Software provider SolarWinds has announced a new AI feature designed to automate IT management. The product, called SW1, is intended to help organizations reduce their reliance on manual processes and respond more quickly to issues within complex IT environments.
According to the company, the launch addresses the growing complexity of IT landscapes. Many organizations operate using a combination of on-premises systems, private cloud, and public cloud environments. This hybrid approach increases the management burden and requires better monitoring and automation. SolarWinds positions SW1 as a central interface that enables IT teams to gain insight into performance, capacity, and system status via natural language.
SW1 is based on SolarWinds’ agentic framework. This refers to an architecture in which AI systems can perform tasks autonomously within predefined parameters. According to SiliconANGLE, SW1 functions as an AI entity that collaborates with IT teams to coordinate workflows within data center and cloud environments.
According to both the company and external reports, the pressure on IT departments continues to increase due to the volume of data and alerts generated by modern environments. IT teams are confronted with large volumes of alerts and signals, leaving them to spend much of their time resolving incidents rather than focusing on strategic work. Automation should alleviate this process by identifying problems earlier and preventing them where possible, SiliconANGLE adds.
Natural language as a gateway to data
SW1 is integrated into both the self-hosted and SaaS versions of SolarWinds Observability and consolidates signals from various sources into a single overview. IT professionals can use the system to ask questions in natural language about, for example, database capacity or performance issues in cloud applications, according to SiliconANGLE.
In a statement, Cullen Childress, Chief Product Officer at SolarWinds, says that in his view, organizations need technology that not only identifies problems but also helps prevent them. He states that the goal is to allow IT teams to spend less time on operational tasks and more time on strategic work.
Although SW1 is available immediately, the initial version focuses primarily on generating insights. In many cases, human administrators remain responsible for taking action. SolarWinds says it is working on further expanding autonomous functionality in upcoming updates.
The roadmap includes features to identify service-level risks earlier and to automatically generate workflows, scripts, and runbooks based on existing knowledge. The company also aims to reduce notifications by filtering out irrelevant or duplicate alerts and improving visibility into incident-to-incident connections.
The launch of SW1 coincides with the publication of SolarWinds’ IT Trends Report 2026. According to the company, the report highlights a shift in which IT professionals are evolving from operational administrators to roles where they primarily manage and monitor AI-driven processes.