10 Best Companies In Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is a much talked topic in tech, at present. This technology is used by us everyday especially with activities like storing files and maintaining friendships. With powerful apps run by mobile and tablet devices via the cloud, the PC and the netbook world is on the verge of extinction.

Nowadays many companies have figured out on building clouds, which also have made them grow into a fully-fledged enterprise, dedicated for this massive technology called the cloud. So with that said, let us take a look at some of the most important companies in the world that are into cloud computing technology to their fullest as listed out by Business Insider.

#1 Amazon – the most important cloud player
There is no question regarding Amazon being the best cloud player. This is the firm that invented the IaaS market.
A company that was founded just to sell books suddenly turned itself into a spark which lead to so many changes in the IT industry including cloud computing- that’s Amazon for you.
This cloud firm cloud offers a huge list of choices. Right from a little bit of cloud storage for few pennies to a month by renting supercomputer-strength power for $5000 an hour.
Amazon is after the enterprise market, adding more security to its cloud and hiring sales people. It seems like it would never let VMware, Citrix or even OpenStack take enterprise customers without a fight!
Though we never thought that Amazon would do this much to our daily lives, today it is clear that Amazon has proved its competency, apart from being just an online retail site.

#2 VMware going deeper into all things

Till this year it was known that VMware did not offer cloud services at all. It only gave software called vCloud for building clouds.
VMware is one of the biggest players in the cloud software arena, with competitions against called OpenStack which is run by a group of vendors including IBM, Rackspace and HP.

However in March, there were some changes in VMware as it announced to launch its own public cloud. This could be interesting as VMware says that, about 200 service providers offer clouds built on vCloud, such as Verizon and CSC. Now it’s time for VMware to carefully compete against them.

#3 Microsoft is staking out its own turf

Microsoft has its own big enterprise cloud called Azure. This is a Platform as a Service cloud that is famous with many developers who write apps using the coding tool by Microsoft. Azure further took itself into the IaaS market by allowing users run Linux on its cloud and also promising to match Amazon’s low prices.
In addition Microsoft offers many of its enterprise apps over the cloud, right from its SQL Server database to Microsoft Office 365.

#4 Salesforce.com has proved it that enterprises really want the cloud

Salesforce.com almost equals itself to cloud computing and the firm has shown the world that it is the most reliable provider of SaaS (Software as a service).
In 2012, Salesforce went into many areas, spending more than $ 1 billion to acquire Radian6 and Buddy Media for its Marketing Cloud. In March, the firm raised another $1 billion debt to pay for more shopping.
For home-grown applications, the company has one of the most popular PaaS clouds.

#5 Google was ‘Born’ in the cloud

Lately, Google  made some big news in cloud computing. It introduced a popular Platform as a service (PaaS) called Google App Engine, offering Google Cloud Storage and released its new big data cloud app, GoogleBigQuery.
The search giant also made big waves in Cloud Computing by launching its own IaaS service, the Compute Engine last year.
Besides, Google possesses consumer and business cloud apps like Google Drive and Google Apps. Also assisting is the Chrome Operating System, Chromebook and Chromebox PC like devices  runs almost all the apps from the time cloud came in.

#6 Rackspace is leading a massive coalition for free cloud software

Rackspace has championed against OpenStack by running an Infrastructure as a service cloud (IaaS).
The company didn’t want to pay other firms like VMware for software it couldn’t handle. It therefore partnered with NASA after NASA invented some good cloud software. It had also invited other players who contribute code to make OpenStack work well and stay free.
Rackspace does not own OpenStack, but is one of the strongest companies in the  powerful cloud conglomerate.

#7 IBM – All in for OpenStack

IBM has been along with cloud tech OpenStack for a long time. In March the software giant’s stakes went up in a much bigger way.
As IBM said, it will use OpenStack for all clouds it builds, even adding its own public ‘smart clouds’ which it sells as service also taking every ‘private cloud’ into consideration, of which it installs for, in its enterprise customer’s data centres.
As IBM said, it will be using OpenStack for all clouds it builds, including every of single its own public ‘smart clouds ’which it sells as a service and its ‘private clouds’, installed within the data centers of IBM’s larger base of enterprise customers.
Gartner has also predicted that the Worldwide Cloud Services Market would surpass $206.6 billion market by 2016.

#8 Citrix System is taking on VMware with some success

Citrix offers software for clouds and it has two main rivals at hand. They are VMware and an association of vendors who have built an open source, free cloud operating system called OpenStack.
To show some competition to OpenStack, Citrix gave its software called CloudStack to Apache Foundation, a non-profit group that handles popular open source projects. This initiation helped people make a choice between buying VMware’s vCloud and OpenStack. Citrix has its own commercial version and referring people to CloudStack intends in helping Citrix sell more of its other data center software that holds competition with VMware.

#9 Joyent offers powerful low cost alternative for big data centers

Joyent is offering affordable cloud computing services to companies says it’s Co-founder Jason Hoffmann. The company is competing with its rivals namely VMware, OpenStack and Citrix in offering its own cloud computing services.
Joyent claims to have more than 30,000 customers which include big names like LinkedIn, Intel, Dell, EMC and Telefonica – a Spanish phone company. Facebook investor Peter Andreas Theil is also one of their major investors.

#10 SoftLayer Technologies – the key to success for two big players

IBM and EMC are reportedly said to be in a race for acquiring cloud computing company SoftLayer, which would go beyond $2 billion.
SoftLayer is the largest privately-held cloud computing and Web-hosting private service provider.
Looks like IBM is on the verge to ‘nab’ SoftLayer’s customers and data centers for its success. And if EMC buys the cloud computing company, it would be a great opportunity for its VMware systems. One of its biggest rivals, Citrix, is a big SoftLayer partner and customer.