25 INNOVATORS 11
24
12
13
14
15
William Largent
Douglas Brockett
David Bennett
Rami Rahim
Taher Behbehani
Chairman, CEO
President
CEO
CEO
GM, Mobile B2B Division
Veeam Software
StorageCraft
Axcient
Juniper Networks
As Veeam’s founders step out of the limelight, Largent is responsible not only for moving Veeam’s headquarters to the U.S. to be closer to the cloud, but also for shifting focus from data protection to the fastgrowing but technically more complicated data management space.
The IT industry traditionally has had primary storage and secondary storage vendors. Since Brockett joined StorageCraft in 2017 with the acquisition of Exablox, where he was CEO, he has led the push to help the company blur the line and make it a true provider of unified storage.
Axcient is all about protecting data, and Bennett is all about making that protection end to end. He has led Axcient through multiple acquisitions, and recently melded its acquired technologies into a single platform while adding a unique take on ransomware protection.
Cloud-first, AI-empowered networks are more critical than ever before and Rahim is taking full advantage of Juniper’s Mist Systems acquisition, which he led, to revamp Juniper’s road map. Under Rahim, Juniper is becoming a formidable player once again in the wired and wireless networking space.
Samsung Electronics America
Behbehani has been driving the efforts around B2B devices and mobile offerings— such as with the launches of two rugged businessfocused devices, the Galaxy Tab Active Pro tablet and XCover Pro smartphone, and the debut of Project AppStack for B2B SaaS and native app delivery.
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17
18
19
20
Salvatore Sferlazza
Mark Barrenechea
Rohit Ghai
Orion Hindawi
Rob Rae
CEO
Vice Chair, CEO, CTO
President
Co-Founder, Co-CEO
SVP, Business Development
NinjaRMM
OpenText
RSA
Tanium
Datto
As some legacy RMM tools have fallen prey to exploits, Sferlazza invests heavily in engineers and drives a relentless 45-day update cycle for the company’s flagship product. NinjaRMM debuted mobile capabilities and revealed the company is rolling out a partner program to drive growth.
It’s Barrenechea’s turn to try to unify security and storage. Others have tried—think Symantec/Veritas—but did not succeed. Barrenechea engineered the late 2019 acquisitions of Webroot and Carbonite, and his ability to bring them together will define OpenText’s future.
Ghai is making RSA more nimble and agile by carving the encryption pioneer out from the Dell Technologies behemoth and reconstituting it as an independent company under the stewardship of STG Partners.
Hindawi has been laserfocused on building a mission-oriented culture at Tanium that provides the world’s largest enterprises with more visibility into their IT ecosystems. He has expanded Tanium beyond security to help customers address challenges they have around IT operations.
As Datto continues to become the industry’s top provider of the widest range of MSP-focused automation, storage, networking and management platforms, Rae is at the center of innovating the channel programs that bring those disparate technologies to MSPs large and small.
21
22
23
24
25
Todd McKinnon
Eva Chen
Jim Whitehurst
Jed Ayres
Gajen Kandiah
Co-Founder, CEO
CEO
President
CEO
CEO
Okta
Trend Micro
IBM
IGEL
Hitachi Vantara
McKinnon has made it easier for large organizations to authenticate the traffic generated by immersive digital experiences through Okta DynamicScale. He has also simplified the identity giant’s training and accreditation process to help solution providers get sales and technical certifications.
Chen purchased Cloud Conformity to help Trend Micro handle misconfigurations and unprotected user accounts in the public cloud. She has gone all in on hybrid cloud security, which now accounts for one-quarter of Trend Micro’s nearly $1 billion in annual sales.
Whitehurst went from the staid airline industry to what he described to CRN as the “mind-bending” innovation and disruption of the open-source software business at Red Hat. Now he’s No. 2 at Big Blue following its acquisition of Red Hat—a leader IBM hopes can combine the best of those worlds.
The channel, technology and marketing-savvy CEO has established IGEL as the undisputed edge operating system market leader for cloud workspaces. Under Ayres’ leadership, IGEL is headed toward 1 million IGEL operating system seats being sold and activated each year.
As Hitachi Vantara’s new CEO, Kandiah is bringing an integral services mindset to the vendor amid its transformation to becoming a key IoT and big data player. Having previously led Cognizant’s digital business, Kandiah knows what it takes to bring digital practices to the next level.
AUGUST 2020
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