In just a few short years, cloud computing has become a tech that affects everyone's daily lives.
Our personal files are stored in the cloud. We maintain our friendships via apps in the cloud. Mobile phones and tablets run powerful apps via the cloud, giving rise to new devices like tablets, and killing off others, like the netbook and, perhaps one day, the PC.
IT departments went from distrusting the cloud to allocating billions of dollars to spend on using it. Instead of buying every app and server they need, they will rent them.
But none of this is happening on its own. It's all being figured out right now by the companies building clouds.
A word about clouds
Before we get to the list, let's define cloud computing. There are three types: Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS).
Cloud computing lets you rent the tech you want, paying a monthly fee for it. As this chart shows, SaaS means renting the just app. PaaS means renting everything but the app (often used by app developers). IaaS means renting just the hardware and tools to maintain the hardware (popular with startups and enterprises). Click here for a bigger version of the chart.
No. 10: SoftLayer is the key to success for two big players.
IBM and EMC are reportedly both courting cloud-computing company SoftLayer Technologies in an acquisition expected to exceed $2 billion.
SoftLayer is known as the largest privately held cloud-computing and Web-hosting service provider.
If EMC successfully buys SoftLayer that will be a boost to EMC's VMware. VMware is trying to get some new cloud-computing plans off the ground. One of VMware's biggest rivals, Citrix, is a big SoftLayer partner and customer.
IBM would prefer to nab SoftLayer's customers and data centers for itself.
No 9: Joyent offers a powerful, low cost alternative for big data centers.
Joyent competes with VMware, OpenStack and Citrix, too, with its own cloud operating system.
It's become a popular alternative for service providers needing big cloud data centers because it costs them less, Joyent cofounder Jason Hoffman told Business Insider.
Joyent says it has more than 30,000 customers, including big names like LinkedIn and its backed by Intel, Dell, EMC and and Spanish phone company Telefonica. VC Peter Thiel also invested.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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