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.