The Coolest Cloud Startups Of 2012 (So Far)

Emerging Clouds

Inspired first with an idea and then spurred on with investment capital, cloud innovators emerged so far this year with a wealth of new products and services they think will offer can't-do-without improvements in cloud computing.

From refinements to Infrastructure-as-a-Service models to more interactive cloud marketplaces, these cloud startups' CEOs offer new, and they think better, ways to work in the cloud.

Continue on and check out the cool new cloud startups.

BetterCloud

CEO: David Politis

New York-based BetterCloud, which offers management and security tools for Google Apps users, launched earlier this year and quickly received $2.2 million in funding from CEO David Politis himself and unnamed venture capital investors.

In February, BetterCloud released DomainWatch, a Google Apps security tool for domain administration management capabilities. The company has recently begun a beta release of FlashPanel, its Google Apps management tool.

To expand its reach, BetterCloud in July created a Preferred Partners program, with 11 Google Apps resellers already participating, including DoIT, Master Concept, SIOS, Viwo, L Tech, Sheepdog, Excel Micro, Cloud Sherpas, Cloud Technology Solutions, Orion Solutions and Damson Cloud.

CliQr Technologies

CEO: Gaurav Manglik

CliQr Technologies just unveiled a cloud application management platform called CloudCenter, designed to migrate and manage applications on private, public or hybrid clouds.

CliQr, Palo Alto, Calif., emerged from stealth mode in January with $1 million in seed funding from Google Ventures and Foundation Capital.

The startup uses orchestration software to allow different applications to work with different clouds without either having to be modified.

Garantia Data

CEO: Ofer Bengal

Garantia Data in June released a beta version of its automated, in-memory NoSQL cloud service, which offers Memcached, a distributed memory caching system, and Redis, an open-source, networked, in-memory, data store system.

Israel-based Garantia Data's technology virtualizes multiple cloud servers, allowing data sets to scale autonomously from Gigabytes to Terabytes and even Petabytes.

AppDirect

Co-CEOs: Nicolas Desmarais (left) and Daniel Saks

AppDirect's cloud platform offers a management system for service providers to run cloud service marketplaces that connect businesses, brands and developers.

San Francisco-based AppDirect, which raised $8.5 million in venture funding in July, now powers the marketplaces of companies such as Deutsche Telekom, Bell Canada and Appcelerator.

AppDirect recently inked a deal with Rackspace to power the Rackspace Cloud Tools Marketplace.

Atlantis Computing

CEO: Bernard Harguindeguy

Atlantis Computing has emerged as a provider of storage optimization software for virtual servers and desktops.

In July it released Atlantis ILIO FlexCloud 1.0, storage software that lets enterprises and service providers manage storage-intensive virtualized server and cloud applications such as databases, big data and custom enterprise applications. The product integrates with virtualization solutions from Citrix, Microsoft and VMware.

Atlantis Computing is privately held and funded by El Dorado Ventures, Partech International and Cisco Systems with headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., and offices in London, England.

ProfitBricks

CEO: Achim Weiss

ProfitBricks is making waves with a new cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service platform it says offers better performance at a lower cost than current cloud platform providers by allowing users to change their virtual servers and network infrastructure at any time. With ProfitBricks Data Center Designer, no predefined plans or configurations are required and users can scale their virtual data centers.

In addition, ProfitBricks' Live Vertical Scaling lets users set up their data centers to adapt to their infrastructure needs by adding processor cores without restarting their virtual servers and environments. The startup has offices in Berlin and Boston.

CumuLogic

CEO: Mike Soby

CumuLogic in July released its CumuLogic Cloud Application Platform v1.0 to allow cloud service providers to build a Platform-as-a-Service to deploy Java applications in the cloud. It also includes enterprise application management features such as monitoring and metering.

Cupertino, Calif.-based CumuLogic’s platform supports Citrix CloudStack, OpenStack and VMware vSphere in private and hybrid clouds.

ComputeNext

CEO: Sundar Kannan

The 451 Research Group said ComputeNext offers an Expedia-like approach to cloud brokering through its marketplace for users and providers of cloud services by allowing them to search, utilize and purchase compute resources.

ComputeNext, Bellevue, Wash., provides access to an inventory of cloud infrastructure that lets users search and discover computing and storage as needed. Users of the marketplace can build the most efficient system available.

NuoDB

CEO: Barry Morris

Cambridge, Mass.-based startup NuoDB in July received $10 million in venture funding. The investment was led by Morgenthaler Ventures, with participation from Hummer Winblad Venture Partners and Longworth Venture Partners. The company's flagship product is its Elastically Scalable Database, which is built to scale in the cloud with the full functionality of a relational database. NuoDB, which is currently in beta, said it has 700 customers so far and plans to become generally available in the third quarter of this year.

Cluttr

CEO: Frederik Van Hecke

Cluttr provides software to help companies manage their data centers more efficiently and with a lower energy footprint.

The startup, based in Ghent, Belgium, offers the Power Waste Reduction Suite, which lets companies monitor, assess and improve their data center infrastructure by increasing the efficiency by emphasizing timing, resources, cost and energy use.