The 20 Coolest Cloud Software Vendors Of The 2015 Cloud 100

Coolest Cloud Software Vendors For 2015

These days, cloud offerings come in a multitude of shapes, sizes and flavors as the industry is moving to an everything but the kitchen sink-as-a-service model. But Software-as-a-Service is still the most tangible and perhaps elegant of cloud products, relieving those of us who don't want to fiddle with virtual machines and complex development platforms of the burdens of everything but using powerful applications. While this list includes some cloud pioneers like Salesforce.com and SAP who now offer the planet's largest and most-mainstream CRM and ERP systems, it also profiles a new crop of startups adding to the mix with solutions for big data processing, business intelligence and analytics, application performance and IT management, and e-commerce.

Birst

Jay Larson

CEO

Birst develops a cloud-based business intelligence and analytics platform, putting it at the juncture of two of the IT industry’s hottest trends. Birst plugs into a company’s applications and data stores, creating visual reports and dashboards business that users can easily access.

CloudPhysics

Jeff Hausman

CEO

CloudPhysics offers a Software-as-a-Service toolset that collects and analyzes big data about IT system configuration, performance, failures and events, providing system administrators with the predictive analytics capabilities they need to manage virtualized data centers.

Databricks

Ion Stoica

CEO

One of the hottest big data technologies in 2014 was Apache Spark, the open-source, in-memory data processing engine that turbocharges big data systems such as Hadoop and could revolutionize data management and business analytics. Databricks, started by Spark’s original developers, created a Spark-based platform for data transformation, exploration and analytics.

HubSpot

Brian Halligan

CEO

Offering an alternative to old-school sales tactics of cold calls and spam emails, Hubspot develops in-bound marketing and sales software that businesses use to attract and engage website visitors, convert leads and close deals with customers. Hubspot went public in October.

NetSuite

Zach Nelson

President, CEO

NetSuite develops Software-as-a-Service ERP, CRM and e-commerce applications and in recent years has been growing between 30 percent and 35 percent a year despite competing against such giants as Microsoft and SAP. The vendor also works closely with solution providers, making it a channel favorite.

New Relic

Lew Cirne

CEO

New Relic creates cloud-basad application performance management software for monitoring the cloud and mobile applications that make up an increasingly larger portion of many IT departments’ technology portfolio. The fast-growing company went public in December and also recently launched a channel program.

Otixo

Jens Birnbaum

CEO, CFO

Managing multiple cloud operations can be a challenge. Otixo offers a cloud service aggregator that can organize files stored on Amazon S3, Box, Dropbox, Picasa, SkyDrive and SugarSync, among others, into one uber cloud drive that can be monitored through a single management console.

Qlik

Lars Bjork

CEO

Qlik develops self-service business analytics, data discovery and visualization software, including the Qlik Sense Desktop, that is capable of meeting both the ease-of-use requirements of everyday business users and IT management’s requirements for enterprise scalability, control and data governance.

Qubole

Ashish Thusoo

CEO

A pioneer in the big data arena, Qubole develops a Hadoop-based cloud data service that businesses use to store and manage huge volumes of structured and unstructured data and tap into that data for analytical chores and other tasks.

Salesforce.com

Marc Benioff

CEO

Despite being one of the original vanguard cloud computing companies (founded in 1999), Salesforce continues to grow rapidly even as it expands into new areas. In 2014 the company introduced Wave, the vendor’s cloud entry into the $38 billion business analytics software arena.

Salsify

Jason Purcell

CEO

For many e-commerce companies, exchanging information about products can be a business bottleneck. Salsify offers a cloud-based product content management system that manufacturers, distributors and retailers use to create and distribute the product content, such as images and product specifications, needed for e-commerce.

SAP

Bill McDermott

CEO

SAP, originally built on its on-premise ERP and other business applications, has been making some gutsy moves in the past two years to transform itself into a company focused on cloud-based software. The company forecasts that revenue from cloud software will surpass sales of on-premise applications by 2018.

ServiceNow

Frank Slootman

President, CEO

ServiceNow provides cloud-based service management, IT operations management, custom application development and business workflow tools. At a time when IT departments are being asked to do more with less, ServiceNow is among the leaders in bringing the benefits of the cloud to IT.

Snowflake Computing

Bob Muglia

CEO

Snowflake recently came out of stealth mode, debuting its cloud-based data warehousing services as a more flexible, easier-to-manage alternative to complex and often very expensive on-premise data warehouse systems. Snowflake’s Elastic Data Warehouse will compete with Amazon Web Services’ Redshift and Google’s Big Query.

Soonr

Ahmet Tuncay

CEO

It’s an increasingly mobile world, especially among the workforces at many companies. Soonr develops technology that provides a way for those workers to securely store, share, access and search files across multiple platforms, including on any mobile device or desktop PC.

Splunk

Godfrey Sullivan

President, CEO

A significant percentage of big data comes from IT systems and sensors, not information created by humans. Splunk’s cloud-based software can search, monitor and analyze machine-generated data—what it calls operational intelligence. That well-positions the company to handle the coming Internet of Things data deluge.

Strevus

Ken Hoang

CEO

Strevus develops compliance life-cycle management applications that help financial services companies comply with government regulations—an increasingly complex problem in a big data world. The software gathers, tracks and reports the movement of information between financial company co-workers, clients and regulatory agencies.

SumAll

Dane Atkinson

CEO

SumAll’s cloud-based marketing analytics and dashboard software combines social media, Web traffic, sales and e-commerce data and other information to help marketers track the impact of their digital marketing efforts. Because of its emphasis on ease of use, SumAll sells to small and midsize businesses as well as big companies.

Treasure Data

Hiro Yoshikawa

CEO

Treasure Data develops an end-to-end cloud service that covers the entire process of collecting, storing and analyzing massive amounts of data from the Web, Internet of Things, mobile devices and more. The company positions itself as a simple-to-use alternative to Hadoop platforms and services.

Xplenty

Yaniv Mor

CEO

Xplenty offers a cloud-based data integration service that pulls together structured and unstructured data. Running on Hadoop (and masking that big data platform’s complexity), Xplenty is an alternative to legacy data ETL (extract, transform and load) tools. It also competes with Amazon’s Elastic MapReduce service.