SolarWinds announced Monday it had acquired for an undisclosed sum the assets of New Zealand-based software maker Kiwi Enterprises, best known for its free management and configuration tools.

SolarWinds, also known for making freeware versions of its enterprise software available, acquired Kiwi with plans to incorporate the company's Syslog and CatTools products into its own Orion platform. 

SolarWinds executives say while the company has network and systems management capabilities already, it has yet to venture into log management. The Kiwi buy will enable that move.

"Kiwi's Syslog server fits cleanly with our product line, and we don't have a stand-alone syslog server and the top priority from our customers was to make ours more like Kiwi's, so we are," says Kenny Van Zant, chief product strategist at SolarWinds.

SolarWinds will take on the handful of developers and staff working on Kiwi's technology in New Zealand and add the company's "thousands of customers" to its own roster, which boasts more than 60,000 SolarWinds users. The buy will also add to SolarWinds' list of competitors. Vendors such as LogLogic, LogRhythm, Q1 Labs and ArcSight have separately introduced products to manage logs to tackle enterprise IT's network, compliance and security needs.

"Log management was not a market we had fixed on before, but with this acquisition and our business model, SolarWinds will be able to offer customers enhanced capabilities around log management," Van Zant says.

SolarWinds also plans to add Kiwi-specific forums to its community site, thwack, to enable SolarWinds and Kiwi customers to share experiences and advice online.