SolarWinds has launched a new artificial intelligence agent aimed at enhancing autonomous operational resilience for IT teams. The company reports that nearly half of IT leaders experienced unexpected outages despite high resilience ratings, according to its 2025 IT Trends Report. The SolarWinds AI Agent is designed to predict issues, automate responses, and alleviate cognitive burdens on IT professionals. Key features include the ability to summarize outages, gather diagnostics, and suggest remediation steps using natural language commands. The AI Agent enters a tech preview phase today, with broader availability planned for 2026.
Barracuda Networks has launched Barracuda Research, a new centralized resource for threat intelligence and incident analysis aimed at organizations struggling to manage cybersecurity threats. The research comes at a critical time, as 31 percent of small to mid-sized organizations express concern about sourcing and implementing effective threat intelligence, while 47 percent worry about the challenges posed by sophisticated evasion techniques in cyberattacks. Barracuda Research leverages detection data from Barracuda’s artificial intelligence systems, providing insights into email threats and summarizing the latest threat analysis reports from the company’s Security Operations Center.
Why do we care?
SolarWinds has a new AI agent — and yeah, it’s trying to sound like ChatGPT for outages. You talk to it in plain English, it tells you what’s broken, grabs diagnostics, and maybe even fixes it for you. The pitch? Reduce outages and make ops teams smarter. It’s in tech preview now, full launch next year.
But let’s pause. This comes from SolarWinds — a company still rebuilding trust. And the AI stuff? Cool on paper, but unless it plugs into your real workflows, it’s just another alert with a marketing badge.
Then there’s Barracuda, launching “Barracuda Research” — threat intelligence, email analysis, SOC data — all rolled up into one place. It’s timely: MSPs keep saying they don’t have threat intel to show clients. This gives you ammo for QBRs, training, and proof you’re doing more than checking boxes.
Both vendors are chasing the same thing — make you look smart, save you time. But if these tools aren’t integrated, aren’t actionable, and just flood your inbox or give you another dashboard? They’re noise.
What to do?
- Kick the tires on the SolarWinds preview — see if it actually helps, or just talks pretty.
- Use Barracuda’s threat intel in QBRs — it’s story fuel.
- Ask every vendor one thing: how does this save me time and show my value to clients?
Otherwise? Just another AI headline to ignore.