The 20 Coolest Cloud Software Vendors Of The Cloud 100

Salesforce.com came out ahead of the pack years ago by offering CRM business SaaS. Now all the major software vendors are making their wares available through the cloud, while younger companies are creating new cloud environments to offer a variety of software products and services.

Here we take a look at the coolest cloud software vendors to make this year's Cloud 100 list.

CEO: Yury Larichev

Cloud ERP software vendor Acumatica enjoyed solid growth throughout 2012, adding partners and expanding territories. Its ability to offer ERP in a SaaS model or hosted on-premise, in a data center or in the cloud remains a winning formula.

President, Co-CEO: Daniel Saks

Cloud marketplace vendor AppDirect got an $8.5 million venture funding boost in July, an indication of the value of its Marketplace Manager platform that lets solution providers administer a cloud service, making available to customers offerings such as product catalogs, marketing and billing.

President, CEO: Mark Templeton

Software and service giant Citrix has staked out a leading position in the cloud with an extensive portfolio that includes its CloudPlatform open-source software, with CloudStack architecture, that pools data center resources to build public, private and hybrid clouds.

Founder, CEO: Solomon Hykes

DotCloud offers an application platform for developers and organizations to deploy, manage and scale their applications by assembling and customizing preconfigured stacks and services. Developers can build applications using a range of development and database stacks, with a single management environment.

Co-Founder, CEO: Larry Page

Google challenges traditional business software licensing models by delivering apps via the cloud with Google Apps, including Docs and Gmail; Google Drive storage; as well as Google Apps Marketplace, an app store for Google Apps users. In 2012, Google introduced its IaaS Compute Engine.

President, CEO: Robert Reid

Intacct makes its mark with cloud financial management applications, which are used by more than 5,000 organizations, including finance and accounting firms. Its applications cover accounting, revenue management, project and fund accounting, inventory management, purchasing and financial reporting.

President, CEO: Brad Smith

Intuit’s financial management, accounting and tax preparation software is now cloud-based with offerings such as QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Online Payroll and Intuit Payments Solutions. Its App Center helps users find its products, such as mobile billing, CRM and billing and invoicing.

CEO: Raj Koneru

Kony Solutions is riding high in the cloud on mobile apps. Its open, standards-based KonyOne Platform lets enterprises develop and deploy mobile apps to the cloud and use a software suite to manage apps, devices and content in the cloud.

CEO: Steve Ballmer

Microsoft continued to build momentum behind Office 365, its cloud-based suite of business applications, including Microsoft Office, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Lync Online. Windows Azure, Microsoft’s Cloud IaaS service, will also draw in users as partners switch from on-premise apps.

President, CEO: Zach Nelson

NetSuite relies on its large partner base to maintain a leadership position as a provider of cloud-based financial and accounting applications. It offers a realtime dashboard for businesses to manage core business operations, including ERP, accounting, CRM and e-commerce.

Co-Founders: Kire Filipovski (pictured), Mike Schwankl, Vitaliy Zinchenko

OneOps lets businesses deploy to any cloud by simplifying management of application workload configuration across public, private and hybrid clouds. To build and manage complex workloads, OneOps lets users visually assemble applications from a library of predefined building blocks.

Co-Founder, CEO: Larry Ellison

The world’s largest software company is rapidly pivoting to the cloud with multiple initiatives. Oracle Cloud offers platform services, application services, and social services capabilities as well as infrastructure services. And Oracle’s many Fusion Applications and Oracle Fusion Middleware are now cloud-enabled.

CEO: Jim Morrisroe

Piston Cloud Computing is riding the OpenStack wave with its flagship product, Piston Enterprise OpenStack, a massively scalable private cloud OS with software for managing a private IaaS cloud so that IT managers can deliver resources internally to their organization.

CEO: Jason Blessing

Plex Systems focuses on cloud services for the manufacturing sector with its flagship Plex Online, a cloud ERP offering. Plex Online connects and manages applications across almost every department within a manufacturer, including manufacturing execution system, supply chain management and business intelligence.

Founder, Chairman, CEO: Marc Benioff

Salesforce.com rose to fame as the first mover for hosted applications with its SaaS for CRM apps. The company continues to forge ahead, most recently extending the cloud to encompass social networking and marketing activities while growing its AppExchange marketplace for cloud apps.

Co-CEOs: Bill McDermott, Jim Hagemann Snabe

ERP vendor SAP entered the cloud game in a big way in 2012, paying $3.4 billion for SuccessFactors, seller of on-demand HR apps, and $4.3 billion for Ariba, a developer of cloud-based business commerce software. The additions support SAP’s plan to be an on-demand apps provider.

President, CEO: Tom Lounibos

SOASTA allows customers to test their Web applications. Its CloudTest product simulates thousands of users visiting a website simultaneously and allows clients to use predefined tests or create customized tests to automatically examine their Web applications for load balancing, software performance and interface functionality.

Co-Founder, Chairman, Co-CEO: Aneel Bhusri Co-Founder, Co-CEO: Dave Duffield

Cloud-based human resources and financial systems software vendor Workday raised an astounding $675 million in an initial public offering in October, which the company says will fortify it for its coming battles with tech giants rivals Oracle and SAP.

Founder, CEO: Sridhar Vembu

Zoho’s not standing pat with its large portfolio of online productivity and collaboration apps for business. It keeps adding to its lineup, most recently integrating BI and Google Drive with Zoho CRM, complementing cloud-based offerings, invoicing, project management, and Web conferencing.

CEO: Tien Tzuo

In March 2012, Zuora raised $36 million in its fourth funding round, as financiers brought total investment in the company to $82.5 million, confirmation of the potential of Zuora’s online subscription billing system in which businesses can provide subscription-based services to customers.