The ability to drive innovation for technology products, solutions and services is the hallmark of CRN’s Top 25 Innovators of 2024 list.

In an increasingly commoditized product world, innovation is key for businesses looking to differentiate themselves. But innovation is not just building a better widget. Done right, innovation in the IT business can be improvements in a combination of hardware, software, programs and processes.

The Top 25 Innovators of 2024 know that such innovations are especially important with the IT world going through a wave of change caused by businesses’ focus on, and questions about, such tsunamis as digital transformation, AI, 5G and security.

These executives manage companies dedicated to innovation and have proven themselves to also be agents of change in a wide range of technologies.

They include leaders of companies involved with cutting-edge hardware, software and programs in such areas as security, networking, storage and data protection, AI, software, MSP platforms and more.

Just as important, these 25 companies are dedicated to working with indirect sales channels. The channel is a critical part of innovation as businesses rely on solution providers, systems integrators and MSPs to find the best technologies to meet their need to transform their own infrastructure and processes.

What follows is our list of the Top 25 IT Innovators of 2024.

Be sure to also check out the complete list of CRN’s Top 100 Executives Of 2024.

25. Dave Baggett

Founder, CEO

Inky

With Baggett at the helm, email security vendor Inky has brought a focus on delivering phishing protection that is unmatched in effectiveness—as underscored by Inky’s pinpointing of QR code phishing attacks prior to the email security tools of competing vendors.

24. Sumit Dhawan

CEO

Proofpoint

Since joining Proofpoint at the end of last year, Dhawan has moved quickly to accelerate the company’s efforts around “human-centric” cybersecurity—including with the recent debut of new email security offerings that utilize GenAI-based detection to analyze emails prior to delivery.

23. Vadim Vladimirskiy

Co-Founder, CEO

Nerdio

For all the focus on AI, so much partner work remains in moving customers to the cloud and empowering a remote workforce. Cue Vladimirskiy, who has led Nerdio to deliver products for managing Azure Virtual Desktop—making the upstart a darling among Microsoft ISV partners and earning it a fervent following among solution providers.

22. Matthew and Peter Cassar

Co-Founders, Co-CEOs

Sherweb

The Cassar brothers continue to be at the forefront of bringing MSPs to the cloud. Born-in-the-cloud Sherweb’s cloud management platform—with its productivity and business applications and security and compliance technologies—ensures MSPs have access to the cloud-based solutions their larger competitors enjoy.

21. Charles Giancarlo

CEO

Pure Storage

Pure Storage under Giancarlo is showing the storage industry how to use AI to bring the power and performance of flash-based storage to the cloud, taking advantage of its Pure platform to tie on-premises and cloud storage into a system to securely manage storage as if it were a cloud for all workloads, including AI.

20. Matt Hicks

President, CEO

Red Hat

Open source is key for unlocking AI for more users, and few companies understand the unity of open source and partners better than IBM subsidiary Red Hat. A Red Hat veteran with fresh ideas, Hicks has shown he has the acumen to navigate this new AI-driven tech world.

19. Prakash Panjwani

CEO

WatchGuard Technologies

Panjwani has led WatchGuard to continue its going beyond its roots as a network security vendor into becoming a provider of a broad security platform that also spans security for endpoints and identities, as well as offering MSP-focused services such as managed detection and response.

18. Jason Magee

CEO

ConnectWise

Magee is keeping a steady hand on the tiller with new AI, cybersecurity, robotic process automation and more to better serve MSPs as he encourages them to embrace innovation and lean into ConnectWise’s IT Nation community.

17. Dave Shull

President, Workforce Solutions

HP Inc.

As head of HP Inc.’s Workforce Solutions group, Shull is focused on the next evolution of the PC and print giant—becoming an employee experience company—which he plans to achieve by making its Workplace Experience Platform a central way businesses can improve productivity, reduce IT costs and strengthen security.

16. Phil Mottram

EVP, GM, Intelligent Edge

HPE Aruba Networking

Mottram is driving a next-generation AI networking revolution with big profits for partners. The Intelligent Edge business already accounts for the largest segment of HPE’s operating profit, and the proposed Juniper acquisition doubles the size of that business. He has made tremendous strides in expanding the portfolio into areas such as data center, private 5G and SASE.

15. Ali Ghodsi

Co-Founder, CEO

Databricks

Leading the charge to democratize AI with one of the broadest and deepest datalake-driven portfolios, Ghodsi has made big strides this year in separating Databricks from the rest of the pack, particularly with the acquisition of Tabular, new integration with Nvidia and new capabilities for Databricks’ Mosaic AI platform.

14. Eva Chen

Co-Founder, CEO

Trend Micro

Under Chen’s leadership, Trend Micro has doubled down on its Vision One platform for threat detection, response and prevention with the recent debut of its GenAI-powered tool for security analysts, Trend Companion. The tool aims to automate a greater portion of threat investigations and risk assessments.

