Cloud Vendors on the Rise 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.

Amazon Web Services (@awscloud) was the originator of IaaS in 2006 and is now the largest public cloud service provider. In 2019, AWS is looking to expand its dominance by offering new services and advancements in existing services for products such as Alexa for business, AWS Lambda, and high-memory instances for in-memory databases.

BMC (@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.

Cisco (@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.

Cloudflare (@Cloudflare) has provided CDN security services for nearly a decade. Most recently, the company introduced the Bandwidth Alliance -- a conglomerate of cloud-centric vendors formed with the purpose of significantly reducing cloud data transfer fee costs that limit the ability for businesses to further utilize cloud services. 

DataDog (@datadoghq) is a leader in the red-hot space of cloud monitoring and analytics platforms. The company recently announced a new cluster agent specifically designed to manage large Kubernetes container clusters.

Dynatrace (@Dynatrace) monitors cloud and application performance using artificial intelligence. The company recently announced further support for Microsoft Azure and Windows Server Containers platforms.

Google Cloud (@GoogleCloud) offers a suite of modular cloud services as well as a set of management tools. Google is at the forefront of artificial intelligence and machine learning (ML). Its Cloud AutoML gives developers a set of powerful tools to easily build custom ML models with limited expertise. 

Health Catalyst (@HealthCatalyst) is a data warehousing and business intelligence (BI) company focused on healthcare providers. The recent acquisition of Medicity, a population health BI company, will help Health Catalyst further refine its analytics toolset in the coming year.

HPE (@HPE) is looking to put some serious weight behind the Internet of Things revolution. The company’s Universal Internet of Things platform received a $4B investment in 2018. The industry-agnostic product promises to be a dominant force in enterprise IoT deployments in the coming months and years.

IBM (@IBMcloud) has carved out a nice niche in the cloud AI and ML spaces with its Watson platform. It’s also way ahead of the curve in helping customers implement cloud-based services that leverage blockchain technologies. One recently announced use case is IBM Food Trust -- a way to track food supply chains using blockchain for the purpose of improved freshness, safety and reduced waste in the perishable goods market.

Inrupt (@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. 

Microsoft (@azure) provides the Azure platform, which was originally launched as PaaS for Microsoft developers but later expanded into IaaS and SaaS. While still not nearly as large as AWS, Azure is experiencing consistent growth. Of notable interest for 2019 will be the Azure Machine Learning cloud data science platform, which offers tools to help businesses build advanced big-data machine learning fast and efficiently.

Netskope (@Netskope) is a trailblazer in cloud security. Of interest in 2019 will be the company’s newly launched Netskope for Web product, as well as feature integration from the acquisition of Sift security.

New Relic (@NewRelic) offers application performance monitoring SaaS solutions for apps that reside on-premises and in the cloud. The company recently acquired CoScale, a network monitoring platform specifically aimed at monitoring Kubernetes-orchestrated architectures.

Oracle Cloud (@OracleServCloud) offers IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS, including a full complement of business applications. Notable for 2019 will be the company’s IoT platform that allows customers to connect and manage IoT sensors in the cloud.

Red Hat (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.

Snowflake (@SnowflakeDB) burst onto the scene recently, raising $450 million in venture capital in its second round of funding in 2018. The company focuses on data warehousing built for big-data cloud deployments. Big data has gone through some struggles to return tangible business benefits, and Snowflake can potentially eliminate many of the pitfalls and hurdles.

Veeam (@Veeam) is a fast-growing data backup and disaster recovery company. As businesses continue to move apps and data into the cloud, many are looking looking to Veeam Cloud DRaaS services to allow them to protect both their on-premises and multi-cloud environments using a single platform.

VMware (@vmwarecloud) has shifted how it views itself when it comes to cloud computing. Abandoning previous service provider ambitions, the company is focused on providing the tools necessary to better manage cloud deployments. Specifically, VMware hopes to help customers eliminate the complexities of managing and automating a multi-cloud environment in 2019.

Learn about more hot vendors in our full Vendors to Watch package.

(Cover image: Andrey Prokhorov/iStockPhoto)