The 101 Most Highly Compensated IT Vendor Executives

How Much Do The Top Vendor Execs Make?

It's no secret that the technology market pays top executives well, but just how lucrative is it? To find out, CRN compared executive compensation figures in the most recent U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings available as of Feb. 27 from 45 of the top publicly traded IT companies, which are required to disclose the compensation of all named executive officers to the SEC before their annual shareholder meeting.

Then we ranked the 101 technology vendor executives who have the highest compensation, including base salary, bonuses, stock awards, option awards, deferred compensation and other compensation such as perks or, in some cases, severance pay.

Those 101 individuals earned a combined $1.59 billion in total compensation, with 5.2 percent – or $82 million – of that coming in the form of salary.

C-suite leaders looking to strike it rich should seek employment at Apple, Oracle or Alphabet, which are home to five, four and three of the 20 highest-compensated vendor executives, respectively.

Top executives are also well-compensated at IBM and Palo Alto Networks, which each employs four of the 40 highest-compensated vendor executives.

Here's a look at which vendor executives make the most.

90-81 | 80-71 | 70-61 | 60-51 | 50-41 | 40-31 | 30-21 | 20-11 | 10-1

101. Marni Walden, EVP, President, Product Innovation, New Business

Verizon Communications

Base salary: $894,000

Total Compensation: $6,801,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

Walden is always looking to the future. In her latest role with Verizon, she is tasked with developing and growing Verizon's emerging businesses, including its IoT and digital media segments. Prior to that, Walden served as executive vice president and president of product and new business innovation. Prior to that she was executive vice president and chief operating officer for Verizon Wireless, and earlier, served as Verizon Wireless' vice president and chief marketing officer. Assuming that the deal between Verizon and Yahoo is approved, Walden has been tasked with merging Yahoo's assets with AOL, which Verizon bought in 2015.

100. Andy Bryant, Chairman of the Board

Intel

Base Salary: $790,000

Total Compensation: $6,965,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

Andy Bryant joined Intel in 1981, and has worked his way up the ranks from CFO to become the Chairman of the Board in 2011. Bryant has overseen Intel as the company posted full-year revenue of $55.4 billion for the fiscal year ended Dec. 31, 2015, down 1 percent year over year.

99. John Stratton, EVP, President, Operations

Verizon Communications

Base salary: $894,000

Total Compensation: $7,057,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

Stratton was promoted to Verizon Communications' executive vice president and president of operations in 2015 when longtime Verizon executive Daniel Mead announced his retirement plans. Prior to the promotion, Stratton held an impressive track record. Stratton has served as Verizon's executive vice president and president for its global enterprise and consumer wireline division, as well as president of Verizon Enterprise Solutions.

Today, Stratton oversees Verizon's wireless and wireline businesses, including Verizon Consumer and Mass Business, Verizon Enterprise Solutions and Verizon Partner Solutions, which bring in about $126 billion in annual revenue.

98. Robson Grieve, Former SVP, Customer Experience, Marketing, CMO

Citrix

Base Salary: $304,000

Total Compensation: $7,060,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

Grieve spent just nine months at Citrix, joining the company on Jan. 26, 2015, and leaving in early November. During Grieve's brief time at Citrix, he was responsible for evolving and driving the company's marketing strategy and organization. Grieve joined software analytics company New Relic on Nov. 5, 2015, as their chief marketing officer, and he remains there today.

During the first nine months of 2015, Citrix's sales climbed to $2.37 billion, up 3.5 percent from $2.29 billion the year prior. Net income soared to $188.1 million, up 20.2 percent from $156.5 million the year prior. Citrix's shares jumped $21.76, or 35.7 percent, to $75.92 between Jan. 26, 2015, and Nov. 4, 2015.

97. Stacy Smith, EVP, CFO

Intel

Base Salary: $775,000

Total Compensation: $7,094,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

Smith, who joined Intel in 1988, was CFO of the company from March 2006 until 2016. Smith currently oversees the company's global Technology and Manufacturing Group and its worldwide sales organizations. Intel posted full-year revenue of $55.4 billion for the fiscal year ended Dec. 31, 2015, down 1 percent year over year.

96. Michael Berry, Former SVP, CFO

FireEye

Base Salary: $115,000

Total Compensation: $7,149,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

FireEye appointed Michael Berry as CFO in September 2015, at which time he became a key player in the company's push to cut costs and align the business for profitability. He joined FireEye from Informatica, where he was also SVP and CFO.

In 2015, FireEye reported $714 million in revenue and its stock was down 34 percent year over year to $20.74 per share. Berry has since left FireEye, replaced by Frank Verdecanna, senior vice president of finance and chief accounting officer. Berry has taken a role at Intel Security as CFO.

95. Francis Shammo, Former EVP, CFO

Verizon Communications

Base salary: $920,000

Total Compensation: $7,241,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

A 27-year Verizon veteran, Shammo served as the carrier's CFO for six years. Under Shammo's leadership, Verizon took on new business, including media and advertising through its $4.4 billion acquisition of AOL in 2015. Verizon also made several IoT-related questions with Shammo at the helm, including and Fleetmatics Group.

Shammo retired at the end of 2016 and was succeeded by current CFO Mathew Ellis.

94. Godfrey Sullivan, Former President, CEO, Current Chairman

Splunk

Base Salary: $350,000

Total Compensation: $7,286,000

For Year Ended: Jan. 31, 2016

Sullivan joined Splunk in 2008 as its CEO and led the data analysis software company through its initial public offering in 2012. He retired from the president and CEO position in November 2015, and continues to serve as chairman of the company's board of directors.

Splunk grew from 750 customers and $18 million in annual revenue to more than 10,000 customers and nearly $600 million in annual sales during Sullivan's tenure as CEO.

During the first nine months of Splunk's fiscal year, sales spiked to $448.4 million, up 47.8 percent from $303.5 million the year prior. However, the company's loss worsened to $199.4 million, down 24.6 percent from $160.1 million the year prior. Splunk's stock climbed $10.41, or 19.9 percent, between Feb. 1, 2015 and Nov. 19, 2015, Sullivan's last day as president and CEO.

93. Ayman Sayed, EVP, Chief Product Officer

CA Technologies

Base Salary: $388,000

Total Compensation: $7,293,000

For Year Ended: March 31, 2016

CA Technologies brought Sayed on as its new executive vice president and chief product officer in 2015 after he served at Cisco for more than 17 years. In fact, before making the move to CA, Sayed served as vice president of engineering and senior vice president of Cisco's Network Operating Systems Technology Group, during a stint with the network giant that began in 2000.

Sayed joined CA during its 2016 fiscal year, while the company was finishing a two-year overhaul on its channel program, moving the company to become more attractive to the channel.

In 2016, the company made a number of hires, adding Sayed and former Veritas and Symantec executive Tricia Atchison to its executive lineup, and boosting its product portfolio with new software in its key DevOps, agile management, security and mainframe technology areas.

