This February, SolarWinds will bring partners together for the 2026 SolarWinds Partner Summit, our global virtual kick-off designed to share where we’re headed next, and how AI is shaping that journey. As we look ahead to 2026, our AI strategy is central to how we help partners guide customers through complexity and toward more resilient, intelligent operations.
Understanding AI Adoption in the Channel
As IT environments become increasingly complex across hybrid clouds, distributed systems, and dynamic applications, the cognitive load on IT teams continues to rise. Every alert, anomaly, and service disruption adds friction, slowing decision-making and stretching scarce resources. In this landscape, intelligent systems are no longer a luxury; they’re a necessity. But AI adoption in IT isn’t always straightforward. Many organizations and even partners themselves are still exploring how to leverage AI effectively. Challenges include:
- Complexity of hybrid environments: Multiple tools, fragmented data, and inconsistent workflows can make AI integration daunting.
- Cognitive overload: IT teams are often overwhelmed by alerts and operational noise, leaving little bandwidth for AI-led projects.
- Skills gaps: While AI can automate routine tasks, customers may lack familiarity with agentic or conversational AI workflows.
SolarWinds and our partners help bridge these gaps. By designing AI that integrates directly into existing workflows, partners can introduce AI capabilities without requiring customers to make significant changes to their operations. With built-in guidance, best practices, and support for real-time decision-making, partners can position themselves as indispensable advisors on their customers’ path to autonomous operational resilience.
AI Across the SolarWinds Platform
At the heart of our AI strategy for 2026 is the new SolarWinds® AI Agent, designed to make IT operations smarter, faster, and more autonomous. Key capabilities include:
- Conversational interface: Teams can ask natural-language questions, get instant insights, and take actions without manual navigation.
- Proactive incident response: During incidents, the AI Agent can post diagnostics, root cause analysis, and recommended actions directly into collaboration tools before responders log in.
- Context-aware automation: The AI Agent understands the environment, selects appropriate tools for each task, and helps ensure operational continuity with minimal human intervention.
Complementing the AI Agent are additional enhancements across our observability and service management portfolio:
- Root Cause Assist: Correlates anomalies and events to pinpoint issues quickly.
- AI Query Assist: Suggests optimized database queries based on usage patterns.
- AI Log Insights: Summarizes vast log volumes into actionable insights, reducing analysis time.
- Ops Agent: Automates first-response tasks, freeing IT teams to focus on higher-value challenges.
All of these capabilities are built on the Model Context Protocol (MCP) Framework, helping ensure secure, context-aware, and extensible AI adoption across multi-vendor environments.
Empowering Partners as AI Leaders
For our partners, AI is both an opportunity and a responsibility. The rapid evolution of intelligent tools means partners must:
- Adopt internally first: Understanding and using AI in their own operations builds credibility and confidence with customers.
- Educate and guide customers: Many organizations are early in their AI journey; partners can help them navigate adoption safely and effectively.
- Position AI strategically: By demonstrating operational resilience, predictive insights, and reduced cognitive load, partners can show the tangible value of AI-driven solutions.
- Get Certified: Completing SolarWinds partner enablement certifications featuring real-world use cases helps partners gain the right skills and confidence in understanding customer needs, positioning solutions effectively, and guiding new adopters in their AI journey.
At the 2026 Partner Summit, we share a roadmap for partners to integrate AI into go-to-market strategies, adopt agentic capabilities internally, and leverage tools that accelerate customer outcomes. The message is clear: intelligence in every solution, partnership in every step.
Accelerate With Us
With agentic AI, IT systems can act as active participants—detecting, diagnosing, and addressing routine issues—while keeping human experts focused on strategy, judgment, and complex decision-making. For partners, this evolution represents an opportunity to lead the market by helping customers adopt intelligent operations, reduce operational strain, and build resilient, self-healing IT environments. Together, SolarWinds and our partners are shaping a future where operational resilience is not an aspiration, it’s the baseline.
The 2026 SolarWinds Partner Summit, taking place virtually on February 4 and 5, marks an important moment in this journey. It’s where we’ll connect our AI vision, platform direction, and partner strategy, setting the stage for the year ahead and the multi-year roadmap beyond. As we move into 2026, AI will continue to be a defining force in how partners differentiate, advise, and deliver value. We look forward to exploring that future together and equipping our partners with the intelligence, tools, and confidence to lead.
Mark Your Calendars:
- US and Canada (AMER): Feb 4 | 10:00 a.m. CT
- Latin America (LATAM): Feb 4 | 4:00 p.m. BRT
- Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA): Feb 5 | 11:00 a.m. GMT
- Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ): Feb 5 | 11:00 a.m. SGT
