The 20 Coolest Cloud Infrastructure Vendors Of The 2018 Cloud 100
20 Coolest Cloud Infrastructure Vendors For 2018
In a world where hyper-scale, global cloud providers have ruled the roost, tier-two players with a local presence and differentiated managed services wrapped around their infrastructure offerings have been slowly but surely nipping at the heels of the market heavyweights.
Still, players such as AWS, Google, IBM and Microsoft continue to lead the way when it comes to market share.
Despite an increasingly crowded cloud infrastructure market, there's room for smaller players to make themselves known through unique, niche offerings, and a strong channel strategy as interest in cloud grows and more workloads are moved off-premises.
Amazon Web Services
Andy Jassy, CEO
Headquarters: Seattle
As one of the undisputed leaders in the public cloud space, AWS has been offering scalable and inexpensive cloud computing services for years. The cloud giant has also been getting more serious about its channel strategy. During AWS Re:Invent 2017, the cloud giant debuted 70 new products and services for customers and solution providers.
CenturyLink/Level 3
Glen Post, CEO
Headquarters: Monroe, La.
CenturyLink closed its $34 billion acquisition of Level 3 Communications in November, and the newly combined company is looking to differentiate itself from its telecom competition. The new CenturyLink, which is being led by a blend of legacy and Level 3 executives, plans on generating 75 percent of its core revenue from business customers.
DigitalOcean
Ben Uretsky, CEO
Headquarters: New York
Cloud platform company DigitalOcean focuses on cloud developers rather than business users. The result is features intended to reduce friction in the provisioning process and a very low-cost pricing model. In fact, DigitalOcean introduced new pricing at the beginning of 2018, lowing the cost of storage and RAM.
Evolve IP
Guy Fardone, CEO
Headquarters: Wayne, Pa.
Evolve IP specializes in contact center solutions, Disaster Recovery as a Service, and unified communications. The company has been working to expand overseas at the behest of its partner community, and it's doing so via organic and inorganic growth. Evolve IP's acquisition spree last year included four companies, such as secure cloud access provider ClearLogin.
Flexential
Christopher Downie, CEO
Headquarters: Charlotte, N.C.
Flexential, formerly known as Peak 10 + ViaWest, has been busy with integration work. East Coast-based Peak 10 closed its purchase of West Coast-based ViaWest in August, and the cloud provider rebranded itself to Flexential in January. The channel-focused cloud service provider has blended the two separate partner programs into one unified program for solution providers.
Sundar Pichai, CEO
Headquarters: Mountain View, Calif.
Google is making serious investments in its Google Cloud Platform. The internet giant said in January that it will continue to expand its infrastructure via three undersea cables that will go online and five new regions that will be lit up next year. Google also gained a new COO when former Intel executive Diane Bryant joined at the end of 2017.
Green Cloud Technologies
Keith Coker, CEO
Headquarters: Greenville, S.C.
Green Cloud Technologies' vast portfolio includes cloud, managed IT, and telecom services that can be sold via a white-label model exclusively through partners. In 2017, Green Cloud Technologies bought cloud service provider Cirrity in a deal that createdthe largest 100 percent channel-focused, independent, cloud services provider.
IBM
Ginni Rometty, CEO
Headquarters: Armonk, N.Y.
IBM gave the three leading cloud giants -- AWS, Google and Microsoft -- a run for their money in 2017 as the company shifted in favor of a ’cloud-first’ approach to the market. IBM's transformation has today led to the cloud accounting for about 21 percent of its total revenue.
Microsoft
Satya Nadella, CEO
Headquarters: Redmond, Wash.
Microsoft's cloud products, including its Azure public cloud offering and the ever-popular Office 365 product suite, continue to dominate in the crowded cloud market. In October, Nadella said Microsoft's commercial cloud business hit $20 billion in annualized revenue.
NTT Communications
Tetsuya Shoji, CEO
Headquarters: Tokyo
NTT Communications wears many hats. The global provider offers ICT services, including cloud, data center, connectivity, and security. NTT and its Dimension Data subsidiary in November said they would combine their cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service capabilities into a single global solution provider organization under NTT Communications.
Oracle
Safra Catz, Mark Hurd, Co-CEOs
Headquarters: Redwood City, Calif.
Tech giant Oracle brings to the table its integrated stack of cloud applications and platform services. The company has taken aim at public cloud leaders, such as AWS, as it has repeatedly promised to emerge as a top player in the cloud market, especially in the infrastructure and platform spaces.
OVH US
Russell Reeder, CEO
Headquarters: Reston, Va.
Market newcomer OVH US was founded in 2016 as a subsidiary of the France-based OVH Group, the largest European cloud hosting provider since 2011 with 26 data centers spanning four continents, according to the company. In 2017, OVH revealed its executive team, including naming a CEO and CFO, to lead its U.S.-based efforts.
PhoenixNAP
Ian McClarty, President
Headquarters: Phoenix
Global IT services provider PhoenixNAP focuses on ’progressive’ IaaS offerings, such as cloud and bare-metal dedicated server solutions, according to the company. PhoenixNap in 2017 boosted its network security via an updated Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) mitigation solution.
ProfitBricks
Achim Weiss, CEO
Headquarters: Cambridge, Mass.
Channel-focused IaaS provider ProfitBricks is helping solution providers transition to recurring revenue via its flexible licensing model. The provider also isn't a stranger to working with fellow providers. ProfitBricks in 2017 worked with Workspace as a Service provider CloudJumper to allow CloudJumper partners to build competitive WaaS and cloud application delivery solutions on ProfitBricks infrastructure.
Rackspace
Joe Eazor, CEO
Headquarters: Windcrest, Texas
Rackspace has carved out a space for itself in the cloud hosting and managed services market, and is known for its channel-friendly roots. As of today, the provider is among the largest AWS managed services providers. Privately held Rackspace named Eazor its new CEO in May.
RapidScale
Randy Jeter, CEO
Headquarters: Irvine, Calif.
Channel-exclusive cloud service provider RapidScale spent 2017 adding new hires, including a national partner director, to its roster. RapidScale in 2017 acquired VoIP service provider Vonage's hosted infrastructure services business, giving partners access to another DaaS model -- VMware's Horizon, in addition to RapidScale's Citrix DaaS offering.
Skytap
Thor Culverhouse, CEO
Headquarters: Seattle
Privately held Skytap, which was founded under the name Illumita in 2006, offers self-service access to its own cloud environment that Fortune 500 companies can use to test and run their enterprise applications. Last year, the company raised $45 million in a Series E funding round led by Goldman Sachs Private Capital Investing.
Spectrum (NaviSite)
Thomas Rutledge, CEO
Headquarters: Stamford, Conn.
NaviSite, the cloud service provider owned by cable giant Spectrum, is continuing to go big with solution providers with its combined connectivity and cloud bundled offerings for business customers. Specifically, NaviSite is helping partners resell and support Microsoft Office 365. Today, NaviSite is within the top 10 percent of Microsoft's Cloud Solution Provide program.
TierPoint
Jerald Kent, CEO
Headquarters: St. Louis
TierPoint, a channel-friendly cloud provider and data center operator, has been actively investing in the data center space both through organic and inorganic growth for the past several years. TierPoint said in January that it would be investing $13 million in expanding its data center located in Hawthorne, N.Y.
Virtustream
Rodney Rogers, CEO
Headquarters: Bethesda, Md.
Virtustream, which was bought by EMC in 2015, offers cloud management software for private, public and hybrid cloud environments for enterprises, governments and service providers. Dell, which has owned EMC since 2016, still backs the cloud provider and has kept Virtustream running as a business unit within Dell.