The 10 Hottest Cloud Computing Startups Of 2018 (So Far)

From data management, to innovative retention and storage, to hybrid IT solutions, CRN rounded up 10 of the coolest cloud computing startups of 2018, so far.

Getting Cloudy

See the latest entry: The 10 Coolest Cloud Computing Startup Companies of 2022

In an ever-increasing sea of cloud startups, the companies that are standing out are adding value to hyperscale compute power. These startups are helping businesses embrace flexible, hybrid IT environments for running both existing and brand-new workloads, especially as new use cases, including those that harness IoT and AI, emerge onto the scene. At the same time, these cloud companies are also taking advantage of the power of the channel.

CRN rounded up ten of the hottest cloud startups of 2018…so far.

(For more on the biggest news of 2018, check out "CRN's Tech Midyear In Review.")

Accelerite

CEO: Nara Rajagopalan

Four-year-old Accelerite is making a name for itself by acquiring technologies from larger vendors and building on them to solve problems for customers. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company's portfolio includes Aepona, an API management platform acquired from Intel, and Rovius Cloud, a cloud-building platform derived from CloudPlatform from Citrix Systems. Accelerite in January began shipping Rovius Cloud pre-installed on validated Dell hardware, the startup's first integrated solution for private cloud deployment. Accelerite is a wholly owned business of software developer and IT services provider Persistent Systems.

Aparavi

Founder, Chairman: Adrian Knapp

Two-year-old Aparavi is a Santa Monica, Calif.-based startup that specializes in data retention between clouds, locations and platforms. Aparavi revealed its Aparavi Advantage Partner Program in June that gives resellers an opportunity to grow their monthly revenue by expanding their cloud service offerings and better help customers grapple with data management challenges.

appOrbit

Co-founder, CEO: Rahul Ravulur

Cloud startup AppOrbit came out of stealth mode last year with its application modernization platform geared for enterprises looking to avoid costly redevelopment projects. In March, the company launched the second iteration of its platform. The San Jose, Calif.-based startup was founded by VMware and IBM veterans in 2017.

Datos IO

Co-founder, CEO: Tarun Thakur

Datos IO, headquartered in San Jose, Calif., was acquired by Rubrick in February. The flagship product, Rubrik Datos IO offers an application-centric data management platform that can protect, mobilize, and monetize application data across private, hybrid and public cloud environments. The company, which was founded in 2014, partnered with cloud service provider Cloudera to provide data protection for big data in 2017. Datos IO also has worked with data storage provider Cloudian and Igneous Systems to protect object storage data, and last year revealed advanced recovery capabilities.

Elastifile

CEO: Erwan Menard

Elastifile, a startup founded in 2013, focuses on hybrid cloud solutions, particularly data management and unification across disparate locations and bringing it together locally. It's flagship distributed file storage technology, Elastifile Cloud File System, is a flash storage solution to help manage this data. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company was founded by Amir Aharoni, who served as CEO until June when former Scality President and COO Erwan Menard took over at the helm.

HyperGrid

Chairman, CEO: Nariman Teymourian

San Jose, Calif.-based HyperGrid is helping enterprises and MSPs looking to "cloudify" their IT environments, that is, manage workloads and applications across any public or private cloud. Founded in 2016, the company this year revealed new features for its HyperCloud platform, which include deeper integrations with public and private clouds, provisioning of container and big data services on bare metal, and a workload placement recommendation tool.

Minio

Co-Founder, CEO: Anand Babu Periasamy

Founded in 2014, Minio provides open-source object storage for cloud-native and containerized applications across all major public and private cloud provider platforms. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup secured $20 million in Series A funding jointly led by Dell Technologies Capital, General Catalyst Partners and Nexus Venture Partners in September. At the same time, the company launched its multi-cloud object storage solution, which brings Amazon S3 compatible object APIs to all cloud-native environments.

ParkMyCloud

Co-founder, CEO: Jay Chapel

Cloud management startup ParkMyCloud offers its flagship "SmartParking," product, which is a software as a service-based application that partners and businesses use to automate cloud usage and schedule downtime for unused compute resources deployed across Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and the Google Cloud Platform. Founded in 2015, the Dulles, Va.- based company expanded the scope of its cost management solution in June to include cost optimization platform enhancements for Microsoft Azure virtual machine scale sets and Google Cloud Platform managed instance groups.

SkyKick

Co-founders, Co-CEOs: Evan Richman and Todd Schwartz

Cloud management specialist SkyKick creates software for solution providers working with small-and-medium-size businesses to help them build a strategy around IT and cloud. SkyKick in May raised another $40 million that will go towards building more cloud migration solutions, and in June, the Seattle-based company revealed a series of enhancements to its Cloud Backup Suite for Microsoft Office 365.

Wasabi

CEO: David Friend

Cloud storage startup Wasabi Technologies offers an open cloud-based object storage service that is 100-percent compatible with the Amazon S3. The Boston-based company emerged from stealth mode in May, 2017, with a service that can store customers' data in its cloud six times faster than can be done using Amazon S3, and the company said that the service will cost one-fifth of S3's price. Wasabi and was created by Carbonite co-founders David Friend and Jeff Flowers.