Profiler provides backup reports and monitoring and storage resource management, and in recent years made a push into virtual server management.

SolarWinds chief product strategist Kenny Van Zant said the acquisition makes sense because “silos are breaking down” between storage and networking teams and they’re looking for a common management tool. He said this trend is driven by consolidation of storage and networking around Ethernet and iSCSI SANs.

“Everyone is now plugging storage into their network, so storage has become a network device,” he said.

SolarWinds CEO Mike Bennett said his company will sell Profiler separately and will also make it available as an integrated module of Orion by the end of the year.

Both companies have headquarters in Texas. SolarWinds is based in Austin and Tek-Tools in Dallas. Bennett said about 60 Tek-Tools employees will join SolarWinds, including CEO Ken Barth, senior management, and its engineering team in Chennai, India

SolarWinds completed an IPO last May, making it one of the few companies to go public in 2009. SolarWinds reported $32.4 million in revenue for the third quarter of 2009 with $12 million in income. It will report fourth quarter and 2009 yearly revenues Feb. 8. The vendor claims more than 88,000 customers and says Tek-Tools has about 1,300 customers.

Bennett said SolarWinds is paying $32 million in cash for Tek-Tools with the rest in stock. He expects about $4 million to $5 million in revenue from Tek-Tools software this year and an operating loss of around $3 million to $3.5 million. Bennett said Tek-Tools has been operating at a loss.