The 10 Coolest Cloud Startups Of 2017

Increasing Clouds

The cloud has evolved to include a wide swath of companies offering everything from migration between public cloud and premises-based environments, to vertical-focused solutions, such as governance and policy management for finance and health-care companies. And as more businesses embrace hybrid IT environments, the opportunities around cloud for solution providers is only growing.

Even with a market crowded with monster public cloud providers, there's still room for newcomers putting their own twist on cloud services. Here are the 10 coolest cloud startups of 2017.

Get more of CRN's 2017 tech year in review.

Accelerite

CEO: Nara Rajagopalan

Accelerite, based in Santa Clara, Calif., is making a name for itself by acquiring technologies from larger vendors and building on them solve problems for customers. Accelerite's portfolio includes Radia, an endpoint security product originally purchased from Hewlett-Packard, Aepona, an API management platform acquired from Intel, and most recently, Rovius Cloud, a cloud-building platform derived from CloudPlatform from Citrix Systems.

Founded in 2014, Accelerite is a wholly owned business of software developer and IT services provider Persistent Systems.

Aparavi

Founder, Chairman: Adrian Knapp

Aparavi, a Santa Monica, Calif.-based startup, is brand-new to the cloud scene having got its start in 2016. The cloud newcomer specializes in data retention between clouds, locations and platforms. In October, Aparavi launched its SaaS-based tool for hybrid environments. The offering lets businesses protect data stored across multiple clouds and on-premises by addressing the common concerns such as cost, vendor lock, complexity and compliance requirements.

CloudHealth Technologies

Founder, CTO: Joe Kinsella

Based in Boston, CloudHealth got its start in 2012 launching policy management tools for Amazon Web Services. Since then, the startup has integrated its cost management, governance, automation, security, and performance tools within Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, and VMware and OpenStack environments.

In November, CloudHealth revealed its next-generation policy engine for governing cloud infrastructure through the CloudHealth platform for business users. The company is backed by Kleiner Perkins, Meritech, Sapphire Ventures, Scale Venture Partners, .406 Ventures and Sigma Prime Ventures.

Cloudistics

Founder, CEO: Najaf Husain

Cloudistics was founded in 2013 by a team from Dell who wanted to enable simple enterprise cloud computing that would be faster and more affordable than traditional virtualized infrastructure. Today, the Reston, Va.-based company's technology converges network, storage, compute, virtualization and management into a single platform that acts as a public cloud experience with composable on-premises infrastructures to medium and large enterprises.

In 2016, Cloudistics raised Series A funding from Bain Capital Ventures. Cloudistics in June launched a partner program for MSPs, and in November, the company formally unveiled a channel program targeting VARs, systems integrators and ISVs.

CloudVelox

CEO: Raj Dhingra

CloudVelox specializes in automated cloud migration and disaster recovery software for deploying legacy applications to public clouds such as AWS. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based startup in August made its One Hybrid Cloud solution available to VMware Cloud customers on AWS, which combines VMware's Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) software and AWS' bare-metal infrastructure for increased application mobility for private and public cloud.

Elastifile

Co-Founder, CEO: Amir Aharoni

Founded in 2013, Elastifle is heads-down focused on enabling hybrid cloud solutions. The company relies on its distributed file storage technology, Elastifile Cloud File System, a software-defined, flash-native solution, to unite data across multiple locations and manage data as if it was stored locally.

Elastifile announced its support for AWS environments in November, and revealed that it has become certified as an Amazon Partner Network Technology Partner.

Itopia

Co-Founder, CEO: Jonathan Lieberman

Itopia, a Workspace-as-a-Service provider, got its start in 2012. The Miami-based company offers Cloud Workspace, which delivers desktops, applications, and a business' entire IT systems as a secure cloud service that can be white-labeled by partners. The company also offers CIELO, an automation platform for discovery, provisioning, migration, management and billing.

Itopia does 100 percent of its business through channel partners. In March, the company announced that it was Google's first WaaS partner for the Google Cloud platform.

Minio

Co-Founder, CEO: Anand Babu Periasamy

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

Nerdio

Founder, CEO: Vadim Vladimirskiy

Nerdio, a spinoff of Adar IT, is offering a virtual IT solution made for SMBs and the channel partners that support them. The Skokie, Ill. -based provider offers an IT-as-a-Service solution that partners can white-label for their own customers. In June, the company rolled out Nerdio for Azure, a cloud IT automation technology that partners and businesses can use to easily provision and manage IT environments on Microsoft's cloud platform.

Nimble CRM

CEO: Jon Ferrara

Nimble CRM seeks to make use of the data that already exists within a user's email, contact lists, calendars and social networks. Nimble CRM's software integrates social, sales and marketing platforms with Google G-Suite and Microsoft Office 365.

Santa Monica, Calif.-based Nimble CRM in November introduced Nimble Contact, a relationship manager for users and their teams that combines company contacts from Microsoft Office 365, G-Suite, and social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Nimble also has its own channel program and sells its offerings through partners.