cisco routers and several protocols and directories. The monitors collect and analyze metrics for each system and application that indicates availability, performance and service quality. These include user experience measurements for popular Windows applications like Exchange.

Users valued ipMonitor's network management capabilities; 42% of survey respondents scored it excellent for its ability to identify network problems. Thirty-one percent of respondents thought the product's ability to measure application quality or experience was excellent. In addition, users were impressed by ipMonitor's ease of management and maintenance, with 35% awarding it an excellent rating on that criterion.