92. James McGeever, President

NetSuite

Base Salary: $380,000

Total Compensation: $7,316,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

NetSuite COO McGreever has been with the tech giant for more than 16 years. First joining the company as its 15th employee and CFO, McGreever has held a number of C-level positions at the organization. As CFO, he drove the company's initial public offering and in 2015, he was appointed company president and placed on the board of directors.

NetSuite reported annual growth of 33 percent from 2014 to 2015, although investments resulted in a loss of $124.7 million in 2015, up 25 percent from the $100 million loss the year prior.

According to a statement from CFO Ron Gill during the company's fourth-quarter 2015 earnings call, NetSuite expects it will generate revenue of between $950 million and $970 million – representing growth of 28 percent to 31 percent – for the entire 2016 fiscal year.

91. Tracy Keogh, Chief Human Resources Officer

HP Inc.

Base Salary: $600,023

Total Compensation: $7.32 million

Fiscal Year Ended Oct. 31, 2016

Keogh's total compensation in fiscal year 2016 jumped 14 percent to $7.32 million compared with $6.44 million in the prior fiscal year.

Keogh's base salary, meanwhile, dropped 14 percent to $600,023 compared with $700,027 in the prior fiscal year.

Keogh, who is responsible for all HR activities, employee communications and social activities, played a key role in the separation of Hewlett Packard Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

In addition, Keogh led the charge to build the boards of director of the two new organizations, recruiting new directors.

HP Inc. ended fiscal year 2016 with 49,000 employees. As part of a restructuring, HP aims to eliminate 1,500 to 2,500 positions in the current fiscal year. That is part of an overall $1 billion in productivity savings that the company is targeting for the current fiscal year.

90. Burke Norton, Chief Legal Officer and Chief of Corporate and Government Affairs

Salesforce

Base Salary: $700,000

Total Compensation: $7,400,000

For Year Ended: Jan. 31, 2016

Norton's plate is full at Salesforce, where he heads the company's legal, compliance, internal audit, government affairs, corporate development, information technology, business operations, public sector sales and sales strategy teams. The sales strategy he's implemented has certainly worked. Over the last two years, Salesforce's revenues have increased 56 percent. He's also a member of the company's executive committee. Norton has been in that position for more than five years.

89. Parker Harris, Co-Founder

Salesforce

Base Salary: $700,000

Total Compensation: $7,400,000

For Year Ended: Jan. 31, 2016

Parker Harris co-founded Salesforce with Marc Benioff, Dave Moelenhoff and Frank Dominguez in 1999. More recently, Harris and Salesforce's senior leadership has overseen a 25 percent increase in the company's share price, from $66.55 a share in early 2015 to $83.31 a share in the early months of this year. Before Salesforce, Harris co-founded cloud computing cloud pioneer Left Coast Software in 1996. Prior to that, he was at Metropolis Software, a pioneer of sales force automation.

88. Rangarajan Raghuram, COO, Products and Cloud Services

VMware

Base Salary: $605,000

Total Compensation: $7,513,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

"Raghu" Raghuram, who in fiscal 2015 served as executive vice president and general manager for VMware's software-defined data center business, is a 13-plus-year company veteran who with his promotion in October now manages the company's cloud and other services.

In fiscal year 2015, total VMware revenue rose 9 percent over the previous year to $6.6 billion, while GAAP income for 2015 hit $997 million, or $2.34 per share, up 15 percent. Share prices, however, fared less well, falling from a midyear high of about $90 per share to end the year at around $57.

87. Mark Hawkins, CFO

Salesforce

Base Salary: $700,000

Total Compensation: $7,679,000

For Year Ended: Jan. 31, 2016

Hawkins joined Salesforce two-and-a-half years ago, and has overseen steady margin increases since his arrival. Under Hawkins, Salesforce's earnings have swung from a $262 million net loss in 2015 to a $179 million profit in its most recent fiscal year and the company's cash from operations has increased 83 percent. A veteran tech exec, Hawkins has held finance positions at several of the industry's heavy hitters, including Dell, Logitech, Autodesk and Hewlett-Packard where he spent nearly 20 years as a finance and business executive in the U.S. and Europe.

86. Carlos Sartorius, SVP, Worldwide Sales and Services

Citrix Systems

Base Salary: $523,000

Total Compensation: $7,694,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

Sartorius joined Citrix in September 2011 and moved into his current role in January 2015, where he is responsible for virtualization, mobility management, networking and cloud services offerings.

From 2011 until the end of 2014, Sartorius was managing director and vice president of Citrix's Europe, Middle East and Africa organization, where he focused on accelerating revenue growth and maximizing routes to market across the region.

During 2015, Citrix's sales climbed to $3.28 billion, up 4.2 percent from $3.14 billion the year prior. Net income skyrocketed to $319.4 million, up 26.9 percent from $251.7 million the year prior. Shares climed $12.17, or 19.2 percent, to $75.65 in 2015.

85. Brian Olsavsky, SVP, CFO

Amazon

Base Salary: $160,000

Total Compensation: $7,787,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

Olsavsky's tenure at Amazon has seen him oversee financial activities for several of the e-commerce and cloud powerhouse's business units. In June 2015, he took over financial leadership of the entire business as CFO.

In the fiscal year around his promotion, ending Dec. 31, 2015, Amazon stock more than doubled, from $310.35 at market close in 2014, to $675.89.

Revenue was $23.18 billion in the second quarter of 2015, immediately preceding Olsavsky assuming the CFO job, and up to a high (that Amazon has never since matched) of $35.75 billion in the fourth quarter of that year.

84. Chris Dedicoat, EVP, Worldwide Sales, Field Operations

Cisco Systems

Base Salary: $691,000

Total Compensation: $7,834,000

For Year Ended: July 30, 2016

In his first executive appointment as Cisco's new CEO, Chuck Robbins appointed Dedicoat as the company's leader of worldwide sales. For fiscal year 2016 with Dedicoat at the sales helm, Cisco collaboration revenue increased 9 percent, data center 4.5 percent and security nearly 13 percent compared with fiscal year 2015.

Dedicoat has been at the networking giant for more than two decades in a variety of executive sales roles across the globe including President of Cisco's Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Russia (EMEAR) business.

83. Jonathan Chadwick, CFO, COO, EVP

VMware

Base Salary: $680,000

Total Compensation: $7,852,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

Chadwick spent more than three years at VMware before leaving in April to join the board of directors at several different tech companies. Zane Rowe became VMware's new CFO on March 1, 2016.

In fiscal year 2015, total revenue rose 9 percent over the previous year to $6.6 billion, while GAAP income for 2015 hit $997 million, or $2.34 per share, up 15 percent.

82. Kim Rivera, Chief Legal Officer, General Counsel

HP Inc.

Base Salary: $612,000

Total Compensation: $7,946,000

For Year Ended: Oct. 31, 2016

Rivera's total compensation in fiscal year 2016 was $7.94 million. Rivera's base salary in fiscal year 2016 was $612,004.

