The cloud is getting too much buzz these days,  it’s now going mainstream. The shift from a traditional on-premise solution provider model to a cloud-based services model is not just a trend, but it’s now considered by most IT people as a “crucial move” for survival in the fast-evolving tech environment market.

This year, we come out with our own list (the top Cloud and IT Solutions Companies 2018) to help companies navigate the growing cloud marketplace and identify the best IT solutions to support their IT needs.

The Leading Cloud & IT Solutions Companies for 2018:

ActiveState
ActiveState’s roster of products and services targets a host of Web languages, Perl, Python, and Tcl include, to blaze a new trail for development, management, distribution, and cloud solutions for dynamic language applications. ActiveState is used by more than 2 million developers.

Apprenda
Apprenda, closed out 2011 with a big funding boost, adding $10 million to accelerate its product roadmap, and spin up marketing and sales initiatives around its PaaS. Apprenda’s “open PaaS stack” enables an organization to transform its infrastructure into a self-service, cloud app platform.

CloudBees
Want Java apps in the cloud? CloudBees’ platform promises the ability to build, run and manage Java applications in the cloud, quickly and with ease. The company\’s Java Platform-as-a-Service is aimed at enterprises and ISVs for coverage of the app lifecycle from development to production.

Cloudera
In the world of big data, Cloudera offers up the Apache Hadoop-based platform that let users pull value from their structured and unstructured data. Using open-source technology, Cloudera’s Management Suite and other software let data-driven enterprises pull intelligence from data.

CumuLogic
CumuLogic battles vendor lock-in with private Java PaaS. Aimed at security- and compliance-sensitive organizations, CumuLogic’s platform lets users build business-ready private PaaS to improve developer productivity, reduce cloud app management costs and maintain security and compliance.

Engine Yard
Billed as one of the hottest companies in San Francisco, Engine Yard flexes its Ruby on Rails and PHP muscles to deliver PaaS that lets businesses easily build and run cloud applications. Engine Yard brings expertise, uptime guarantees, and promises of performance and scale.

 GCloud3
GCloud3 offers a turnkey private cloud solution in its gPlatform. GCloud3’s gPlatform enables the deployment of servers, desktops, firewalls/routers, and SAN storage. The six-component platform comprises gVirtual (a private cloud solution deployed at the client site), gClient (a thin-client line for integration into gVirtual or gHosted solutions), gBackup ( a backup of the private cloud infrastructure), and gHosted (a data center-style deployment that uses gClient to connect to the data center).

GigaSpaces
Looking for a silo-free cloud application architecture? GigaSpaces looks to deliver just that with its application virtualization and cloud platforms that enable the move of mission-critical applications to next-generation environments with its XAP Elastic Application Platform and Cloudify offerings.