Our list includes company executives, analysts, evangelists and strategists.
When they speak, people stop and listen.
They’re the people who take a big-picture view when it comes to technology, where it’s heading and the impact it will have on the channel. They’re in telecom, cybersecurity, data management and storage, and other technologies.
Our list includes company executives, analysts, evangelists and strategists.
They all come from different backgrounds, but they’re united in their focus on the future of technology.
Scroll through our list of 20 top tech thought leaders to follow:
Dina Moskowitz
SaaSMax’s Dina Moskowitz
Dina Moskowitz, CEO of SaaSMax, said from her seat at the table, “I can see that innovations are coming to the channel in the form of distribution and commerce platforms that make it easier, more operationally efficient and thus more profitable for channel partners to do business with providers of SaaS and cloud software.”
“That means channel partners can and will be able to partner with more and more innovative SaaS products, build better solution sets for their clients and add new monthly recurring revenue (MRR) income streams to their own businesses,” she said. “According to calculations at SaaSMax, the overall impact will be that the channel has the opportunity to drive more than $50 billion in new SaaS revenues by 2024.”
Ansley Hoke
Ansley Hoke, vice president of merchandising at ScanSource Catalyst, said AI and IoT will play a big role in new product and solution offerings.
ScanSource Catalyst’s Ansley Hoke
“Manufacturing will likely further embrace IoT and become more sensor-driven in an effort to better manage inventory, decrease delays in product manufacturing, and improve response times in critical situations,” she said. “IoT-enabled devices on the network will grow exponentially, requiring more bandwidth, better reliability and greater connectivity. This move toward IoT will lead to a stronger push for 5G connectivity from service providers.”
As for AI, it will become an important factor in analyzing big data in order to identify market trends, predict equipment and system failures, and automate simple human tasks, Hoke said.
“AI devices will become more common, assisting users in homes, cars and in the office,” she said. “There is great opportunity for the channel to embrace IoT and AI, and become well-versed on how these technologies can help their customers improve their business processes.”
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Michael Dell
Dell’s Michael Dell
When Michael Dell, Dell Technologies’ CEO and chairman, took the stage at this year’s Dell Technologies World conference, he told attendees they share a “vision of a future that is better than today,” and a vision of technology “as the driver of human progress.” Thirty-four years ago, he founded PC’s Limited, which would be renamed Dell, and in 1992 he became the youngest CEO on the Fortune 500 list.
“At first, the power of digital transformation was kind of like a secret that only we in the technology world saw coming,” he said. “Fast-forward a few years and the secret of digital transformation has burst onto the public consciousness. Every customer that I meet is re-imagining how they use technology in every aspect of their operations to drive growth, new business models, customer relationships, and new products and services. Technology is now at the very top of the agenda for business leaders everywhere and for the C-suite.”
Parisa Tabriz
Parisa Tabriz, Google’s director of engineering, told attendees at this summer’s Black Hat conference that great strides have been made in fighting cybercriminals during the past decade, but to be successful, “we have to stop playing whack-a-mole” and do a better job of identifying and tackling the root cause of cyber threats.
Google’s Parisa Tabriz
She also said it’s important to pick milestones and celebrate them, and build out your coalition of experts.
Tabriz is responsible for Chrome security and Project Zero, a security research team tasked with reducing harm associated with zero-day vulnerabilities.
“Making real change is hard; it results in pushback,” she said. “Making fundamental change to the status quo is hard. If you’re not upsetting anyone, you’re not changing the status quo.”
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Dave Sobel
SolarWinds MSP’s Dave Sobel
Dave Sobel, SolarWinds MSP’s director of MSP evangelism, is always focused on tomorrow, and said artificial intelligence (AI) is going to have the greatest impact on the channel in the next year.
“Systems continue to become more and more intelligent, offering insights that give humans the ability to make better decisions than ever before,” he said. “Just as we are seeing artificial intelligence (AI) drive successful outcomes in health care and in manufacturing, it will bring the ability for channel organizations to be more efficient with access to greater insights. One of AI’s promises is in bringing data insights that humans have difficulty getting on their own, particularly across very large data sets. With successful channel companies providing more and more business consulting and driving to business outcomes, these insights will be more and more impactful.”
Jeff Moss
Black Hat’s Jeff Moss
Jeff Moss, Black Hat founder and director, told attendees at this year’s conference that it feels like the industry is in the final exam stage to prove “if we’re as good as we say we are.” He also said the technology being developed is mostly offensive, while cybersecurity defense is becoming increasingly political.
Maybe 20 companies globally are in a position to do something about raising “security resiliency for all of us,” Moss said. It’s up to everyone else in cybersecurity to put pressure on those companies to get those features, he said.
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Mark J. Barrenechea
Mark J. Barrenechea, OpenText’s vice chairman, CEO and CTO, said industrial AI, the combination of IoT and AI, will have a big impact on the channel over the next year.
OpenText’s Mark Barrenechea
“Ten billion smart machines will connect to the internet, more machines than humans,” he said. “Industrial companies (will be) using AI to understand supply chain behavior, transportation, inventories, demand and production. The machine will understand your next behavior before you do, and will have already moved inventory and supply chain to deliver to you instantly. We will no longer choose our friends on Facebook. We will no longer choose our movies on Netflix, we will no longer choose our consumer goods on Amazon. The machine will. But will the machine choose the partner as well!”
Jon Arnold
Arnold, principal analyst at J Arnold & Associates, always provides both a history lesson and a look ahead when asked asked about various technology and channel trends.
Jon Arnold
“At this point, it’s a given that cloud is pushing channels to adopt SaaS business models,” he said. “This may not be impacting the channel in a big way yet, but will eventually replace business models based on hardware-based capex investments. Innovations around AI will also have a major impact on the channel, but that’s still emerging. For the next year or so, the more market-ready innovations will come from CPaaS offerings, where developer-friendly channel partners can white label vertical applications or platforms that are customized for specific market segments. CPaaS provides great flexibility to embed communications capabilities into other applications or processes, and channels that are comfortable with APIs can offer new forms of value to businesses that need innovation now, but have too many constraints to produce that internally.”
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Jo Peterson
Clarify360’s Jo Peterson
Jo Peterson, vice president of cloud services at Clarify360 and Cloud Girls‘ co-founder, said market consolidation from a vendor perspective is “white hot.” Cloud Girls’ new focus is on thought leadership.