Comparable compensation was not available for the prior fiscal year because Rivera was not one of the top highly compensated executives for HP Inc. in fiscal 2015. Rivera, a passionate advocate for diversity and inclusion, has been at the forefront of an effort to get HP's outside law firms to meet diversity standards.

A Harvard Law School graduate with more than 20 years as legal counsel for Fortune 500 companies including Rockwell Automation and The Clorox Co., Rivera is responsible for all aspects of Hewlett Packard Inc.'s legal, compliance, government affairs and ethics. Before joining HP Inc. in November 2015, Rivera served as the chief legal officer and corporate secretary for DaVita HealthCare Partners, a Fortune 250 health-care services company.

81. Geir Ramleth, Former Chief Strategy Officer, SVP, GM, Workspace Services

Citrix Systems

Base Salary: $580,000

Total Compensation: $7,957,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

Ramleth joined Citrix in December 2014, tasked with building, communicating and driving the company's corporate strategy. He left the company just one year later in December 2015.

During his brief time at Citrix, Ramleth drove the company's strategic planning processes, CTO office, Citrix Labs and Accelerator, and the advanced platform team.

During 2015, Citrix's sales climbed to $3.28 billion, up 4.2 percent from $3.14 billion the year prior. Net income skyrocketed to $319.4 million, up 26.9 percent from $251.7 million the year prior. Shares climbed $12.17, or 19.2 percent, to $75.65 in 2015.

80. Eric Schmidt , Executive Chairman

Alphabet

Base Salary: $1,255,000

Bonus: $6,000,000

Total Compensation: $8,038,000

For Year Ended: Dec.31, 2015

Google's longtime CEO, a towering figure in Silicon Valley, built the corporate infrastructure that allowed the search engine vendor to scale into a technological powerhouse in the years after its founding. Schmidt is still the driving force in Mountain View, now overseeing the Alphabet holding company, of which Google is a subsidiary, as Executive Chairman.

Google stock opened in January 2015 at $529.55 and closed at the end of the year, as Alphabet shares, at $778.01.

79. Michael Cordano, President, COO

Western Digital

Base Salary: $725,000

Total Compensation: $8,322,000

For Year Ended: July 1, 2016

Cordano joined Western Digital in 2012 with its acquisition of Hitachi GST, and in October 2015 took over as Western Digital's president and COO. He has a 20-year history in the hard-drive business, getting his start Maxtor.

Despite a new focus on flash drives and other faster-growing storage technologies, Western Digital saw fiscal year 2016 revenue fall to $13.0 billion compared with $14.6 billion the year before. GAAP income was $257 million, compared with $1.5 billion the year before. During that time, per-share prices fell from the mid-$80s to just over $50.

78. Daniel Mead, EVP, President, Strategic Initiatives

Verizon Communications

Base salary: $1,029,000

Total Compensation: $8,329,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

Mead, Verizon's former CEO of its wireless division since 2010, became executive vice president and president of strategic initiatives in 2016 and led the sale of Verizon's wireline operations in California, Florida and Texas to Frontier Communications Corporation before his retirement last year.

Mead was one of the founding senior executives of Verizon Wireless in 2000 and the business unit flourished under his leadership. In 2011, Stratton was tasked with leading Verizon Enterprise Solutions, a new global business unit the time, which included Verizon's wireless and wireline operations for business, government and wholesale customers.

77. Howard Elias, President Global Services, IT

Dell EMC

Base Salary: $782,000

Total Compensation: $8,497,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

Howard Elias served as Co-Chief Integration Officer alongside Rory Read in the run-up to the Dell EMC merger. Once the merger was final, Elias assumed a new role as head of global services and IT. In that position, which is similar to the position he held at EMC before the merger with Dell, Elias is tasked with providing customers with guidance and expertise with an eye toward creating IT value. Elias joined EMC in 2003 from Hewlett-Packard. He held several services, sales and marketing roles at EMC and helped found what would become the VCE converged infrastructure business.

76. Pankaj Patel, Former EVP, Chief Development Officer, Global Engineering

Cisco Systems

Base Salary: $749,000

Total Compensation: $ 8,498,000

For Year Ended: July 30, 2016

Patel is one of Cisco's longtime leading technologists responsible for driving innovation in the company's networking and data center architectures. Patel was responsible for Cisco's $36 billion global technology portfolio and its 26,000 engineers. In January 2016, the networking giant revealed that Patel would be leaving Cisco after 20 years.

75. Jeremy Burton, Chief Marketing Officer

Dell EMC

Base Salary: $800,000

Total Compensation: $8,517,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

Until the merger of Dell and EMC, Burton was president of products and marketing at EMC. Burton, who joined EMC as Chief Marketing Officer in 2010, now holds that title at Dell EMC. Burton holds an engineering degree, and his career is perhaps more varied than many others in the Dell EMC ranks. Before joining EMC, he was president and CEO of Serena Software. He's also been president of Symantec's security and data management business, and vice president of data management at Veritas, where he also served as CMO. Prior to that, Burton spent 10 years in several positions at Oracle, including vice president of products and services marketing.

74. Bradford Smith, President and Chief Legal Officer

Microsoft

Base Salary: $704,000

Total Compensation: $8,611,000

For Year Ended: June 30, 2016

Microsoft shares jumped 16 percent during its FY16 from $44.10 to $51.16 per share with Smith leading Microsoft's team of more than 1,300 legal, business and corporate affairs professionals. Since joining the software giant in 1993, Smith held multiple general counsel roles until he was appointed President Chief Legal Officer in September 2015. Smith is now responsible for Microsoft's corporate, external and legal affairs.

73. Tim Cook, CEO

Apple

Base Salary: $3 million

Total Compensation: $8.7 million

For Year Ended: Sept. 24, 2016

Cook headed up Apple during a year when sales fell short of internal goals, leading to a lower-than-expected payout for him and other top Apple executives. Apple's internal revenue goal for fiscal 2016 had been set at $223.6 billion, but Apple generated $215.6 billion during the 12-month period. The company's net income of $60 billion also missed the internal goal of $60.3 billion. As a result, Cook and other high-paid Apple executives received 89.5 percent of their target payout for the fiscal year.

Cook has been CEO of Apple since August 2011, and prior to that he was Apple's chief operating officer.

72. Renee James, Former President

Intel

Base Salary: $850,000

Total Compensation: $8,808,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

James served as the president of Intel for more than two years until the end of 2015. James spent 28 years at Intel, and spent much of her tenure as president leading Intel's software operations and spearheading some of the company's biggest acquisitions. Intel posted full-year revenue of $55.4 billion for the fiscal year ended Dec. 31, 2015, down 1 percent year over year. James is currently an operating executive at The Carlyle Group.

