SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) vs. Grafana Cloud

SolarWinds' Network Performance Monitor (NPM) offers sophisticated network troubleshooting capabilities through a detailed hop-by-hop analysis of critical paths, catering to both hybrid environments and traditional on-premises as well as cloud services. This contemporary network monitoring solution stands out for its combination of strength and cost-effectiveness. IT teams can swiftly pinpoint, diagnose, and resolve network disruptions, thereby enhancing overall network efficiency. Among its notable features are a performance analysis dashboard, visualization of critical paths with NetPath, smart alert systems, support for multi-vendor network monitoring, and specialized insights for Cisco ASA devices. With these tools, organizations can ensure their networks operate at optimal levels while minimizing downtime.

Grafana Labs provides the leading AI-powered observability platform, built around Grafana—the most widely adopted open source technology for dashboards and visualization. Recognized as a Leader in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Observability Platforms, Grafana Labs supports more than 25 million users and thousands of organizations worldwide, from startups to Fortune 500 enterprises. Grafana Cloud is the open observability cloud, delivering full-stack visibility across modern applications, infrastructure, and digital services. Built on open source, open standards, and open ecosystems, the platform unifies metrics, logs, traces, and profiles into a scalable observability experience that helps teams detect issues earlier, resolve incidents faster, and operate more efficiently. At the core of Grafana Cloud is the open-source LGTM stack: Grafana for dashboards and visualization, Mimir for scalable metrics, Loki for logs, and Tempo for distributed tracing. Native OpenTelemetry and Prometheus support make it easy to collect telemetry from any environment, while hundreds of integrations connect existing systems and tools—allowing organizations to extend observability without vendor lock-in. Grafana Cloud also introduces powerful AI-driven observability capabilities. Grafana Assistant helps teams explore data, investigate incidents, and troubleshoot faster through an intelligent interface built for engineers. Adaptive Telemetry identifies high-value signals and aggregates the rest, helping organizations reduce telemetry costs while maintaining operational insight. With solutions spanning Kubernetes monitoring, application and infrastructure observability, frontend monitoring, database observability, incident response, synthetic monitoring, and performance testing, Grafana Cloud delivers the clarity teams need to move faster and operate with confidence.