Opsgenie has likely been a core part of your incident response setup for years. It deserves credit for building one of the most reliable legacy on-call systems in the space. But now, with Opsgenie's end-of-life on the horizon for April 5, 2027, you are being forced to plan and complete a migration to either JSM or Compass.
This forced migration means you're not just switching incident response tools; you're being pushed into a broader IT Service Response (ITSM) solution. JSM is a service desk tool; it's not a dedicated incident response platform, which could lead to a downgrade in your incident response capabilities. You have a choice, and you don't have to settle for a solution that isn't a like-for-like replacement.
Why SolarWinds Incident Response Is an Upgrade
Incident Response has changed. Infrastructure is more layered, monitoring tools are more advanced, and teams are chasing deeper visibility across every part of their stack. Monitoring gives you visibility, yes, but what happens when alerts start pouring in from SolarWinds® Observability, Grafana, Prometheus, or any other tool you use?
You need more than visibility. You need a system that brings all your alerts together, correlates them, enriches them with context, and routes them to the right person at the right time. Unlike a dedicated incident response platform, JSM is built on the Jira platform, which can create a complex and clunky experience when you're trying to resolve a live incident. The tool's powerful flexibility can quickly "snowball into a nightmare" of complicated workflows and unnecessary custom fields, adding friction when you need speed most. An incident response platform that is slow and difficult to navigate is not what you need during a critical event.
Once routed, incidents need to be resolved quickly. Metrics like MTTA and MTTR aren’t just numbers; they reflect how well your team is functioning. This is where SolarWinds Incident Response comes in.
It brings together alert correlation and enrichment, automated on-call response, real-time incident collaboration, intelligent automation, and stakeholder updates in one place.
And we’re not just talking about it, we’ve put it into practice, with one of our own internal DevOps teams recently migrating to SolarWinds Incident Response, giving us firsthand experience of its transformative impact.
From Opsgenie to SolarWinds Incident Response
The SolarWinds DevOps team, consisting of 16 engineers, is a globally remote team spread across Brno, Manila, Texas, Utah, and North Carolina. This global structure made it essential to have an on-call solution that could effectively accommodate their schedule when they recently migrated from Opsgenie to SolarWinds Incident Response. They primarily used Opsgenie for on-call notifications and routing. But once they made the switch, they started rethinking how they handled alert noise and incident workflows.
This team internally supports the systems engineers at SolarWinds who use these tools to build software. This includes GitHub, TeamCity, Azure DevOps, and our internal Artifactory. If Artifactory goes down, builds break, which can ultimately delay software releases. That’s the kind of pressure they’re under.
So, when they moved to Incident Response, they weren’t just looking for a tool. They were looking for something that could feel familiar but work better.
What Changed for the DevOps Team
One of the first things the team noticed after switching to Incident Response was how much easier it became to understand what an alert was actually about. Before, an alert meant opening three different tools just to understand what broke down. Now, the moment an alert hits, they see the impacted service and its dependencies in one view. For example, if an alert is related to their TeamCity service, they can immediately tell whether it’s coming from a production or staging environment. That kind of clarity has made a big difference in how quickly they respond.
The team has also set up the service graph visualization, which has helped reduce noise and pinpoint root causes faster. When multiple services go down at once, the graph shows how they’re connected. This makes it easier to identify which service is likely causing the issue.
Instead of sifting through hundreds of alerts, they can now look at the graph and say, “This is the one we need to focus on.” It’s become a go-to tool for triaging incidents and cutting through the noise.
Smarter 24x7 Scheduling and Escalation Setup
A critical feature of Opsgenie was its reliable on-call and escalation setup. When our team moved to SolarWinds Incident Response, they rebuilt their scheduling layer using the platform’s flexible scheduling and escalation policies.
Weekday rotations are handled by the core team, while weekends are covered by senior engineers. What makes their setup especially effective is the use of global scheduling. This ensures that if an incident goes unacknowledged for a certain period, team members in other time zones are notified automatically. Escalation policies are also in place to make sure incidents move up the chain if they’re not addressed in time. One of the big wins for the team's response is that they are not notified unless an incident needs to be escalated, preventing them from being overwhelmed with non-critical alerts.
ChatOps and Real-Time Collaboration
This is where having a dedicated incident response tool really makes a difference. The DevOps team works entirely within Microsoft Teams, and they’ve integrated Incident Response directly into their workflow. They can acknowledge incidents right from Teams without switching apps.
If an incident needs deeper investigation, they open the Incident Response dashboard, review the details, attach relevant runbooks, and assign it to someone who’s online. If it’s not urgent, they simply tag a teammate in the notes with a suggestion to suppress or review it later. This flow has made incident handling feel more natural and less disruptive.
Personal Notification Preferences
Each team member has control over how they’re notified. During the week, most prefer alerts via Teams or email. On weekends, if an incident isn’t acknowledged quickly, the system activates all available channels, including SMS, mobile app notifications, ChatOps tools, and even phone calls. This flexibility helps the team stay responsive without being overwhelmed.
Building Noise Reduction Processes Around Incident Response
Some services in the DevOps team’s environment generate a lot of alert noise. These alerts often come from service accounts or shared inboxes, and they’re not always actionable. To manage this, they’ve routed all those alerts into the Incident Response solution. This gives the team visibility without cluttering their personal workflows. Using suppression rules, they’ve filtered out anything that doesn’t impact their system. It’s not just about cutting down on noise. It’s about making sure the team sees only what matters, and nothing more.
Bi-directional Jira Integration
The integration between SolarWinds Incident Response and Jira has helped the team stay aligned. If a ticket is created in Jira, it syncs with Incident Response. Any updates made in Incident Response are reflected back in Jira. This has made stakeholder communication smoother and reduced the need for manual updates across platforms. Recently, the team integrated Jira forms that create "Incident" ticket types in their Jira project with a specific label. When that ticket comes in, it automatically triggers an alert for the team that is routed based on the "Component" field selected for the incident. This gives internal developers the ability to create an alert from a familiar platform like Jira, while letting the on-call team use the added functionality of SolarWinds Incident Response.
Training and Onboarding
Getting started with Incident Response was straightforward. The team had a quick 30-minute onboarding call with the solution engineer, who walked them through how to map their Opsgenie setup to Incident Response. They learned how to configure services, set up alert rules, and build out their workflows.
Three Big Wins for the SolarWinds DevOps Team
- Faster Response Times: Everyone on the team has Microsoft Teams open throughout the day. With Incident Response integrated directly into Teams, they can acknowledge and respond to alerts without switching apps. This has made a noticeable difference in how quickly incidents are addressed.
- Centralized Visibility: All alerts—whether from email, Teams, or other sources—now live in one place. The team no longer must guess whether someone saw an alert or responded to it. They can see who acknowledged it and know it’s being worked on.
- Less Noise, More Clarity: Suppression rules are easier to configure, which means that the team isn’t overwhelmed by irrelevant alerts anymore. They’re focused, responsive, and confident in their setup.
Migration isn’t just about switching tools. It’s about finding something that feels familiar but works better for you. If you’re thinking about moving away from Opsgenie, maybe this story will help you see what’s possible. And if you’re ready to explore, we’re here to help. To accelerate your move, we have an Opsgenie migrator available, allowing you to quickly transfer critical configurations for a seamless transition.
