The 20 Coolest Cloud Infrastructure Companies Of The 2023 Cloud 100
CRN breaks down the 20 of the most important and influential cloud infrastructure companies of 2023—from Dell, HPE and VMware to AWS, Red Hat and Google.
Cloud infrastructure powers public, private and hybrid cloud environments with hundreds of billions of dollars up for grabs as more and more businesses migrate to the cloud.
IT research firm Gartner is expecting total end-user spending on public cloud services alone to reach a record $592 billion in 2023.
“Cloud migration is not stopping,” said Sid Nag, vice president and analyst at Gartner in November.
Many of the largest technology companies in the world—from Amazon Web Services and Google to Huawei and Alibaba—are investing heavily in cloud infrastructure to power businesses of all shapes and sizes.
These companies provide cloud computing infrastructure, such as servers, networking and storage hardware, to customers in a Opex, consumption-based or as-a-service model.
Cloud Infrastructure Market Leaders
There are various forms of cloud infrastructure market leaders, from hardware titans Dell Technologies, HPE and Cisco Systems, to cloud services leaders Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Google Cloud, as well as companies like data center provider Digital Realty and cloud software star VMware.
In the U.S. alone, cloud infrastructure services reached $84 billion from third-quarter 2021 to third-quarter 2022, according to IT research firm Synergy Research Group.
“U.S. spending on cloud services is now approaching a $100 billion annual run rate and continues to grow by 30 percent per year, which is pretty unusual for such a large IT market,” said John Dinsdale, a chief analyst at Synergy Research Group. “This helps to underpin Synergy’s cloud forecasts, which continue to show strong growth over the next five years.”
Powered by cloud infrastructure, research firm Gartner predicts that enterprise IT spending on cloud computing will overtake spending on traditional IT by 2025 within the massive infrastructure software, business process services, application software and infrastructure markets.
As part of CRN’s 2023 Cloud 100, here are the 20 companies leading the cloud infrastructure market in 2023.
Amazon Web Services
Adam Selipsky
CEO
AWS is pouring billions of dol lars into its ever-growing cloud infrastructure footprint on a worldwide basis. The cloud market leader launched new AWS Cloud Regions and data centers in Switzerland, Spain and inside the U.S. last year, with more investments on the horizon for 2023.
Cisco Systems
Chuck Robbins
Chair, CEO
While Cisco’s hardware powers vast amounts of cloud infrastructure, its portfolio of cloud software for networking, security and application management is elevating the company. Cisco and T-Mobile recently launched the world’s largest cloud-native 5G core gateway to boost performance for customers.
Dell Technologies
Michael Dell
Founder, Chairman, CEO
Dell is a leading provider of servers and storage hardware to power cloud infrastructure. It is now doubling down on delivering cloud as a service with offering such as Apex Cloud Services, which provides hybrid or private cloud infrastructure with integrated compute, storage, networking and virtualization resources.
Digital Realty
Andrew Power
CEO
One of the largest datacenter providers worldwide, Digital Realty delivers colocation offerings for cloud infrastructure. The company also provides cloud and hybrid offerings to enable customers to get a mix of cloud-enabled and privately supported applications to meet all cloud connection needs.
Element Critical
Ken Parent
CEO
Element Critical’s U.S. datacenters bring to life cloud infrastructure and hybrid cloud strategies. Whether it’s for AWS, Microsoft Azure, Oracle or Google Cloud, the company’s EC Cloud Connect delivers direct, private and multi-cloud access with provisioning in minutes.
Flexential
Chris Downie
CEO
Flexential, a data center cloud infrastructure provider, has a wide range of cloud offerings to solve complex IT challenges around private, public and hybrid cloud. The Flexential Cloud Fabric gives customers secure, low-latency connections to cloud providers such as AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.
Google Cloud
Thomas Kurian
CEO
Google Cloud invests billions of dollars each year in cloud infrastructure across the globe by opening new Cloud Regions with the goal of increasing its market share. In 2022, Google Cloud entered new markets abroad at a fierce pace, including in Malaysia, Thailand and New Zealand.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Antonio Neri
President, CEO
HPE is a top provider of servers, networking and storage hardware for cloud infrastructure. The HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform offers Infrastructure as a Service, and the company also introduced new capabilities for HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud Enterprise, which offers a private cloud with a public cloud experience.