71. Kelly Kramer, EVP, CFO

Cisco Systems

Base Salary: $749,000

Total Compensation: $9,058,000

For Year Ended: July 30, 2016

Kramer was appointed to Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins "next generation" leadership team in 2015 after only a few months into her new CFO role. For fiscal year 2016, she helped grow Cisco's net income to $10.7 billion, an increase of 20 percent compared with fiscal year 15. Kramer previously spent 20 years at GE Healthcare working across numerous divisions and countries before joining Cisco in 2012 as senior vice president of Corporate Finance.

70. Rami Rahim, CEO

Juniper Networks

Base Salary: $ 1,000,000

Total Compensation: $ 9,422,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

Entering his third year as CEO, Rami Rahim has been pushing the longtime networking vendor to focus innovation around software-defined networking and security. Rahim began as a Juniper engineer in 1997 and climbed through the ranks over the next 17 years until taking the CEO role in November 2014. During Juniper's fiscal year, ending Dec. 31, 2015, Rahim boosted the company's midmarket push and grew its market share in the U.S. service provider space.

69. Christopher Hsu, VP, COO, GM, Software

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Base Salary: $675,026

Total Compensation: $9.49 million

Fiscal Year Ended Oct. 31, 2016

Hsu is slated to become CEO of Micro Focus Group following the $8.8 billion spin-in merger to combine HPE's "noncore" software assets – including its Autonomy and Vertica big data software and its security software portfolio -- with British multinational software maker Micro Focus.

The Micro Focus spin-in merger is expected to be completed by Sept. 1. Hsu, a former managing director of private equity firm behemoth Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, led the blockbuster separation of Hewlett Packard Enterprise and HP Inc. into two separate companies.

Hsu received plaudits from partners for successfully completing the split without any major issues.

68. George Kurian, President, CEO

NetApp

Base Salary: $787,000

Total Compensation: $9,514,000

For Year Ended: April 29, 2016

Kurian joined NetApp in 2011 to manage product operations and took the NetApp reins in June 2015, giving him a unique perspective on the technology issues that plagued the company at the time. Dell's 2016 acquisition of EMC made NetApp the king of independent storage.

NetApp's fiscal 2016 revenue fell from $1.5 billion to $1.4 billion, while its GAAP income moved from $135 million to a loss of $8 million as the company transitioned from legacy to modern solutions. NetApp's share prices during the period fell from the mid-$30s to the low $20s, but have since recovered strongly.

67. Balaji Yelamanchili, EVP and GM, Enterprise Security

Symantec

Base Salary: $537,000

Total Compensation: $9,544,000

For Year Ended: April 2, 2016

Over the past year, Yelamanchili has overseen an evolution of the Symantec enterprise security portfolio, including driving a focus on a Unified Security platform and the blockbuster acquisition of Blue Coat Systems to expand the company's portfolio further into web and cloud security. During that period, Symantec had $3.78 billion in sales in 2016, with a stock price that rose 47 percent to $28.26 per share. Of those sales, Symantec's enterprise security business had sales of $1.93 billion, down 7 percent year over year.

66. John Stephens, Senior EVP, CFO

AT&T

Base salary: $838,000

Total Compensation: $9,599,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

Stephens was named AT&T's senior executive vice president and CFO in 2011 and is responsible for the carrier's financial planning, corporate development, accounting, tax, auditing, treasury, investor relations, and corporate real estate for AT&T. Prior to his promotion six years ago, Stephens served as controller of AT&T from 2001 to 2011.

Under Stephens, AT&T took in more than $42 billion in revenue in 2015. The carrier is reporting significant annual growth driven by its DirecTV and DirecTV Now, its new streaming video service.

65. Alexandre Dayon, President, Chief Product Officer

Salesforce.com

Base Salary: $700,000

Total Compensation: $9,705,000

For Year Ended Jan. 31, 2016

Dayon has been with Salesforce since 2008 as the company's president of products. Dayon, who joined the company through the acquisition of InStranet (where he formerly served as CEO), has focused on creating business value out of technology disruption as the company continued to power through the fiscal year ended January 2016, with an increase in revenue of up to 32 percent year over year for fiscal 2015.

64. John Donovan, Chief Strategy Officer, Group President, Technology and Operations

AT&T

Base salary: $808,000

Total Compensation: $9,738,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

Donovan is responsible for corporate strategy function, technology development, and network deployment and operations for the carrier. Today, Donovan's biggest priority is helping AT&T transition to a software-defined network. The longtime telecom executive in January announced an aggressive goal to virtualize 55 percent of the AT&T network by the end of 2017.

Donovan also heads up AT&T Labs and Foundry initiatives, including IoT solutions development. Prior to his latest appointment, Donovan served as CTO for AT&T.

63. Kevin Mandia, Former President

FireEye

Base Salary: $325,000

Total Compensation: $9,756,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

Mandia joined FireEye in 2014 with the company's blockbuster acquisition of Mandiant, where he was CEO and founder of the incident response company. During 2015, FireEye had sales of $714 million and a stock price that dropped 34 percent year over year to $20.74 per share. Since then, Mandia has been promoted to CEO, replacing Dave DeWalt, and driven a strategy that focuses on developing the FireEye platform, continuing to innovate and pushing toward profitability.

62. David Goulden, President, Enterprise Systems Group

Dell EMC

Base Salary: $850,000

Total Compensation: $9,850,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

Goulden was instrumental in making the acquisitions that built EMC's federation of companies. He's been at EMC since 2002, and was CFO between 2006 and 2014, when he was made CEO of the company's largest unit, EMC Information Infrastructure. Today, Goulden is president of Dell EMC and oversees the company's Infrastructure Solutions Group. The tech industry veteran was an exec at Getronics, Wang Global and Unisys before joining EMC.

61. John Chambers, Executive Chairman

Cisco

Base Salary: $1,019,000

Total Compensation: $9,860,000

For Year Ended: July 30, 2016

Chambers, the former leader of Cisco for more than two decades, is keeping himself busy at the networking giant as executive chairman of the board. Chambers grew the company from a $1.2 billion business in 1995 to $47 billion when he stepped down in July 2015. During FY16, Chambers traveled the globe speaking with political leaders about digitization as well as taking on the role as executive sponsor for Cisco security.

60. Bill McDermott, CEO

SAP

Base Salary: $1,239,000

Total Compensation: $9,998,000

For Year Ended: December 31, 2015

McDermott led his company to double-digit revenue growth in 2015 fueled by a spike in new bookings for its cloud services and adoption of its S/4HANA software. SAP reported that revenue grew 18 percent in 2015 to $22.5 billion, up from $19 billion in 2014. The growth included a 20 percent increase in cloud and software sales to $18.6 billion, as well as 110 percent growth in cloud subscriptions and support to $2.5 billion.

59. John Stankey, CEO, Entertainment Group

AT&T

Base Salary: $942,000

Total Compensation: $10,041,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

Stankey has led marketing and operations for AT&T's consumer entertainment business since 2015, which includes video offerings and content development, as well as high-speed internet products and the carrier's advertising business. Stankey is helping AT&T pivot into the content space and was instrumental in the carrier's 2015 DirecTV acquisition and the massive Time Warner merger that's currently on the table.

