This is the first
post of a new effort here at SolarWinds. We are kicking off an Orion product team blog. Why would we do
this? The product team already monitors thwack, our community forum, and
responds to user comments and questions many times every day. So, you
might ask, what else could we possibly have to say? Lots, actually.
With thwack,
we're reacting to users, and we're committed to continuing that ongoing
conversation. With this blog, our desire is provide a proactive channel
where we can talk to users about Orion. In this blog, we're going
to assume that the reader owns and uses Orion and its modules. That
assumption gives us the freedom to talk about nitty gritty details of the
product and its features. Prospective customers are welcome to read and may
benefit from doing so, but our goal is to provide a service to existing
customers. In fact, in a future release of Orion, we intend to make the
blog available right in the product in order to make the content as readily
accessible as possible for all customers.
What are we
trying to accomplish?
- First and foremost, we want to provide
some content that might fall in the "tips and tricks" category. We talk
to and hear from so many customers who have done really interesting things with
Orion, and we want share some of their creativity more widely. We also
talk to new customers who like Orion and suspect (correctly, more often than
not) that they are only getting a fraction of the value of the product. The
Orion family strives to be easy, yet powerful, which means that the "meat and
potatoes" of the product can be accessed without much effort, but over time,
ever more power reveals itself. We want to accelerate that
revelation process. - The other thing we expect to do is talk
about features-new and old-and the rationale behind them. Product
Management and Engineering work closely on the design of each feature,
including end user feedback as much as possible. In the end, we spend a
lot of time on the features, and we care about the
details. And since you're the consumer of these features, we figure
you all care about them, too, and will be interested as well. We know our
spouses aren't. We've tried talking to them, and frankly, we're tired of
the eye-rolling when we try to tell them excitedly about the new, cool thing we
just released. So, we'll tell you about the features instead.
We'll explain what we were trying to accomplish, why we made the design
decisions we made, and all the inside dirt.
We encourage
comments and we'll respond. It's just another channel for our ongoing
dialog about Orion. Please add this blog to your RSS Reader or set up
email notifications if you're interested in this content.
