The benefits of cloud computing—reduction of costs in terms of hardware, people and utilities; ease of instantiation—are by now well understood, thanks to the efforts of these organizations in 2011. The *-as-a-Service model also appeals to companies that want to “pay as they go” for software and platform use. Here are the early leaders in an industry shift—and paradigm shift—into the cloud.
Amazon
AppFog
Apprenda
CloudBees
dotCloud
Engine Yard
GigaSpaces
GitHub
Gizmox
Google
Heroku
Koding
OpenStack
VMware
