(NOTE: This story was originally posted to CRN.com July 6.)

The Cloud's Startup Culture

The cloud has become the primary breeding ground for technology innovation since its inception about a decade ago. Many recently founded startups that have seized the opportunities created by the paradigm shift to cloud computing are now rapidly scaling to meet market demand for their products. Having proven their market viability, some are accepting larger infusions of capital to hire more workers, extend into new geographies, and build more integrations with platforms and providers.

These startups are delivering to organizations across all industries the ability to easily and rapidly deploy flexible, agile and heterogenous IT environments for running production workloads, as well as developing and testing new applications and empowering their workers with the latest and greatest productivity tools.

Here are the 10 coolest cloud startups of the year so far.