The SD Times 100 is about innovation and leadership. While every project and organization in the SD Times 100 list meets those criteria, there are a few that, through the work they accomplished in 2011, were able to shift an entire industry toward a platform, methodology, emerging standard or even way of thinking. This list includes many of the major players in the software industry, as one would expect, as well as some perhaps surprising newcomers.

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.