13. Yusuf Mehdi

EVP, Consumer Chief Marketing Officer

Microsoft

Mehdi, a 30-plus-year Microsoft veteran, introduced the world to Copilot+ PCs, some of the first AI PCs to hit the market. Microsoft partners stand to see big business from a global device refresh‑-and local processing might be one way AI makes inroads into the mainstream.

12. Richard Marko

CEO

ESET

Under Marko’s leadership, ESET has been driving partner-focused innovation for its endpoint security platform while remaining committed to offering on-premises options. Other recent highlights for partners have included the debut of a new benefit that aims to provide specialized support around targeted marketing campaigns.

11. Ed Meyercord

President, CEO

Extreme Networks

Meyercord has been Extreme’s fearless leader for nearly a decade, transforming the company from a small networking player into one of the world’s largest network providers. Meyercord continues to expand Extreme’s total addressable market by driving innovation and integration between security, networking and AI.

10. David Friend

CEO

Wasabi

Friend has been at the forefront of developing cloud storage for a couple of decades, so it’s no wonder Wasabi is now one of the top storage clouds. It serves as the back-end storage for the widest range of data protection technologies, making it a key competitor to the cloud storage business of the major hyperscalers.

9. Jason Kimrey

VP, North America Commercial, Partner Sales

Intel

In his new role as the head of Intel’s North America commercial and partner sales, Kimrey is bringing a holistic approach to how the chipmaker works with businesses, whether they’re end users or partners. The result is a faster way for partners to sell solutions and enable customers with Intel.

8. Michael Gold

CEO

Intermedia

Intermedia’s longtime CEO has driven a partner-first strategy for his unified communications and cloud businesses. Under Gold’s leadership, the company has grown revenue by more than 8X while transforming from an email and web hosting company to a channel and cloud communications leader.

7. Fidelma Russo

EVP, GM, Hybrid Cloud, CTO

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Russo is a 40-year industry stalwart who has delivered big technology breakthroughs that have radically altered the solution landscape, especially the three-click up-and-running HPE Private Cloud AI and the new HPE virtualization capability. Look for Russo to continue to deliver breakthroughs, including new private cloud offerings for VDI and SAP.

6. Charles Liang

Founder, Chairman, President, CEO

Supermicro

While it’s common to associate Nvidia’s GPUs with the term “AI,” it is Supermicro which, under Liang, has done the most to bring those GPUs to market. Liang makes sure Supermicro, located just 10 miles from Nvidia, gets first crack at the latest Nvidia technology to make Supermicro the primary AI server supplier.

5. Jeff Clarke

Vice Chairman, COO

Dell Technologies

After 37 years working side by side with Michael Dell to build Dell Technologies into an $88 billion technology superpower, Clarke has not lost a step. Now he’s leading the charge on the GenAI opportunity, which he calls “more disruptive than anything I’ve experienced in my four decades in the industry.”

4. Danny Jenkins

Co-Founder, CEO

ThreatLocker

With recent launches including ThreatLocker’s managed detection and response service, Jenkins has been spearheading the drive to become a provider of a comprehensive platform for endpoint security. Other recent moves have included its expansion into protecting Apple macOS devices.

3. Joe Levy

CEO

Sophos

Named acting CEO in February and then permanent CEO in May, Levy has taken the reins of Sophos’ aggressive expansion push into managed detection and response and other Security-as-a-Service offerings. A major focus for Levy is on enabling partners to better protect under-resourced midmarket organizations against intensifying cyberattacks.

2. Rajiv Ramaswami
President, CEO

Nutanix

A channel- and tech-savvy CEO who is making all the right moves to drive big channel sales growth, including blockbuster partnerships with Dell Technologies and Cisco, Ramaswami does not get enough credit for driving game-changing Nutanix innovation, including GPT In A Box 2.0 and Nutanix Kubernetes Platform.

1. Jeff Ready
CEO
Scale Computing

Scale Computing is enjoying a massive increase in its sales pipeline, winning new business along with hearts and minds in the market with its cost-effective and reliable edge architecture.

Ready, the company’s co-founder and CEO, has a simple business plan for this year, which is to make Scale Computing the best partner it can be for its solution provider channel, help customers escape VMware by Broadcom’s price increases and grow Scale’s edge leadership.

“What we’re doing at Scale is building the future with all of you,” he told the audience at his annual Platform 2024 conference in Las Vegas.

Earlier this year Ready said the company’s pipeline of new customers for its first quarter was up 80 percent sequentially from the end of the year, while year-to-year sales are up 35 percent. Scale Computing also is on track to break 50 percent growth this year, he said.