An AT&T veteran, Stankey has had several roles within the company, including chief strategy officer, as well as president and CEO of AT&T Business Solutions.

58. David Henshall, EVP, COO, CFO

Citrix Systems

Base Salary: $690,000

Total Compensation: $10,053,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

Henshall has served as Citrix's CFO since April 2003 and added chief operating officer responsibilities in February 2014.

Henshall oversees corporate accounting, strategic development, planning, treasury, tax, audit and investor relations for the vendor. He also leads Citrix's information security, IT, business operations, and real estate teams.

During 2015, Citrix's sales climbed to $3.28 billion, up 4.2 percent from $3.14 billion the year prior. Net income skyrocketed to $319.4 million, up 26.9 percent from $251.7 million the year prior.

Citrix's shares climbed $12.17, or 19.2 percent, to $75.65 during 2015.

57. Ralph de la Vega, CEO, Business Solutions; Vice Chairman

AT&T

Base salary: $940,000

Total Compensation: $10,087,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

Career telecom executive De la Vega is AT&T’s second highest paid executive after CEO Randall Stephenson.

In 2007, de la Vega became CEO of AT&T's Mobility unit and was credited with getting the carrier exclusive rights to the iPhone while at this post. In 2014, de la Vega was promoted to President and CEO of AT&T's combined Mobile & Business Solutions group where he drove the carrier's IoT strategy. de la Vega served as vice chairman of AT&T Inc. and CEO of AT&T Business Solutions and AT&T International in 2016 until he retired on Dec. 31, 2016.

56. Amy Hood, EVP, CFO

Microsoft

Base Salary: $731,000

Total Compensation: $10,375,000

For Year Ended: June 30, 2016

Hood is entering her fourth year as Microsoft's CFO after helping the company increase its net income by 38 percent in fiscal year 16 to $16.8 billion. She was given additional responsibility in 2016 including leadership over the finance team for Microsoft's sales and marketing group after the resignation of COO Kevin Turner. Hood has been with the software giant since 2002 and before that spent eight years with Goldman Sachs.

55. Michael Gregoire, CEO

CA Technologies

Base Salary: $1,000,000

Total Compensation: $10,401,000

For Year Ended: March 31, 2016

For CA, the 2016 fiscal year was a positive one, during which Gregoire added several new members to his executive team, expanded CA's technology portfolio and finished a two-year-long restructuring and revitalizing initiative for the company's partner program.

CA reported a profitable year in 2016, with a net income of $783 million and a gross profit of $3.2 billion.

54. Joe Tucci, Former Chairman, CEO

EMC

Base Salary: $1,000,000

Total Compensation: $10,408,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

Tucci joined EMC in 2000, and became CEO the next year. He became chairman of the company's board in 2006, and helmed the data storage giant as it expanded beyond traditional storage hardware and amassed its "federation" of companies, including VMware, Pivotal, RSA, VCE, Virtustream and others. Tucci left the company once its acquisition by Dell was complete in early September .

In his last years at EMC, Tucci defended the federation and successfully fought off activist investors who wanted the break up the company to boost shareholder value as sales of EMC's legacy hardware dipped and its stock price declined. Tucci collected a "golden parachute" package worth about $27 million when he departed the company.

53. Stephen Luczo, CEO, Chairman

Seagate Technology

Base Salary: $1,246,000

Total Compensation: $10,421,000

For Year Ended: July 1, 2016

Luczo has been a top executive at Seagate since late 1997, except for a four-plus-year period in the early 2000s when he stepped away from the company. While at Seagate, he has seen his company and industry grow to astronomical heights and fall as storage technologies move from hard drives.

Fiscal 2016 was a tough year for Seagate, which saw its revenue drop year over year from $2.7 billion to $2.6 billion. GAAP income during the same period fell from $138 million to $70 million. Share prices over the period dropped from the low $50s to the low $20s, but have recovered since the start of fiscal 2017.

52. Rory Read, Chief Integration Officer

Dell Technologies

Base Salary: $496,000

Total Compensation: $10,545,000

For Year Ended: Jan. 29, 2016

Read took the job as Dell COO in early 2015, and was in that job for a little more than six months when the company announced its intention to acquire EMC and made Read chief integration officer. The tech industry veteran spent more than two decades at IBM, and held top executive positions at Lenovo and AMD before taking the job at Dell, collecting a $750,000 signing bonus in the process. As chief integration officer, Read has pushed an aggressive agenda that includes fully integrating Dell and EMC within a year of the merger's closing in early September.

51. Stephen Milligan, CEO

Western Digital

Base Salary: $1,050,000

Total Compensation: $10,546,000

For Year Ended: July 1, 2016

Milligan has a long history with Western Digital. He joined in 2002, left in 2007 for Hitachi GST, then returned when Western Digital acquired HGST in 2013.

Milligan has presided over a tough time for the hard-drive industry, and for Western Digital as well. Despite moves to shift some focus into flash drives and other faster-growing parts of the storage industry, the company saw fiscal year 2016 revenue fall to $13.0 billion compared with $14.6 billion the year before. GAAP income was $257 million, compared with $1.5 billion the year before. During that time, per-share prices fell from the mid-$80s to just more than $50.

50. Ursula Burns, Chariman, Former CEO

Xerox

Base Salary: $1,100,000

Total Compensation: $10,613,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, '15

Burns has served as Xerox's chairman since May 2010, and was the company's CEO from July 2009 to December 2016.

Burns led Xerox through the 2016 separation of its business process services business – which was renamed Conduent – from its legacy document technology and document outsourcing business. She spent 36 years with Xerox, working her way up from a summer internship in 1980.

During 2015, Xerox's revenue fell to $18.05 billion, down 8 percent from $19.54 billion the year prior. Net income fell to $488 million, down 52 percent from $1.01 billion in 2015.

Xerox's stock tumbled $3.25, or 23.4 percent, to $10.63 during 2015.

No. 49. Glen Post, President, CEO

CenturyLink

Base Salary: $1,250,000

Total Compensation: $10,665,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

Glen Post has worked at CenturyLink for more than four decades and served as the company's CEO for more than a quarter-century.

Post has grown CenturyLink from America's eighth-largest telecom carrier to its third largest over the past decade thanks to its 2009 acquisition of Embarq and 2011 purchase of Qwest. He has also helped build CenturyLink's cloud infrastructure and hosted IT business for enterprise customers.

During 2015, CenturyLink's sales fell to $17.9 billion, down 0.7 percent from $18.03 billion the year prior. Net income skyrocketed to $878 million, up 13.7 percent from $772 million the year prior.

CenturyLink's stock fell $14.67, or 36.8 percent, to $25.16 during 2015.

