The 20 Coolest Cloud Software Companies Of The 2022 Cloud 100
Here’s a look at 20 innovative software companies, from startups to some of the industry’s most established software vendors, that are driving the evolution of cloud software today.
Coolest Software Companies
The adoption of cloud-based software continues to accelerate, fueled by the work-from-home move and efforts by businesses and organizations to reinvent themselves through digital transformation initiatives.
Businesses are increasingly taking a SaaS-first approach to software consumption, both to replace on-premises legacy systems and implement new systems that offer advanced functionality combined with unparalleled flexibility. They are turning to the cloud for operational applications such as ERP and CRM, collaboration and communications software, data management and analytics platforms, and AI and AppDev tools.
As part of CRN’s 2022 Cloud 100, here’s a look at 20 innovative software companies, from startups to some of the industry’s most established software vendors, that are driving the evolution of cloud software today.
Adobe
Shantanu Narayen
Chairman, President, CEO
Adobe maintains it leadership in the “digital experience” arena, going beyond its Photoshop and Acrobat products to offer an expansive lineup of creative, marketing and document management software, including its Creative Cloud application suite. The recent acquisition of Frame.io adds cloud-based video collaboration to its lineup.
Cloudera
Robert Bearden
President, CEO
Following its 2019 merger with Hortonworks, Cloudera a has built momentum around its Cloudera Data Platform and hybrid data cloud strategy. The company ’s new Cloudera DataFlow for the Public Cloud processes hybrid streaming data workloads on Cloudera Data Platform to automate complex data operations.
Confluent
Jay Kreps
Co-Founder, CEO
Confluent, which went public in 2021, targets real-time data processing tasks— what the company calls “data in motion“—with its Confluent Platform and Confluent Cloud real-time data/event streaming software. Confluent recently debuted governance tools to help businesses build trust around their streaming data.
Cribl
Clint Sharp
CEO
Startup Cribl is an emerging player in data observability, a hot subsegment of the big data space. The company provides its LogStream cloud-based data engineering tools for securely building and managing globally distributed pipelines that are needed to collect, analyze and store machine log, instrumentation, application and metric data.
Databricks
Ali Ghodsi
Co-Founder, CEO
Unified data analytics technology developer Databricks is one of the hottest companies in the big data space. With many expecting an IPO in 2022, the company‘s recent $1.8 billion funding round put its market value at $38 billion. Databricks champions the “data lakehouse” concept for data, analytics and AI applications.
DataRobot
Dan Wright
CEO
One of the more established players in the AI arena, DataRobot markets its AI/data science cloud platform for building, deploying and managing machine learning models. DataRobot Core is a portfolio of development tools that help data scientists more quickly deliver AI capabilities for business processes.
Firebolt
Eldad Farkash
Co-Founder, CEO
Firebolt offers a highperformance, cloud-based data warehouse system targeting developers and data engineers building dataintensive applications and interactive analytical systems that tap into huge volumes of data. Firebolt, which officially launched in December 2020, is boldly competing with Snowflake and AWS.
GitLab
Sid Sijbrandij
Co-Founder, CEO
GitLab’s DevOps platform helps businesses develop, manage and secure software, covering the entire development life cycle from project planning to source code management. The recently launched GitLab Operator allows production instances of GitLab to run on Kubernetes and OpenShift platforms.
H2O.ai
Sri Ambati
Founder, CEO
H20.ai offers a platform and tools for building and operating AI applications and infusing AI into business workflows. The company is seeing rapid adoption of its H2O AI Cloud, launched in January 2021, which brings together the company’s AI and machine learning products in a unified cloud platform.
Informatica
Amit Walia
CEO
A pioneer in the big data space, Informatica today develops a range of software tools for data management, integration, governance, quality and other tasks, running on the company’s flagship Intelligent Data Management Cloud platform. Privately held since 2015, Informatica went public in October 2021.
Intermedia
Michael Gold
CEO
Intermedia, which filed to go public last year, delivers an integrated platform for unified communications, business email, VoIP, data backup and management, and security applications. The company‘s Intermedia Unite combines unified communications and contact center service capabilities.
Salesforce
Marc Benioff, Bret Taylor
Co-CEOs
Salesforce remains one of the fastest-growing companies in the IT industry with its expanding portfolio of CRM, marketing, customer service and business analytics applications. Salesforce became a major player in the collaboration software space with its blockbuster $27.7 billion acquisition of Slack in July 2021.
SAP
Christian Klein
CEO
SAP boasts a broad product portfolio led by its flagship S/4 HANA ERP application suite, along with CRM, HR and supply chain management applications and the Business Technology Platform. Rise with SAP, a set of software and services launched in 2021, manages cloud migration and business transformation initiatives.
ServiceNow
Bill McDermott
CEO
ServiceNow’s platform for managing digital workflows has become a critical component of many business process transformation initiatives. In 2021 ServiceNow expanded its capabilities with the acquisitions of Intellibot and Lightstep, and debuted OT management software for manufacturers.
Snowflake
Frank Slootman
Chairman, CEO
Snowflake’s data cloud platform has become central to many companies’ initiatives around data warehousing, data science and engineering, and dataintensive applications. Snowflake has more than 5,416 customers, including 223 Fortune 500 companies, with some spending more than $1 million a year on Snowflake services.
Starburst
Justin Borgman
Co-Founder, Chairman, CEO
Startup Starburst develops its data analytics platform built on the Trino SQL query engine. Galaxy, the cloud edition of the Starburst platform, can perform queries and data analytics tasks across widely distributed, multicloud systems—what some are calling the “data mesh.”
SumoLogic
Ramin Sayar
President, CEO
Sumo Logic’s machine datalog management and analysis platform is used for investigating issues in IT operations, cloud infrastructure and applications, security, DevOps observability and business analytics. AWS named Sumo Logic its ISV Partner of the Year for 2021.
ThoughtSpot
Sudheesh Nair
CEO
ThoughtSpot develops business intelligence tools, including its Modern Analytics Cloud, which emphasizes ease of use through AI, search and natural language capabilities. The company made a strategic pivot to the cloud in 2020 and in the last year annual recurring revenue from cloud products grew over 250 percent.
Yugabyte
Bill Cook
CEO
YugabyteDB is a distributed SQL database designed for running data-intensive transactional applications. In September Yugabyte, which has attracted $291 million in venture funding, launched Yugabyte Cloud, a fully managed Database as a Service for building new cloud-based applications and moving legacy applications to the cloud.
Zoho
Sridhar Vembu
CEO
Zoho started with its cloud-based CRM application and today offers a broad lineup of finance, sales, marketing, HR, help desk, business intelligence, email and collaboration SaaS applications. It markets its Zoho One package of more than 45 integrated applications as a complete operating system for small businesses.