15 Cool Cloud Companies And Their Even Cooler Products

No Cloud Is An Island

Discussions about the cloud usually veer toward hyper-scale providers or popular Software-as-a-Service applications.

But there's a wave of innovative companies -- many startups, some longer in the tooth -- launching products that are reshaping the way business customers interact with and take advantage of their public and private cloud environments. They're making clouds more manageable, agile, visible, affordable, insightful and secure -- and easier to adopt.

Many of those vendors are aligned with established cloud providers and technologies -- some exclusively with an individual operator, others forging as many partnerships as they can to offer customers accessibility to the computing environments of their choice.

Here's a list CRN compiled of 15 cool cloud technology vendors and products.

CloudHealth

CloudHealth, based in Boston, provides a single, comprehensive view of an entire cloud ecosystem and enables policy-driven management and governance of heterogeneous computing resources.

The platform can define, manage and implement changes programmatically to optimize cost, availability and performance.

By streamlining cloud management, CloudHealth helps customers align their cloud operations with their business objectives.

SkyKick

SkyKick automates all aspects of Office 365 migration projects, from the technical heavy lifting involved with moving email systems and data to planning, software provisioning and customer communications. The SaaS product comes in two versions: one for small and medium-size businesses and the other for larger enterprises.

The Microsoft-aligned software developer based in Seattle added a data backup service and a cloud management portal this past summer to round out its product line.

CloudBolt

As all sorts of clouds and micro-services proliferate in the IT landscape, the market is heating up for cloud management platforms that can simplify provisioning and management of those often disparate technologies.

CloudBolt, a startup based in Campbell, Calif., helmed by Netscape veteran Jon Mittelhauser, positions itself in that space between the enterprise and its many on-premises and public cloud environments.

The platform was recently expanded to incorporate some of the latest, most disruptive technologies, including VMware's software-defined networking solution, Linux containers and three public cloud environments.

InsideSales

InsideSales, a Provo, Utah-based developer of predictive analytics tools to drive more effective sales interactions, recently made its machine learning algorithms and troves of contextual data available through a new cloud-based platform.

The software developer, backed by Salesforce.com and Microsoft, introduced Predictive Cloud -- new capabilities that enterprise customers, software developers and solution providers can leverage to create unique analytics functionality.

BitTitan

BitTitan, a Microsoft technology partner based in Kirkland, Wash., that has seen rapid adoption of its Office 365 migration tools, recently released a platform for MSPs to manage the entire life cycle of selling to, onboarding and servicing cloud customers.

MSPComplete starts with sales acceleration, takes partners through email and data migrations to the cloud, and then enables ongoing monitoring and management.

It's an end-to-end solution that helps providers keep connected to their existing customers and drive continuous solution sales rather than one-and-done deals.

Platform9

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Platform9, a startup co-founded by former VMware engineers, sells a cloud-based management platform that helps companies quickly deploy self-service OpenStack private clouds within their existing data center environments.

Platform9 takes a SaaS approach to handling OpenStack, offering a dashboard that enables visibility into infrastructure across compute, storage, network and existing workloads.

appFigures

App store intelligence platform appFigures, based in New York, is used by large Internet retailers and developers to understand how their apps are performing in online markets.

The appFigures platform compiles and reports metrics on downloads, revenue, returns, rankings and ratings across just about all of the major app stores, including those offered by Apple, Google and Microsoft.

AppDirect

AppDirect offers a platform solution providers can use to build self-branded SaaS marketplaces from which customers can select cloud applications and manage their portfolios.

The San Francisco-based developer provides guidance to its white-label resellers on selecting the apps they offer customers, sharing a selection of software developers that are creating best-in-class solutions for productivity, security, backup and storage, accounting, CRM and several other categories.

AppDirect recently purchased AppCarousel, a similar platform for Internet of Things-related software.

ZeroStack

ZeroStack, a startup based in Mountain View, Calif., is bringing to market an ultra-converged scalable system with a SaaS layer that includes management, operational intelligence and analytics tools.

The company's appliance architecture offers an easy, quick way to deploy an enterprise-grade private cloud. ZeroStack uses OpenStack as the management layer below its proprietary SaaS tools.

Cloud Cruiser

San Jose, Calif.-based Cloud Cruiser was founded six years ago to develop software helping businesses gain visibility of their cloud consumption, forecast future usage and compare costs across platforms to achieve and maintain balance between IT demand and supply.

With its recently released workflow templates, Cloud Cruiser can now help companies track in greater, more-granular detail how efficiently they're spending on public and private cloud resources.

The new package, CloudSmart-Now, works across the "Big 5" clouds: AWS, Microsoft Azure, the Windows Azure Pack private cloud, OpenStack and VMware.

Egenera

Egenera, a developer of software for provisioning and managing private clouds, recently released a wholesale cloud service called Xterity intended for channel partners to white label.

Xterity is a hosted version of Egenera's cloud management technology that MSPs and solution providers can design as they like, brand as their own and sell at the price they choose.

Based in Boxborough, Mass., Egenera tested its wholesale cloud model for a year in Ireland before bringing it to a wider market. Xterity has now been deployed in several Equinix data centers, leveraging the network-neutral hosting provider's advanced networking capabilities, security and global presence.

Tangoe

Tangoe, a Connection Lifecycle Management developer, offers a software suite for managing the lifecycle of enterprise telecom resources and helps customers optimize spending on all communications and IT infrastructure.

The Orange, Conn.-based company now offers a cloud discovery service as well.

MatrixCloud Cloud Discovery -- designed to detect, analyze and optimize an enterprise’s sanctioned and unsanctioned public cloud environment, including SaaS, PaaS and IaaS resources -- gives visibility into the actual cost of existing cloud deployments.

ComputeNext

Cloud service broker ComputeNext helps businesses, especially those involved in telecommunications, search, discover, procure and provision cloud infrastructure through a multi-cloud marketplace.

The Redmond, Wash.-based startup's Global Cloud Marketplace provides real-time access to any cloud service. The platform can be white labeled by IT resellers, distributors, telecoms and service providers.

ComputeNext has 40 IaaS providers in its market and many prominent SaaS vendors. Services can be added through a single API, making the platform highly scalable.

Jitterbit

Jitterbit envisions a world in which Oracle, SAP, Salesforce and Microsoft harmoniously coexist across enterprise networks, all generating data that seamlessly flows from one rival platform to another.

The Alameda, Calif.-based cloud integration vendor has spent more than a decade building out the connective tissue to unite those disparate enterprise solutions with each other, and with custom on-premises software, social networking platforms and a burgeoning number of Software-as-a-Service tools.

Jitterbit's APIs, visually managed through the Harmony cloud integration platform, act as the glue, linking everything on both sides of a firewall.

Itopia

The Miami-based workspace-as-a-service provider recently released a platform called Cielo that helps MSPs and VARs "forklift" their clients to the cloud.

The automated migration process allows the users to decide with a click of the mouse what resources they want hosted for them, and what they want to keep on-premises.

The often painstaking, labor-intensive process of discovery, provisioning desktops and applications, data migration and ongoing management is simplified into a job that can be done remotely in a far shorter period of time.