48. Robert Youngjohns, EVP, Former GM, Software

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Base Salary: $700,027

Total Compensation: $11.2 million

Fiscal Year Ended Oct. 31, 2016

HPE Software's fiscal year 2016 sales dropped 12 percent to $3.19 billion in fiscal year 2016 compared with $3.62 billion in the prior fiscal year.

HPE Software's earnings before taxes in fiscal year 2016 were down 5 percent to $749 million compared with $788 million in the prior fiscal year.

With the $8.8 billion spin-in merger to combine HPE's "noncore" software assets – including its Autonomy and Vertica big data software and its security software portfolio with British multinational software maker Micro Focus, Youngjohns is taking a position as executive vice president strategic business development reporting to HPE CEO Meg Whitman.

47. Reynolds Bish, VP, President, Enterprise Software

Lexmark International

Base Salary: $365,000

Total Compensation: $11,960,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

Bish joined Lexmark in his current role in May 2015 as part of its acquisition of smart process application provider Kofax, where he had served as CEO since 2007.

After Lexmark was acquired by Apex Technology and PAG Asia Capital in November 2016, the company said its enterprise software group would be spun off and rebranded to Kofax.

During 2015, Lexmark's sales fell to $3.55 billion, down 4.3 percent from $3.71 billion the year prior. The company recorded a loss of $40.4 million, down from net income of $79.9 million in 2014.

Lexmark's shares plummeted by $13.40, or 29.2 percent, to $32.45 between May 21, 2015 – Bish's first day at Lexmark – and the end of the year.

46. Keith Block, Vice Chairman, President, COO

Salesforce.com

Base Salary: $1,077,000

Total Compensation: $12,253,000

For Year Ended: Jan. 31, 2016

MISSING SHARE PRICE

Block, who joined Salesforce in 2013, has led the company with a vision of customer transformation. As vice chairman, Block leads the company's distribution organization – including its global sales, channels and alliances. The company continued to power through the fiscal year ended January 2016 with an increase in revenue of up to 32 percent year over year for fiscal 2015. Prior to his gig at Salesforce, Block served as Oracle's executive vice president of North America Sales and Consulting.

45. Antonio Neri, EVP, GM, Enterprise Group

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Base Salary: $725,000

Total Compensation: $12.44 Million

Fiscal Year Ended Oct. 31, 2016

Neri is the driving force behind a hybrid computing software defined data center strategy that includes partnerships with the companies including Arista Sofware and the recent $650 million acquisition of hyper-converged superstar SimpliVity and the $1.09 billion acquisition of all flash storage power house Nimble Storage.

In the fiscal year ended Oct. 31, 2016, HPE's Enterprise Group's sales were down 2 percent to $27.21 billion compared with $27.90 billion in the prior fiscal year.

The Enterprise Group's earnings before were taxes were down 11 percent to $3.45 billion in fiscal year 2016 compared with $3.86 billion in the prior fiscal year.

44. Cathie Lesjak, CFO

HP Inc.

Base Salary: $850,033

Total Compensation: $12.66 million

Fiscal Year Ended Oct. 31, 2016

Under Lesjak's steady financial hand, HP Inc. generated $3.2 billion in net cash and $2.8 billion in free cash flow in fiscal year 2016.

HP returned 72 percent of free cash flow in fiscal year 2016 to shareholders.

Lesjak, who joined Hewlett Packard in 1986, is widely credited with helping HPE CEO Meg Whitman return the company to financial stability after the company was saddled with $12.5 billion in debt in wake of the Autonomy acquisition under former HP CEO Leo Apotheker.

Lesjak, who served as the interim HP Inc. CEO before Apotheker took the helm, opposed the $11 billion acquisition of Autonomy.

43. James Whitehurst, President, CEO

Red Hat

Base Salary: $975,000

Total Compensation: $12,726,000

For Year Ended: Feb. 28, 2016

Whitehurst has more than doubled the company's revenue since coming on board in January 2008. Under Whitehurst's leadership, Red Hat's revenue increased 16 percent year over year for the fiscal year ended February 2016. The company's strong sales led it to become the first $2 billion open-source company, according to Red Hat in March 2016.

42. Kevin Turner, Former COO

Microsoft

Base Salary: $867,000

Total Compensation: $12,957,000

For Year Ended: June 30, 2016

Microsoft's longtime COO and sales leader Turner helped drive sales and marketing efforts for Microsoft Office 365 for more than a decade. Once considered a candidate to replace former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Turner left the software giant in July to become the CEO of Citadel Securities, a division of Citadel LLC. However, after only seven months at Citadel, Turner recently departed and has yet to announce a new job.

41. Martin Schroeter, SVP, CFO

IBM

Base Salary: $693,000

Total Compensation: $13.1 million

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

Schroeter has served as senior vice president and chief financial officer of IBM since January 2014, and before that was general manager of IBM Global Financing. During IBM's fourth-quarter 2015 earnings call, Schroeter said that cloud, analytics, mobile, social and security represented 35 percent of IBM's revenue during the quarter, compared with 22 percent two years earlier. "Cloud is now a $10 billion business for us," he said. "This made us the largest cloud provider in 2015, which is what you'd expect, given our extensive relationships in enterprise IT and incumbency in the data center, positioning us to help our clients implement hybrid cloud environments."

40. René Bonvanie, CMO

Palo Alto Networks

Base Salary: $338,000

Total Compensation: $13,114,000

For Year Ended: July 31, 2016

Bonvanie joined Palo Alto Networks in 2009 as chief marketing officer, helping drive the vendor to be a marketing powerhouse in the security space. He previously served as senior vice president of Serena Software. In 2016, Palo Alto Networks saw sales rise drastically, up 49 percent year over year to $1.4 billion and its stock increase 29 percent year over year to $149.64 per share.

39. John Kelly, SVP, IBM Cognitive Solutions & IBM Research

IBM

Base Salary: $676,000

Total Compensation: $13,64,0000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

Kelly became senior vice president of IBM Cognitive Solutions in 2015, adding the division to a set of responsibilities that also includes heading up IBM Research, which he joined in 2007. Kelly has overseen the launch of industry-specific initiatives at IBM, including the introduction in April 2015 of Watson Health, a cognitive computing solution for the health-care industry.

38. John Fowler, EVP, Systems

Oracle

Base Salary: $700,000

Total Compensation: $13,819,000

For Year Ended: May 31, 2016

Fowler is Oracle's leading light when it comes to hardware, responsible for the company's portfolio of systems solutions that includes its SPARC and x86-based servers, as well as its networking, storage and operating system products.

A longtime Sun Microsystems executive, Fowler came to Oracle when the company was acquired in 2010. He had served as CTO for Sun's software division, and led the company's systems group.

Oracle's converged hardware systems, developed by Fowler's group, are vital in the company's promotion of its product line as an ideal hybrid solution -- functioning exactly the same on-premise as in the cloud.