IBM
Arvind Krishna
Chairman, CEO
The IBM Cloud portfolio offers a full-stack c l o u d plat form with over 170 products and services— from AI and IoT to containers and blockchain. The IBM Cloud platform combines Platform as a Service and Infrastructure as a Service for public, hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
Lenovo
Yang Yuanqing
Chairman, CEO
Lenovo offers cloud infrastructure via its server, storage and networking hardware portfolio. Its aim is to accelerate customers’ cloud transformation by delivering end-to-end cloud life-cycle management. Lenovo also provides cloud infrastructure as a service via its TruScale Infrastructure Services.
Lumen Technologies
Kate Johnson
President, CEO
Lumen enables customers to connect to and deploy multiple public or private clouds within a single hybrid cloud platform. It also offers cloud storage and networking infrastructure and has a global data center footprint. In November, the company hired former Microsoft executive Johnson as its new president and CEO.
Microsoft
Satya Nadella
Chairman, CEO
Microsoft spends billions of dollars annually expanding its cloud infrastructure reach by launching new Cloud Regions and data centers on a global basis. The software and cloud giant’s Intelligent Cloud segment generated $20.3 billion in revenue during its first fiscal quarter 2023, as Azure sales increased 35 percent year over year.
Nutanix
Rajiv Ramaswami
President, CEO
The Nutanix Cloud Platform lets customers run any application at scale via its software-defined cloud. Compute, storage, virtualization and networking are hyperconverged and driven by software on the platform. Nutanix software also is integrated with hardware platforms from HPE, Cisco and Intel.
Oracle
Safra Catz
CEO
Oracle calls its Oracle Cloud Infrastructure the next-generation cloud designed to run any application faster and more securely for a less expensive price tag. The company is investing in opening new cloud regions to expand its cloud infrastructure footprint while forming deeper partnerships with Microsoft and Nvidia.
Rackspace Technology
Amar Maletira
CEO
Rackspace’s RackConnect Global offering creates a VPN with access to popular cloud infrastructure, while Rackspace Fabric offers a single platform for automated cloud services. The company specializes in securing, adopting and managing cloud infrastructure and provides about 40 colocation data centers.
Red Hat
Matt Hicks
President, CEO
Red Hat is a leader in open-source solutions for any application on any cloud. From Red Hat OpenShift for Kubernetes to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the company can automate, secure and manage hybrid cloud, multi-cloud and edge environments. Red Hat also has integrations with AWS, Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud and Google Cloud.
Scale Computing
Jeff Ready
Founder, CEO
The Scale Computing Platform for hyperconverged infrastructure delivers scalability and availability for autonomously running applications, including in the cloud. The company partnered with Google to extend to the cloud with SC//Platform Cloud Unity, a hybrid cloud offering to make it easy to move workloads freely in the cloud or on-premises.
SoftIron
Phil Straw
Co-Founder, CEO
SoftIron’s HyperCloud enables IT generalists to build and operate sophisticated hybrid or multi-cloud infrastructure. HyperCloud’s modular nature—combined with the simplicity in adding new compute and storage resources and secure multitenancy capabilities— means the cloud fabric can be scaled up or down to eliminate overprovisioning.
TierPoint
Jerry Kent
Chairman, CEO
Data center provider TierPoint offers a slew of cloud services, from cloud disaster recovery and big data analytics to managed private cloud and cloud licensing optimization. TierPoint also delivers cloud connectivity and high-performance on-ramps between its data centers and public clouds.
VMware
Raghu Raghuram
CEO
VMware’s software and integrated cloud hardware lets customers build, connect and protect applications on any cloud. VMware Cloud Foundation combines hyperconverged infrastructure, an enterprise-ready Kubernetes environment and cloud services to transform on-premises deployments into SaaS-enabled infrastructure.