If you want to be in the cloud business, these are some of the cloud infrastructure companies that will help you get there. These are the providers that will host your customers’ business applications and provision them on-demand as Software-as-a-Service. They will store customers’ data in the cloud and secure it there as well. Whether customers want to use a private cloud, a public cloud or a hybrid mixture of both, these companies can help make it happen. And they can even help your customers exchange their expensive legacy hardware for a simple monthly payment plan. Welcome to the cloud.

Stay tuned for the rest of CRN's 100 Coolest Cloud Computing Vendors and check out last year's top cloud computing vendors.

Amazon Web Services. AWS. Those letters have become synonymous with cloud. A true cloud pioneer, AWS offers cloud players every piece of the cloud computing landscape with its cloud services, including Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Simple Storage Service (S3) and its new NoSQL database, DynamoDB.

From pledging to invest $1 billion in cloud and mobility to signing on with the OpenStack open source cloud project, AT&T has shown it’s serious about cloud. And its line of Synaptic cloud services, including power, platform and storage, makes AT&T a carrier cloud contender.

Bluelock embraces the public cloud for its enterprise cloud hosting offerings using its Bluelock Virtual Datacenters to help companies get up and running in its SAS- 70 Type II datacenters. Bluelock also boasts the distinction of being among the first certified VMware vCloud Datacenter service providers.

The networking giant got a slow start in the cloud, but Cisco has put all that to bed with the launch of its CloudVerse cloud framework that combines Cisco’s Unified Data Center, Cloud Intelligent Network and Cloud Applications, and with cloud-specific partner programs.

Dell has cloudified its data center legacy to add a dash of cloud flavor. That—its acquisition of cloud integration darling Boomi and its continued push toward complete private and public cloud offerings— has made Dell one of the biggest cloud vendors on the block.

Eucalyptus is turning heads on two fronts: The cloud and open source. As an open source, private IaaS software provider, Eucalyptus continues to sharpen its sword with new capabilities, most recently adding support for high-availability environments. Eucalyptus also boasts more than 25,000 enterprise cloud starts.

Automation is the name of the game for Gale Technologies, which makes software to automate, orchestrate and optimize IT resources. With GaleForce, it aims to automate the entire infrastructure—hardware, software and virtual machines—to simplify the process of building private and hybrid clouds.

GoGrid prides itself on being a pure-play IaaS provider, focusing its hosted cloud infrastructure to deploy and manage apps and workloads. And with the launch of GoGrid Exchange, a repository of cloud solutions from GoGrid partners, the company is bringing more capabilities to the cloud.

HP has the chops to be a major cloud player. The newly unveiled HP Cloud Services mark HP’s first leap into IaaS with HP Cloud Compute and HP Cloud Object Storage, which leverages HP hardware and software, along with the OpenStack open source cloud.

Nebula enables the deployment of large private clouds via a hardware appliance that allows massive private cloud computing infrastructures, comprising hundreds or thousands of inexpensive computers. Nebula vows to take big data to a large scale and plant itself firmly in the “information revolution.”

This emerging IaaS player offers cloud servers, on-demand dedicated services and cloud storage, leveraging its CloudScript interface that gives users the ability to manage all facets of the cloud. And with free support, NephoScale makes sure the cloud you have is the cloud you want.

OpenStack isn’t a vendor, but an open source cloud project that brings together major vendors, including Cisco, Citrix, Dell and HP among them, to push for open cloud. Launched by Rackspace and NASA, OpenStack has made a true case for open source cloud.

Cloud infrastructure automation is the name of the game for Opscode, which vows to help companies develop automated server infrastructures that scale easily and predictably and can be rebuilt rapidly in any type of environment, which can save developers and systems engineers money and time.

OpSource has grown from its cloud and managed hosting beginnings to become a full-fledged go-to cloud infrastructure player. And with the backing of Dimension Data, which acquired the company last year, OpSource’s presence in the cloud can only go skyward.

Rackspace has broken out of its hosting shackles to become a full-on cloud colossus. From launching the Rackspace Cloud, a true cloud infrastructure play, to having a major hand in the launch of the OpenStack project, Rackspace has made cloud computing its business.

Since its acquisition by CenturyLink, Savvis has become part of the carrier cloud revolution. The combined companies creates a managed hosting and collocation juggernaut with the ability to scale and meet the demand for cloud services and outsourced IT with a growing global presence.

SoftLayer’s cloud infrastructure platform delivers performance, control and a full-featured API. Currently, the company manages more than 100,000 servers, making it among the largest privately held IaaS providers in the world with its modular architecture that spans 13 global data centers.

SunGard Availability Services, a subsidiary of SunGard, is tackling cloud computing and now, with its Enterprise Cloud Services, it offers a fully managed cloud IaaS through which it manages availability and security of compute, network and storage resources with an SLA that promises 99.95 percent uptime.

Terremark was a cloud evangelist before Verizon scooped it up in a bigdollar acquisition that vaulted the carrier to an international cloud giant. With a foothold in Latin America and other locations, Terremark gives its now parent company the ability to grow in new markets.

While Terremark acts as Verizon’s cloud business, the massive carrier is continuing to sharpen its cloud talons as well. Whether it’s the acquisition of CloudSwitch to add more app capabilities or the launch of new cloud services, Verizon is leading the cloud carrier charge.

Cloud 100:
The 20 Coolest Cloud Software Vendors
The 20 Coolest Cloud Storage & Data Center Vendors
The 20 Coolest Cloud Security Vendors
The 100 Coolest Cloud Computing Vendors Of 2011