85 Cloud Computing Vendors Shaping the Emerging Cloud: Page 7

65) Parallels
Parallels is really a virtualization company, but without server virtualization, the economics of cloud computing don’t add up. At first glance, Parallels occupies a dangerous market space. VMware, Citrix, Microsoft and now Oracle (through the Sun acquisition) all have deeper pockets, wider channels and a far greater number of entrenched customers than Parallels, making Parallels a long shot to make it in the virtualization market.

The company has gained a bit of traction by beating competitors to market with a desktop virtualization solution for Mac – probably not viable as a long-term strategy, but it certainly buys them time. They’re also doing well with Windows and Linux desktop virtualization, but the competition there is getting stiffer by the minute.

Moving beyond virtualization, though, Parallels has a pretty compelling cloud vision. As they see it, there are five types of clouds emerging as the space matures. The first three are all proprietary platforms, represented by Google, Microsoft, Amazon and other large players. Type 4, channel clouds of services providers, and Type 5, private clouds, are where Parallels says it will stake its claim.

For service providers, Parallels offers typical cloud services, such as application development, deployment and management tools. For internal clouds, the company offers various data center automation tools.

Notable: Parallels’ history is an odd one. It was secretly acquired by virtualization software maker SWsoft in 2004. Since then, the acquiring company has been absorbed into the acquired, and the SWsoft name has been dropped and its technology rolled into the Parallels product suite. Investors include Insight Venture Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners and Intel Capital.

The company claims 10 million “customer end users” in 125 countries and recently launched a cloud-computing sales push into the Asia-Pacific region by opening offices in Australia and South Korea, adding to existing ones in China, Japan, India and Singapore.

66) GigaSpaces
GigaSpaces's PaaS offering is based on GigaSpaces XAP (eXteme Application Platform) and Amazon EC2. Like the other products in this category, its goal is to make it easier for enterprises to move applications to the cloud or to develop applications in the cloud, including Web apps based on Java EE, Spring Framework, Jetty, or Glassfish. The company claims the product saves customers money by reducing machine hours, bandwidth, and storage while eliminating the need for other cloud computing products.

Notable: Last year, GigaSpaces was ranked as the third fastest-growing technology company in Israel. Its customers include Dow Jones, Gallup, and Virgin Mobile.

67) Rackspace
Rackspace started out in 1998 offering data center services, such as dedicated server hosting and storage. As with many other hosting providers, Rackspace has moved into the cloud space. Unlike the herd rushing into cloud computing now, though, Rackspace was an early mover.

In April, the company named Chief Strategy Officer Lew Moorman as President of the company’s cloud business, signaling just how important cloud computing is to Rackspace’s future roadmap.

The Rackspace Cloud suite offers access to virtual servers, an application and website building service and a storage service. To broaden its appeal to the developer community, the company has just released the “Cloud Servers API,” an open source API that allows users to create, configure and control Rackspace Cloud Servers from within their own applications.

Notable: Rackspace customers include a number of startups and online companies, as well as Radio Flyer and Razorfish.

68) Hyperic/Spring Source
A purveyor of multiple system monitoring and management tools, Hyperic offers three separate solutions for monitoring cloud resources. CloudStatus, still in Beta, provides real-time and weekly reports of activity for companies using the most popular cloud service providers, including Amazon Web Services and Google Apps Engine. Hyperic HQ gives companies a unified view of activity on both cloud and internal resources, and Hyperic HQ for AWS allows enterprises to access a Hyperic HQ instance through Amazon Web Services.

Although it still uses the Hyperic name, the company was recently acquired by Spring Source.

Notable: Hyperic monitors some of the world's largest Web applications, including those run by CNET, Yahoo, and Comcast.

69) Intuit
With a ten-year history, Intuit's QuickBase online database is something of an elder statesman in the world of cloud computing. It's hardly Intuit's only foray into cloud computing though. They also offer cloud-based versions of the QuickBooks small business accounting software, Quicken personal finance software, TurboTax tax software, and other less well-known packages for payroll, healthcare expense tracking, real estate management, and more.

In June, Intuit announced a new which will allow other software developers to market SaaS offerings to Intuit small business customers through the Intuit workplace.

Notable: Last year, Intuit was named one of America's most admired companies.

70) RightScale
RightScale’s cloud management platform helps customers manage the IT processes that used to be in their data centers but are now out there somewhere in the cloud. The platform does such things as set up server clones, load balance them, monitor for and report errors and perform automated backups.

In April, the company rolled out additional features that allow customers to manage both applications hosted in public clouds as well as resources within their own private clouds from a single management interface.