37. Pat Gelsinger, CEO

VMware

Base Salary: $1,000,000

Total Compensation: $14,359,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

Gelsinger, along with VMware, the company he joined MOR ETHAN four years ago, is now the public, as in stock market, face of Dell Technologies since privately held Dell acquired EMC. It's a role that has served both Gelsinger and VMware well as the company continues to lead the software-defined everything charge.

For fiscal year 2015, total revenue rose 9 percent over the previous year to $6.6 billion, while GAAP income hit $997 million, or $2.34 per share, up 15 percent. Share prices, however, fared less well, falling from a midyear high of about $90 per share to end the year at around $57.

36. Michael Brown, Former CEO

Symantec

Base Salary: $1,000,000

Total Compensation: $14,392,000

For Year Ended: April 2, 2016

Michael Brown served as CEO of Symantec from 2014 until 2016, when he was replaced by current CEO Greg Clark upon the completion of the company's blockbuster acquisition of Blue Coat Systems. As CEO, Brown helped lead Symantec through the first phase of its transformation, including the divestiture of its Veritas storage business, a new product road map for enterprise security, cost structure improvement, executive leadership appointments and returning cash to shareholders. Symantec had $3.78 billion in sales in 2016, with a stock price that rose 47 percent to $28.26 per share.

35. Michael Nefkens, EVP, GM, Enterprise Services

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Base Salary: $700,027

Total Compensation: $14.57 million

Fiscal Year Ended Oct. 31, 2016

Nefkens' total compensation in fiscal year 2016 increased by 133 percent to $14.57 million compared with $6.24 million in the year ago period.

Nefkens' base salary, meanwhile, remained unchanged in fiscal 2016 at $700,027.

In the fiscal year ended Oct. 31, 2016, HPE's sales were down 5 percent to $18.87 billion, compared with $19.8 billion in the prior year.

HPE Services' earnings before taxes for the fiscal year ended Oct. 31 were up 44 percent to $1.4 billion compared with $1.0 billion in the prior fiscal year.

The 133 percent increase in total compensation comes with Nefkens selected as the top sales and business development executive for DXC Technology - the blockbuster service behemoth created from the spin-in merger of HP Enterprise Services and CSC.

HPE is set to complete the tax-free spin-in merger of its $20 billion enterprise services business with CSC as of April 1.

34. Brian Krzanich, CEO

Intel

Base Salary: $1,100,000

Total Compensation: $14,634,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

Krzanich, who was elected the CEO of Intel in May 2013, is a long-time employee, starting his career with the company in 1982. Under Krzanich's leadership, the company posted full-year revenue of $55.4 billion for the fiscal year ended Dec. 31, 2015, down 1 percent year over year. Intel made strides during that year by introducing an Internet of Things platform and unveiling new networking, enterprise-cloud and high-performance computing offerings.

33. Bridget van Kralingen, SVP, IBM Global Industry Platforms

IBM

Base Salary: $665,000

Total Compensation: $14,819,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

In August 2016, van Kralingen became senior vice president of the newly created Industry Platforms division at IBM. Prior to that, van Kralingen had served as senior vice president for IBM Global Business Services since 2012. During 2015, IBM Global Business Services generated $17.17 billion in revenue, down 12 percent from $19.51 billion in 2014.

32. Frank Calderoni, Former EVP, Operations, CFO

Red Hat

Base Salary: $475,000

Total Compensation: $15,351,000

For Year Ended: Feb. 28, 2016

Calderoni, who has more than 30 years of experience in the tech industry under his belt, was named Red Hat's executive vice president in 2015. He had previous experience working as an executive at Cisco, QLogic and SanDisk. While Calderoni was executive vice president, Red Hat's revenue increased 16 percent year over year for the fiscal year ended February 2016. As of January 2017, Calderoni left Red Hat to become president and CEO of Anaplan.

31: Michael Rhodin, SVP, IBM Watson Business Development

IBM

Base Salary: $630,000

Total Compensation: $15,559,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

Rhodin became senior vice president for IBM Watson Business Development in February 2016, and before that was senior vice president of the IBM Watson Group since early 2014. Watson, which includes solutions, services and apps that are based on cognitive systems, is a major focus of IBM's reinvention of its business for the modern computing era. IBM did not offer details on the financial performance of Watson in 2015.

30. Mark Templeton, Former President, CEO)

Citrix Systems

Base Salary: $740,000

Total Compensation: $15,845,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

Templeton worked at Citrix for more than two decades, serving as president and CEO of the software company from June 2001 to October 2015.

Templeton's retirement was announced in June 2015 in the wake of pressure from activist investor Elliott Management.

During the first nine months of 2015, Citrix's sales climbed to $2.37 billion, up 3.5 percent from $2.29 billion the year prior. Net income soared to $188.1 million, up 20.2 percent from $156.5 million the year prior.

Citrix's shares jumped $12.44, or 19.6 percent, to $75.92 between the start of 2015 and Oct. 20, Templeton's last day as president and CEO.

29. Chuck Robbins, CEO

Cisco

Base Salary: $1,172,000

Total Compensation: $16,034,600

For Year Ended: July 30, 2016

Cisco CEO Robbins went on an acquisition and innovative tear during the networking giant's 2016 fiscal year, acquiring a total of 11 companies including Jasper Technologies, CliQr Technologies and CloudLock. Robbins boosted Cisco revenue around collaboration and security by double digits for the second half of fiscal year 2016 year over year, while also undertaking a massive engineering restructuring to refocus research and development around the Internet of Things, cloud, applications and next-generation networking.

28. Carl Eschenbach, President, COO

VMware

Base Salary: $730,000

Total Compensation: $16,365,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

Eschenbach left VMware in early 2016 after a 13-year run to become a partner at Sequoia Capital.

Fiscal year 2015 saw VMware’s total revenue increase 9 percent over the previous year to $6.6 billion, while GAAP income for 2015 hit $997 million, or $2.34 per share, up 15 percent. Share prices, however, fared less well, falling from a mid-year high of about $90 per share to end the year at around $57.

27. Dave DeWalt, Former CEO

FireEye

Base Salary: $350,000

Total Compensation: $16,378,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

DeWalt joined FireEye in 2012 as CEO from McAfee, where he was president and CEO. At FireEye, DeWalt was essential in helping the company pioneer the market for advanced threat protection and become one of the largest security vendors, with $714 million in revenue in 2015. The company's stock in 2015 was down 34 percent year over year to $20.74 per share. Last summer, FireEye said DeWalt had been replaced by current CEO Kevin Mandia. DeWalt remained with the company as executive chairman until January 2016, when he resigned.

26. Steffan Tomlinson, CFO

Palo Alto Networks

Base Salary: $394,000

Total Compensation: $16,380,000

For Year Ended: July 31, 2016

Tomlinson joined Palo Alto Networks in 2012 from Aruba Networks, where he was also CFO and helped oversee the company's IPO. Since joining Palo Alto Networks, Tomlinson has overseen the network security vendor's finance, accounting, IT and manufacturing functions. During the past year, Palo Alto Networks has seen sales rise 49 percent year over year to $1.4 billion and its stock increase 29 percent year over year to $149.64 per share.

