The 20 Coolest Cloud Storage Vendors Of The Cloud 100

Coolest Cloud Storage Vendors For 2013

Among its many game-changing features, the cloud can act as an enterprise data repository and, as such, it has inspired a new wave of innovation as storage vendors rush to develop ways to leverage the cloud to handle data.

New companies are developing products based on inexpensively storing and sharing data in the cloud. And vendors with long experience in storage have expanded their products and services to exist in a cloud-based environment.

Here we take a look at the coolest cloud storage companies to make this year's Cloud 100 list.

Acronis

President, CEO: Alex Pinchev

As the complex data requirements of enterprises increase, Acronis, with its flagship Backup & Recovery 11.5 system, is providing protection of data at both the file and system levels, as well as data protection for physical, virtual and cloud environments.

Asigra

CEO: David Farajun

Asigra's Cloud Backup platform offers backup and recovery features and emphasizes a strong program for solution providers, MSPs and telcos. The platform is nonproprietary and as such integrates with Windows, Linux or Mac environments.

Bitcasa

CEO: Tony Gauda

Bitcasa, a developer of cloud storage promising unlimited capacity for just $10 a month, in June unveiled a $7 million funding round. Bitcasa targets the public cloud storage, file share, and mobile device data sync market.

Box

Co-Founder, CEO: Aaron Levie

Box, which began as a consumer-focused service, has moved firmly into the enterprise market and lists more than 125,000 businesses as customers. In late 2012, Box unveiled a worldwide content-sharing network, called Box Accelerator, which includes nine new points of presence.

Carbonite

Co-Founder, Chairman, CEO: David Friend

Carbonite offers online backup for consumers and SMBs, featuring easy-to-use, low-cost and secure online backup services that run on both the Windows and Mac platforms. Carbonite offers two product lines: Carbonite Home and Home Office, and Carbonite Small Business.

Caringo

Co-Founder, CEO: Mark Goros

Caringo says it wants to help businesses build private clouds that offer tiered storage and are scalable and self-healing. Its flagship CAStor software is a unified object storage operating system running on x86 hardware and acts as a scalable foundation for cloud storage apps.

Cobalt Iron

Founder, CEO: Richard Spurlock

Cobalt Iron offers a suite of data protection and recovery solutions. Its Cobalt Iron Data Protection Portfolio is available in different-size tiers and can be installed on-premise with Cobalt Iron Vault appliances, in the cloud, or both.

Ctera Networks

Co-Founder, CEO: Liran Eshel

Ctera Networks' Cloud Storage Enablement Suite offers a cloud-based service delivery platform, on-premise cloud storage gateway appliances, and management features with a management dashboard. The company also launched mobile cloud apps for business users looking for secure access to files and data backups.

DropBox

Founder, CEO: Drew Houston

Starting out as a free, cloud-based storage startup in 2007, DropBox has achieved some impressive benchmarks. The file hosting service offering cloud storage, file synchronization and client software has garnered $257.2 million in funding and has more than 100 million users.

eFolder

CEO: Kevin Hoffman

eFolder relies on the channel to offer open, data protection services, integrating its technology and cloud infrastructure with best-in-breed technology from other vendors, including StorageCraft ShadowProtect and Dell AppAssure, to give partners a range of tools to meet customers' needs.

EMC

Chairman, CEO: Joe Tucci

EMC, the longstanding storage leader, has reached out to the cloud with EMC Atmos, which lets enterprises and service providers meter storage capacity, bandwidth and usage across tenants in hybrid, private and public clouds. Customers can self-manage and access their storage needs.

EVault, a Seagate Company

President, General Manager: Terry Cunningham

EVault, owned by Seagate, offers cloud-based storage with its EVault Cloud-Connected Services Platform, which lets ISVs send data to the cloud and offer their software as a service. The platform includes enterprise-class storage, APIs and a service connector to secure and accelerate data transfer.

Gridstore

Co-Founder, CEO: Kelly Murphy

Gridstore replaces legacy storage architecture with scale-out-storage technology and lets businesses build grids made up of blocks added to a network. A low-cost storage device with its own CPU and memory resources allows business to add blocks as they grow.

Intronis

Interim CEO: Jay Bolgatz

Aimed at the channel, Intronis Cloud Backup and Recovery services let MSPs give their customers a portfolio of local and online backup, data security, and on-demand recovery. The company features redundant data centers on opposite coasts, and military-grade data encryption during transmission and storage.

Mezeo Software

President, CEO: Steve Lesem

Mezeo Software provides storage services for cloud applications, with its MezeoCloud platform enabling implementation of public, private or hybrid cloud storage. Channel partners can use the MezeoCloud platform to deploy their own branded cloud storage solutions.

Nasuni

Founder, CEO: Andres Rodriguez

Nasuni serves distributed enterprises by combining on-premise hardware, cloud storage and an integrated service. Nasuni's Filer storage controller allows businesses to remotely control and manage easily accessible data volumes and provide shared data to multiple global locations.

Nirvanix

CEO: Dru Borden

Nirvanix provides enterprise-class cloud storage services with its CloudComplete, offering fully managed public, hybrid and private cloud storage services with usage-based pricing. Its Cloud NAS Gateway software installs on Windows or Linux servers and provides access to the Nirvanix cloud storage services.

Softlayer

CEO: Lance Crosby

SoftLayer's Object Storage clusters are available in the company's worldwide data centers, integrated with Softlayer's Content Delivery Network to enable archiving, management and delivery of unstructured data across through the cloud. The company uses a per-gigabyte pricing model.

SugarSync

CEO: Laura Yecies

SugarSync lets businesses access, sync and share folders and files from any device and any platform with multiple stored versions of every file and automated backup. Data is stored in multiple carrier-grade data centers using 128-bit AES encryption.

Symform

CEO: Mark Ashida

Symform gained attention with its innovative architecture for cloud backup technology that allows for protection of a customer's data by splitting it into tiny blocks, encrypting those blocks and then spreading them out across excess capacity on multiple customers' storage devices.