Let’s be real, running today’s complex and hybrid IT is a headache. Just being able to visualize what’s causing the issue isn’t enough anymore, you need smart IT monitoring that can predict, analyze, report, and troubleshoot. You require an intuitive network monitoring or an observability solution.
But the real challenge here is, how do you know which tool truly fits your long-term plan?
The Evolving IT Monitoring Landscape
Enterprises operate across highly complex hybrid environments that include on-premise data centers, private clouds, and multi-cloud infrastructure. Given this setup, traditional, siloed monitoring tools are falling short due to their inability in bridging the gap between tools forcing the shift towards unified IT monitoring, driven by integrated analytics and automation capabilities.
An ideal full-stack observability tool provides end-to-end visibility across your IT infrastructure like networks, servers, applications, and storage. While the goal of these tools remain the same, they offer different architectural approaches and scalability models.
While we talk about the ideal full-stack observability tool, we also should discuss how you should choose such a tool for your organization infrastructure.
What Are the Non-Negotiables?
Picking the right full-stack observability tool goes beyond just monitoring performance metrics. It’s about gaining complete visibility, control, and in-depth insight into every layer of your IT infrastructure. In today’s hybrid environments, even a small blind spot can lead to big disruptions.
Top 5 recent Internet outages:
| Company | Outage Date | Cause | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare | 5th Dec 2025 | Body parsing logic | Cloudflare Blog |
| Cloudflare | 18th Nov 2025 | Database change | Cloudflare Blog |
| AWS | 28th Oct 2025 | Faulty automation | AWS Service Health |
| Google Cloud | 12th June 2025 | Null pointer error handling | Google Cloud Status |
| CrowdStrike | 19th July 2024 | Faulty content update | CrowdStrike Blog |
To keep your systems performing at their best, here are the non-negotiable capabilities every full-stack observability solution should:
- Monitor everything from infrastructure and applications to databases, networks, and end-user experience.
- Track metrics, logs, traces, and events in one place for a quicker root-cause analysis.
- Utilize in-built AIOps to detect potential issues, minimize noise, and predict issues before they cause an end-user impact.
- Ensure visibility across on-prem, cloud, and containerized environments (AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes, etc.).
- Offer quick setup, simple configuration, and seamless integration with ITSM, DevOps, and collaboration tools.
- Be secure, stable, and flexible in terms of pricing, licensing, and ownership.
When talking about full-stack observability tools, we need to mention these forerunners of the IT monitoring platforms, ManageEngine OpManager Plus and SolarWinds HCO. And, both these tools directly address the issues that organizations face because of the tool sprawl and isolated insights provided by traditional tools.
SolarWinds vs. OpManager Plus
As dominating players in the market for more than a decade, SolarWinds relies on its Orion platform to offer comprehensive, in-depth insights for complex IT management. This solution and its capabilities are well-suited for a huge user base, including large enterprises and service providers.
OpManager Plus, on the other hand, is part of ManageEngine’s integrated IT management suite. It unifies network performance monitoring, server and application management, configuration, bandwidth analytics, and log management, all in one platform.
Features Comparison
| Category | OpManager Plus | SolarWinds |
|---|---|---|
| Monitoring | Unified, comprehensive monitoring across all infrastructure layers, including network devices, servers, virtual machines (VMs), storage, applications, and configurations. | Strong network and server monitoring, alongside advanced modules for application and configuration management. |
| AIOps & Automation | Built-in anomaly detection, forecasting, and automated workflows for proactive remediation. | Offers automation via add-ons, and they also have native AIOps capabilities like built-in anomaly detection, conversation AI interface, etc., |
| Ease of Deployment | Easy installation with modular add-ons. Works for both mid-size and large enterprises. | Enterprise-level setup with multiple components and dependencies. |
| User Interface & Usability | Intuitive dashboards with unified visibility across IT layers. | Feature-rich with a steeper learning curve. |
| Licensing & Cost | Flexible, modular pricing. Only pay for what you need. | Flexible licensing. |
| Scalability | Scales across distributed environments with ease, all managed from a single, unified console. | Highly scalable with careful infrastructure planning. |
| Integration Ecosystem | Integrates seamlessly with in-house tools, ITSM tools like ServiceDesk Plus, ServiceNow, ServiceDesk Plus Cloud, and extends support to the third party tools as well. | Broad integration ecosystem that connects seamlessly with ITSM, cloud, DevOps, and security tools. |
When comparing these features, the choice really comes down to your operational style. SolarWinds offers modern capabilities, with observability modules. But recently, users are reporting an increase in their yearly renewals.
You can also refer to the official docs about increase in license consumption.
On the other hand, OpManager Plus offers the flexibility in licensing and ownership, offering stable and affordable for SMBs and enterprises.
Where OpManager Plus Stands Out?
OpManager Plus stands out for being simple, affordable, and giving you a complete view of your business stack. It brings network, server, and application monitoring together on one smart dashboard, with AI that helps spot issues and automate routine tasks. You also have the option to choose from their point solutions (Network Configuration Manager, Firewall Analyzer, OpUtils, etc…) or go for their all-in-one observability suite – OpManager Plus.
They also offer flexible licensing options that include perpetual and licensing models with no multi eloquence.
Where SolarWinds Excels?
With its solid reputation and extensive ecosystem, SolarWinds remains a strong choice for large enterprises with complex distributed environments. It offers a powerful feature set as long as organizations are prepared to handle its complexity.
Choosing the Right Fit for Your IT Strategy
Ultimately, the choice between SolarWinds and OpManager Plus depends on your organization’s priorities:
- If you seek a cost-effective platform to simplifies IT operations while embracing AIOps, OpManager Plus is the better strategic fit.
- If you require large-scale observability for a highly complex network architecture, SolarWinds should be your option.
In the end, both offer strong capabilities for network and infrastructure monitoring. SolarWinds is ideal for massive environments demanding granular depth, while OpManager Plus shines with its unified dashboards, built-in automation, and affordability.
