20 Coolest Cloud Computing Vendors

CRN recently published their list of the 20 coolest cloud computing vendors. They chose this topic due to the recent wave of acquisitions of cloud vendors in the security market by traditional software and appliance vendors.

According to CRN, there doesn't seem to be any sign of a slowdown in acquisitions in 2010. Cloud computing has been driven in part by the tough economy, due to the lower initial capital expenditures, and a switch to operating expenses. Cloud solutions took off over the last 16 months and accompanied with that was a growth of SaaS acquisitions by some of the largest security players. Symantec was one of the first with its acquisition of MessageLabs in October of 2008, followed by acquisitions by players such as WatchGuard, McAfee, Barracuda, M86 and Cisco.

In addition to cloud-based antivirus, spam filters and Web scanning engines, security companies are now launching cloud-based DLP and authentication and log management technologies.

You can find CRN's list of the 20 coolest cloud vendors here.