Cloud Vendors on the Rise in 2019 – InformationWeek

The largest cloud providers may be familiar names, but their offerings are changing and the cloud marketplace is rapidly evolving. Browse our list of cloud vendors to watch in 2019.

When it comes to cloud computing trends, little remains the same from one year to the next. For the well-established cloud providers, that means growing service portfolios. For cloud upstarts, the market is more volatile.

The opportunity is vast. In 2019, top technology predictions include fields such as artificial intelligence (AI), IT security, quantum computing, Internet of Things (IoT) and container and multi-cloud management. These fields include technology that is commonly built and managed inside cloud environments.

There are more cloud products and services than ever before, and that means more vendors to consider. We’ve compiled a list of top cloud vendors on the rise to help you narrow the choices. Included you’ll see big-name cloud service providers such as Amazon, Microsoft and IBM. That said, we did not include these companies simply because they dominate one or more cloud segments. Even the biggest cloud providers must either innovate or die, and we’ll point out new cloud trends and technologies these providers are adding to their already massive portfolios of services.

You may be less familiar with some of the other vendors on the watch list. These companies are included because they’re working on brand new innovations that can disrupt the cloud computing space. and enterprise IT in general. This includes trailblazing into emerging fields of AI, blockchain, multi-cloud, and cloud storage.

Top cloud vendors in 2019

With that in mind, here, in alphabetical order, is our list of the top 20 cloud vendors to keep an eye on for 2019. Check out the hot vendors in other segments of IT in our full Vendors to Watch package.

(@BMCSoftware) offers a suite of management tools that provide monitoring, security, automation, and cost control for multi-cloud environments. Specifically, the Helix multi-cloud management platform should be of specific interest for businesses looking to gain advantage with multi-cloud architectures.

(@CiscoCloud) has continued its shift away from hardware to software and cloud licensing. The Cisco Meraki product line of cloud-managed networking gear continues to explode. Also, the merging of Cisco Spark and WebEx, rebranded as WebEx Teams, shows a glimpse of where unified collaboration is headed in the coming years.

(@Inrupt_Inc) burst onto the scene in late 2018 announcing its goal to “help drive the next stage of the web.” To do so, the company is promoting the open-source Solid platform as a way for people to keep their personal data separate from online apps. Users place their private information in a personal online data store (POD) and permit/deny access to web services on an as-needed basis. The potential for improved online security and cloud-service integrations is enormous.

(IBM) @RedHatNews) is a prominent name in open source cloud computing, and just last week IBM announced its intention to buy it. The company’s OpenShift container application platform is particularly hot right now. Developers are looking at OpenShift combined with a PaaS to speed up application delivery time and elasticity.

RightScale (Flexera) (@rightscale) offers a cloud management platform as well as a product that tracks cloud usage and cost. What makes RightScale one to watch in 2019 is the fact that it were recently acquired by Flexera, an IT asset management company. Flexera has been on an acquisition tear, also picking up Meta SaaS and Brainwaregroup this year. It will be interesting to see what Flexera has in store for the RightScale platform in the new year.

Learn about more hot vendors in our full(Cover image: Andrey Prokhorov/iStockPhoto) Vendors to Watchpackage.

Andrew has well over a decade of enterprise networking under his belt through his consulting practice, which specializes in enterprise network architectures and datacenter build-outs and prior experience at organizations such as State Farm Insurance, United Airlines and the … View Full Bio

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