Bessemer Cloudscape: A map of the major cloud players

Even as global markets struggle beneath the weight of unemployment, government paralysis, debt crises and Occupy Wall Street, one segment of the economy enjoys explosive growth with the promise of leading the recovery, one job at a time: cloud computing.

Cloud computing is no longer at the leading edge of the software world, but rather from the perspective of a growth investor, entrepreneur, or technology buyer, cloud computing IS the modern software industry. This multi-billion dollar, high-growth segment of technology now encompasses hundreds of exciting companies, covering every major segment of the software ecosystem.  At Bessemer Venture Partners, we were unable to find a single compelling visual to track the leading companies in this revolution, so we synthesized our own based on thousands of meetings over the last decade.

Earlier this month we assembled 100 of the top thought leaders at Bessemer’s annual CEO conference on cloud computing, and the response was extremely positive to this approach.  After many follow-up requests for a digital copy of the visual, we’ve decided to “open source” this chart and make it available to the cloud community, as we have done with many of our other white papers and research materials throughout the years.

We hope that the depth and breadth of high quality companies on this graphic is as striking to you as it is to us.  There are now multiple successful SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS vendors in virtually every major sub segment of software, and most are growing very rapidly.  We can’t share private financial data by company, but in aggregate I can share that among the private Bessemer portfolio companies on this chart, the average growth rate exceeds 100% annually.  The public data is equally compelling; among Bessemer’s recent cloud IPOs, including LinkedIn, Cornerstone OnDemand, and Broadsoft, their Q3 GAAP revenue grew year over year 126%, 63%, and 60% respectively.  Although they are not nearly as sexy as B2C internet stories like Facebook and Yelp, the B2B world is now eagerly awaiting the IPOs of the next wave of cloud companies like Bazaar Voice, Eloqua, and Workday.

As a result of the rapid growth of the cloud computing industry, there is one major challenge that plagues almost all of the companies on this chart: hiring!  Many of these companies literally have dozens of open positions and are paying recruiters large sums of money to identify talent.  This collective market demand is projected to literally translate into thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of revenue creation in the coming years.  So if you’re looking to join the cloud revolution, this list is a pretty good place to start.  Send your resume to some of the companies on this list image, because they’re hiring!

One final thought:  we did wrestle with the placement and inclusion or exclusion of certain companies, and we’d welcome your feedback.  Please be vocal and send us your input and detailed thoughts to cloudvc@bvp.com.  We promise to consider all input and will incorporate much of it into our next version, which we will continue to update and make available online at www.bvp.com/cloud.

Byron is an experienced cloud founder and CEO, co-author of Bessemer’s 10 Laws of Cloud Computing, and currently leads the cloud computing practice at Bessemer Venture Partners.  For more information: www.bvp.com/cloud

Image courtesy of Flickr user commorancy.

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