the most powerful people in enterprise tech

Google wants a piece of the enterprise pie with its Google Apps, it s various cloud computing services and its Google Chrome operating system. It is Singh s job to reel in customers. Google snared Singh from Oracle, so he knows the enterprise software sales drill. His goal is nothing short of domination. He wants to grab 90% of Office users away from Microsoft.

Ginni Rometty has blossomed into her relatively new role as the CEO of the nation s most venerable enterprise IT company. In less than a year s time, she managed to pry her predecessor Sam Palmisano s grip off of the company, becoming CEO in January 2012, and then taking his chairman title, too. But she has her work cut out for her. She presided over the worst quarter the company had in years, and instituted a reported big layoff. She is also struggling to bring aging IBM businesses up to snuff and still meet Palmisano s ambitious promise to investors of hitting $20 earnings per share in 2015.

Suddenly Rob Lloyd is everywhere. He s the front runner to become Cisco s next CEO, assuming that John Chambers actually retires in 3 4 years as he suggested he might. Lately, Cisco has been showcasing this 18 year Cisco veteran at keynote speeches, press conferences, and other tech events.

Andreessen is one of the tech industry s true visionaries, particularly with enterprise tech. His venture firm, co founded with Ben Horowitz, is a big player in enterprise. It backs Box, Asana, ClearStory, and Okta among others. Andreessen is also on the boards of Hewlett Packard, Facebook, and eBay.

NetSuite was founded in 1998, the brainchild (at least in part) of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, before people understood cloud computing or software as a service. Nelson has been its CEO for most that time (since 2002). He s walking a fine line now between Ellison s other company, Oracle, which has recently launched into the cloud, and Oracle s biggest competitor, SAP. Nelson is helping mid sized companies use the cloud. He s making progress, too. NetSuite logged a record $308.8 million in revenue for 2012.

HP is about 18 months through a five year turnaround. Or so Whitman tells investors and the media every chance she gets. She s been tasked with getting HP past its self made troubles and growing again. Her first year was rocky: big layoffs, big write offs, a near revolt of shareholders over the botched $11 billion acquisition of Autonomy. But she is slowly winning over investors, customers, employees. Next up: She has to deliver real revenue growth, and soon. Powerful people, like board member Marc Andreessen, are convinced she will.

McDermott was born to be a CEO. The native New Yorker bought his first company at the age of 16 (a delicatessen on Long Island). He s been co CEO of SAP AG since February 7, 2010 the U.S. partner to his Danish born counterpart, co CEO Jim Hagemann Snabe. McDermot is SAP s strategy and sales guru. He s fending off countless upstarts trying to break SAP s steady hold on the financial software market.

Woz will forever be powerful and important in the tech world as the respected co founder of Apple. He currently works for Fusion io, an enterprise storage company that went public in 2011. Fusion io is the poster child for a new kind of storage for enterprises that use flash tech, the same kind of storage in smartphones and thumb drives. His company really needs Woz s star power now. It underwent a huge management shakeup where the founders were ousted and the new CEO is a man from HP involved in some of HP s rockiest moments.

After 22 years at the company, Simon Segars will become CEO of ARM Holdings in July, taking over for Warren East who turned ARM into an industry game changer. So Segars has big shoes to fill. Low power chips designed by ARM, and produced by many, have helped spawn the powerful mobile devices that are killing PCs. Next up for Segars is to bring ARM into data center servers, making data centers vastly more powerful while using a fraction of the space and energy. Several companies, including HP, are working with ARM on this.

Juniper Networks claim to fame is to give Cisco a hard time. It s a big rival in the network equipment industry and a big player with computer security, too. Johnson joined as CEO in 2008, after a long time spent running the Windows sales organization at Microsoft. Johnson is ready to push his company into the brave new world of software defined networking. He bought startup Contrail Systems for $176 million just two days after it came out of stealth. This whipped up excitement and venture investment in the young tech. Johnson is also a director for Starbucks.