Top 10 Cloud Computing Startups of 2010

This top 10 list of the most promising startups in cloud computing cuts across various disciplines in the cloud, including application development, infrastructure management, subscription billing and business intelligence as a service, to name a few. Because the cloud market is still so new and headed in so many different directions, we decided to give you a broad view of what we believe to be some of the most interesting technologies across the field. Later on, we might drill into Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and private cloud in separate lists.

The biggest surprise for us in regards to this list isn’t who’s on it, but who is not. Security fears still dominate the debate, but we haven’t seen a single vendor step up to the plate and take on some of the complex challenges, such as federated identity management in the cloud from any device and any location. Although strides have been made in areas like single sign-on, it hasn’t been enough.

There’s also a distinct lack of well-funded companies looking at performance analysis and benchmarking tools for the cloud, although plenty are doing it out of their bedrooms. That won’t work for enterprise IT shops. While the venture capitalists scratch their heads figuring out what to fund next, here’s our list of companies already making the cut.

SkyTap

Skytap has seen tremendous success with its virtual lab in the cloud that lets users run demonstration and development environments. Its customers are finding new uses for it, including setting up virtual training classrooms, and some have reported Skytap as so handy that they’ve tripled their own deployments.

Skytap also allows users to create virtual private clouds in their data centers, ensuring that the company has at least a toe in the private cloud market that’s all the rage nowadays.

The company reports 500% growth in customers and says revenues have doubled over last year, although it doesn’t break out real numbers. Skytap has raised $13 million since 2008 in two rounds of funding, backed by Madrona Venture Group, Ignition Partners, Bezos Expeditions and Washington Research Foundation Capital, and the startup may already be profitable.

View the article to see the full list here.