The 20 Coolest Cloud Software Companies Of The 2023 Cloud 100
Here’s a look at 20 innovative software companies, from data analytics and machine learning startups to some of the industry’s most established cloud application vendors, that are driving the evolution of cloud software today.
The Coolest Cloud Software Companies
The shift to cloud-based software continues to accelerate as businesses and organizations 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.
The move to cloud software was already well-underway before the COVID-19 pandemic as businesses sought to reinvent themselves through digital transformation initiatives. The move to hybrid work practices and the need to provide work-from-home employees with the same IT they have in the office is another major catalyst.
Businesses and organizations are moving software of all types to cloud platforms, from operational applications such as ERP and CRM systems, collaboration and communications software, data management and analytics platforms, and AI and application development tools.
As part of CRN’s Coolest Cloud Computing Companies of 2023, 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.
Aparavi
Adrian Knapp
Founder, CEO
Unstructured data can account for up to 80 percent of an organization’s data— much of it hidden “dark data.” Aparavi has been gaining attention with its data intelligence and automation platform that identifies, classifies and optimizes unstructured data wherever it resides, helping businesses mitigate risk and reduce costs and storage.
Cloudera
Robert Bearden
CEO
Cloudera bills itself as a hybrid data company, providing its Cloudera Data Platform as the foundation for a range of data services including data analytics, data management and machine learning. In August Cloudera launched CDP One, a SaaS data lakehouse that enables self-service analytics and data science tasks.
Cockroach Labs
Spencer Kimball
CEO
Cockroach Labs is a standout among the wave of next-gen database systems. The company’s CockroachDB is a cloud-native, distributed SQL database that’s designed to handle application workloads with huge volumes of transactional data. The company has raised more than $633 million in funding since its 2015 founding.
Databricks
Ali Ghodsi
Co-Founder, CEO
Databricks is a leading proponent of the data lakehouse, a system that combines elements of traditional data warehouses and data lakes for a range of analysis, engineering, AI, machine learning and governance tasks. Databricks has been working with partners to develop vertical industry solutions around its Databricks Lakehouse Platform.
Dbt Labs
Tristan Handy
Founder, CEO
Startup Dbt Labs provides data transformation and analytics engineering software that works within cloud data warehouses to produce trusted data sets for data analytics and reporting, machine learning modeling and operational workflows. Its development framework combines modular SQL with software engineering best practices.
Drata
Adam Markowitz
Co-Founder, CEO
Drata provides a compliance automation platform that businesses use to ensure adherence to regulatory and security frameworks. The system automates compliance operations and evidence collection, using monitoring integrations across SaaS services to create a single, holistic view of a company’s security posture.
FinancialForce
Scott Brown
President, CEO
Financial Force said its cloud-native ERP and professional services applications provide a customer-centric view of a business’ operations. Its applications are built on Force.com, the Salesforce cloud platform. The FinancialForce portfolio includes cloud ERP software for accounting, billing and supply chain management.
Fivetran
George Fraser
CEO
As more data becomes increasingly scattered across cloud and on-premises systems, pulling it all together is a challenge. Fivetran’s automated data movement platform uses extract and load technology to centralize data, replicates it in databases and SaaS applications and performs integrated data transformations.
GitLab
Sid Sijbrandij
Co-Founder, Chair, CEO
GitLab’s DevSecOps platform is designed to shorten application cycle times, reduce development costs and improve productivity. It integrates the application development process from planning, coding and testing new software through the release, deployment and monitoring phases— all surrounded by a layer of security.
IGEL
Jed Ayres
President, CEO, IGEL North America
IGEL OS is a hardware agnostic, managed endpoint OS designed for secure access to any digital workspace, including VDI, Desktop as a Service and cloud workspaces. IGEL is driving to make the nextgen edge OS the standard for Windows workspace computing across any device or cloud.
Informatica
Amit Walia
CEO
Informatica is a longtime player in the data management and integration space and is continuing that role with its flagship Intelligent Data Management Cloud platform as more data—and more data operations— move to the cloud. Its portfolio includes tools for data management, quality, governance and transformation.
Intermedia
Michael Gold
CEO
Intermedia, a cloud communications company, offers a range of integrated collaboration and unified communications offerings including voice, videoconferencing, chat, contact center, business email, file sharing and archiving, and security. Channel-centric Intermedia sells its services through more than 7,200 partners.
Intuit
Sasan Goodarzi
CEO
Intuit’s QuickBooks are the operating backbone for many small businesses, including QuickBooks Online applications for managing income and expenses, invoices and more. The company is now also offering QuickBooks Commerce for managing omnichannel sales and is adding AI capabilities across its applications.
MongoDB
Dev Ittycheria
President, CEO
MongoDB has been gaining attention with its MongoDB Atlas multi-cloud database and developer data platform for building enterprise, data-centric applications. The company has established extensive alliances with the major cloud platform providers including Google Cloud, AWS and Microsoft Azure.
Salesforce
Marc Benioff
CEO
Salesforce has continued to expand its cloud reach through such blockbuster acquisitions as Tableau, MuleSoft and Slack that have extended its cloud portfolio. The recent launch of DevOps Center helps developers build, test and deploy custom apps on the Salesforce platform that tap into real-time customer data.
SAP
Christian Klein
CEO
SAP has been moving its customers to the cloud with such flagship products as the SAP S/4HANA Cloud suite of ERP applications, the SAP Business Technology Platform, and cloud applications for supply chain management, human capital management and CRM, among others.
ServiceNow
Bill McDermott
Chairman, CEO
As businesses undertake digital transformation initiatives, they often find that traditional software can be too inflexible. ServiceNow’s cloud computing platform is used to digitize, automate and manage siloed business processes and workflows, including processes for IT service operations.
Snowflake
Frank Slootman
Chairman, CEO
Snowflake has become a leading force in the data service provider space with its data cloud platform that businesses use to unite siloed data, discover and securely share it, and execute a range of analytic workloads. More recently the company has been expanding into data marketplaces, focusing on vertical industry solutions.
Starburst
Justin Borgman
Co-Founder, CEO
Starburst develops the Starburst Enterprise System — based on the Trino distributed query engine— that provides a way to perform analytics on data no matter where it resides. Its Galaxy cloud software performs cross-cloud query, ETL and business analytics tasks across data warehouses, data lakes and data lakehouses.
Tecton
Mike Del Balso
Co-Founder, CEO
Founded by the team who built Uber’s Michelangelo machine learning system, Tecton is a rising star in the machine learning space. The startup’s enterprise feature store platform enables data teams to build machine learning features using real-time data and quickly put them into production.