The company landed a $13 million second round of VC funding this past December. Index Ventures led the round, which was joined by Benchmark Capital, which funded the company’s $4.5 million first round.

Notable: RightScale was founded by Michael Crandell, CEO, Thorsten von Eicken, CTO, and Rafael H. Saavedra, VP of Engineering. Crandell previously served as CEO of several SaaS companies and EVP of eFax.com. von Eicken was formerly founder and Chief Architect of Expertcity (which was acquired by Citrix Online) where he directed the architecture of GoToMeeting. Saavedra was previously Director of Software Development at Expertcity.

71) CloudTest/Soasta
Web 2.0 applications can be notoriously difficult to troubleshoot. Soasta's CloudTest addresses that problem by providing affordable load, performance, functional, and UI/Ajax testing capabilities that simulate real world scenarios. It supports all of the most commonly used browsers and the most common protocols (Soap, Http(S), Html, Ajax, etc.) While it was originally "built on the Cloud to Test inside the Cloud," CloudTest is also available as a standalone appliance for testing behind your firewall.

Notable: Intuit used CloudTest to make sure its TurboTax Online service would perform as anticipated even with the peak loads of April 14 and 15. And Activision successfully used the product to test the Guitar Hero III site before the 2007 holiday season.

72) Mashery
A core concept in cloud computing is the Application Programming Interface, or API. Companies that allow access to their Web applications – say, for instance, to developers or clients – do so through an API, which is a portal to the infrastructure.

Mashery, founded in 2006, has built its business on the centrality of the API. The San Francisco-based company provides a SaaS infrastructure for supporting a firm’s API. Its management and monitoring tool allows a company to control details like who has access to its data via an API. Among other advantages, this enables businesses to form Web-based partnership with other online businesses – which is the core of cloud computing.

Mashery has garnered an impressive customer list, including Alcatel-Lucent, Hoovers, Netflix and Best Buy.

Notable: Mashery’s management team – here’s their blog – includes Oren Michels, CEO, who was president of Colt HR and Winebid.com; and Ajay Arora, VP of strategy and services, who held executive positions at newScale and Centrata. Mashery has so far raised $2 million in venture funding.

Other players in the API management sector include Sonoa Systems and 3scale.

73) CloudWorks
CloudWorks began life as a sort of outsourced IT department for small- and medium-sized businesses. Now in addition to providing helpdesk services, CloudWorks also hosts its clients' desktops, servers, software, files, email, backups, etc. Clients simply log in to the Web-based service from any browser on a Mac or PC. Prices start at $45/month.

CloudWorks is particularly appropriate for businesses that have a number of salespeople who frequently work from the road or a large percentage of telecommuters. In fact, CloudWorks’ own staff uses the service to perform their jobs every day.

Notable: CloudWorks lists Citrix, Cisco Systems, Microsoft, and Dell as its technology partners.

74) Skytap
Skytap offers “cloud-based virtual labs.” Skytap’s stated goal is to “make serving up virtual machines over the internet as ubiquitous as delivering html to a browser.”

Skytap Virtual Lab provides users with self-service provisioning of virtual servers, storage and network bandwidth. Tools allow for automated set-up and tear-down of application environments, along with quality assurance, IT operations testing and automated replication services.

Skytap also offers a software library that contains major operating systems, databases and IT- and business-related software.

Founded in 2006, the company closed a $7 million series B round of funding in March. The second-round funding from Ignition Partners, Madrona Venture Group and Washington Research Foundation brings the total raised to date to $13 million.

Customers include WildBlue, Acresso Software, Ellie Mae and Oracle.

Notable: Skytap is headed by CEO Scott Roza, who was formerly VP of worldwide OEM and channel sales for HP/Opsware’s Business Service Automation business unit. John Janakiraman, VP of Engineering and CTO, was also previously with HP, where he was the research manager for the Data Center Architecture team at HP Labs. Matt Perrine, VP of Sales and Business Development, was formerly EVP of Worldwide Sales at Asempra, an early stage start-up; before that he served as EMC’s first VP of Sales for its Open Software Division.

75) AppZero
Unlike more traditional virtualization approaches, AppZero de-couples applications from the underlying operating system so that it is easier to move them from one server to another, which is especially helpful in a cloud computing environment. It calls this technology a Virtual Application Appliance or VAA.

Notable: Recently, AppZero and cloud computing hosting provider GoGrid announced a partnership that encourages enterprises to use AppZero VAAs to simplify the process of moving applications to the GoGrid cloud. And in April, Gartner listed AppZero as one of the Cool Vendors in Cloud Computing."

Next Page: More cloud computing vendors, Appistry, Joyent, CloudScale, Enki...