Eight top-of-mind innovators to watch in 2008
December 17, 2007 - 6:27 am - Posted by iDunzo
They’re all passionate about an idea, an approach, or a technology, and they’re focused on driving it to the next level.
Watch for each of them to be a force for change in their own corner of the tech world.
Meet 8 people who will help shape the business technology world in the coming year:
Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt
With very different approaches, this duo’s dragging the stagnant phone business into the Internet age. Jobs’ Apple iPhone embraces a closed network, and Schmidt’s Google Android platform envisions a wide-open one. Both are forcing change for the better.
Mark Zuckerberg
It’s not Facebook that matters, it’s Facebook thinking. IT will feel growing pressure to provide social networking functions–to customers, along the supply chain, and inside their workplaces.
Mark Hurd
He’s got Hewlett-Packard back atop the PC market. How big a splash can he make in business software? The year ahead will tell.
Ray Ozzie
For a Microsoft exec, Ozzie sure is quiet. That’s fine, but it’s time for his vision of software-plus-services to make some noise. That means delivering some surprising products businesses can put to use.
Sam Palmisano
IBM can’t afford to stand pat in software. After making the company’s biggest acquisition ever this year, count on IBM’s CEO to keep dealing in 2008.
Diane Greene
Microsoft storms the virtualization market next year, along with a growing horde of Xen-based rivals like Sun and Oracle. The VMware CEO is a leader, and this is her toughest test yet.
Charles Phillips
2008 needs to be about new products, as Oracle promises to deliver the first of its Fusion applications, which draw together software from past acquisitions. But don’t expect Oracle’s president, a former Wall Street analyst, to lay off the deal-making.