25. Omid Kordestani, Former SVP, Chief Business Officer

Alphabet

Base Salary: $488,000

Total Compensation: $16,964,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

Kordestani, who joined Google back in 1999, is credited with playing a leading role in developing the company's initial business model and developing its sales and field operations. After some time away from the company, he took the executive position of CBO in July 2014.

Kordestani oversaw business operations leading up to Google's restructuring as parent company Alphabet in August 2015. A few months later, he left Google to take the position of executive chairman at Twitter.

24. Satya Nadella, CEO, Director

Microsoft

Base Salary: $1,200,000

Total Compensation: $17,692,000

For Year Ended: June 30, 2016

As Microsoft's leader for the past three years, Nadella HAS bolstered the company's Azure sales in fiscal year 2016, including a 102 percent growth year over year for the IaaS and PaaS solution during its fiscal fourTH quarter. Nadella also helped the software giant in growing its net income by 38 percent in fiscal year 2016 to $16.8 billion compared with $12.2 billion in fiscal year 2015. In one of the biggest acquisitions of 2016, Microsoft acquired LinkedIn for $26.2 billion, opening the door to tighter integrations between Office 365 and Dynamics ERP/CRM with the 433 million-member social media platform.

23. Lowell McAdam, Chairman, CEO

Verizon Communications

Base salary: $1,662,000

Total Compensation: $18,344,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

McAdam became CEO of Verizon Communications in 2011 after serving as president and COO, overseeing Verizon's wireline and wireless operations. McAdam also was responsible for internal services, technology management and CIO functions prior to his promotion.

Over the past six years as CEO, McAdam has been pushing Verizon into new markets, such as IoT, content, and mobile entertainment. With McAdam at the helm, Verizon purchased AOL in 2015, and the carrier also has pending acquisition plans on the table to take over Internet giant Yahoo for $4.83 billion.

22. Bob Calderoni, President (Interim), CEO, Executive Chairman

Citrix Systems

Base Salary: $431,000

Total Compensation: $19,631,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

Calderoni served as Citrix's interim president and CEO from October 2015 to January 2016, and has been executive chairman of the software company's board of directors since July 2015.

Calderoni joined Citrix's board in June 2014, five months after he departed Ariba, where he had been CEO for more than 13 years.

During 2015, Citrix's sales climbed to $3.28 billion, up 4.2 percent from $3.14 billion the year prior. Net income skyrocketed to $319.4 million, up 26.9 percent from $251.7 million the year prior.

Citrix's shares climbed $12.17, or 19.2 percent, to $75.65 during 2015.

21. Ginni Rometty, Chairman, President, CEO

IBM

Base Salary: $1,550,000

Total Compensation: $19,822,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

Rometty is a veteran of IBM--she started there in 1981--who became president and CEO of the company in January 2012. During 2015, IBM saw revenue decline to $81.74 billion, down 12 percent from $92.79 billion in 2014. Net income rose, however, to $13.19 billion in 2015 from $12.02 billion in 2014. "As we transform to a cognitive solutions and cloud platform company, we are well positioned to continue delivering greater value to our clients and returning capital to our shareholders," Rometty said in announcing IBM's 2015 results.

20. Yang Yuanqing, Chairman, CEO

Lenovo

Base Salary: $1,369,000

Total Compensation: $22,644,000

For Year Ended: March 31, 2016

Yang joined Lenovo as a 20-something student in the late 1980s, and has been the company's CEO since 2001. He is the driving force behind the firm's push to expand its reach, spearheading the company's acquisition of Google's Motorola unit for $2.9 billion and IBM's x86 server business for $2.1 billion.

19. Luca Maestri, SVP, CFO

Apple

Base Salary: $1,000,000

Total Compensation: $22,804,000

For Year Ended: Sept. 24, 2016

Maestri oversees areas including accounting and analysis of Apple's finances. During the earnings call for Apple's fiscal fourth quarter 2016, Maestri pointed to business adoption of Apple products as one promising area for the company, citing data from the rollout of Macs through Apple's partnership with IBM. Maestri said 90,000 Macs were in use as of Sept. 24 by IBM employees, and IT management of the computers has been one-third the cost of managing Windows PCs.

18. Bruce Sewell, SVP, General Counsel, Secretary

Apple

Base Salary: $1,000,000

Total Compensation: $22,808,000

For Year Ended: Sept. 24, 2016

Sewell heads up all legal matters for Apple, including areas such as intellectual property and litigation, which were both major issues during the 12 months ended Sept. 24. One top issue was Apple's long-running patent dispute with Samsung, in which Apple alleged Samsung stole features and design aspects of the iPhone. One setback for Apple during fiscal 2016 came when a federal appeals court sided with Samsung, in February 2016, nixing a $120 million payment that Samsung had previously been ordered to make to Apple.

Sewell joined Apple in 2009, and before that he served as Intel's general counsel.

17. Dan Riccio, SVP, Hardware Engineering

Apple

Base Salary: $1,000,000

Total Compensation: $22,808,000

For Year Ended: Sept. 24, 2016

Riccio leads the engineering teams for Apple's major hardware products -- iPhone, iPad and Mac. During fiscal 2016, which ended Sept. 24, the iPhone business line dropped 12 percent to $136.7 billion in revenue from the same period a year earlier. The iPad line, meanwhile, slid 11 percent to $20.63 billion in sales during the 12-month period, and the Mac line fell 10 percent to $22.83 billion in sales.

Riccio has worked for Apple since 1998, when he joined as vice president of product design.

16. Eddy Cue, SVP, Internet Software, Services

Apple

Base Salary: $1,000,000

Total Compensation: $22,808,000

For Year Ended: Sept. 24, 2016

One bright spot in Apple's fiscal 2016 results was the company's services business -- which includes the App Store, iTunes, Apple Music and other services -- and which Cue oversees. Apple's Services business generated $24.35 billion in revenue during the 12-month period ended Sept. 24, an uptick of 22 percent from $19.9 billion during the same period a year earlier.

Cue has been with Apple since 1989, and helped launch services for the company including the iTunes Store in 2003 and the App Store in 2008.

15. Angela Ahrendts, SVP, Retail

Apple

Base Salary: $1,000,000

Total Compensation: $22,903,000

For Year Ended: Sept. 24, 2016

Ahrendts oversees Apple's physical retail stores as well as its online store, which saw a disappointing 12 months for sales. Apple's three largest product lines -- iPhone, iPad and Mac - dropped a combined 11.5 percent to $180.16 billion in sales for Apple's fiscal 2016, which ended Sept. 24. That led Apple's total annual revenue to decline for the first time since 2001.

Ahrendts has been in the role since 2014, and before that was CEO of fashion retailer Burberry.

14. Randall Stephenson, Chairman, President, CEO

AT&T

Base salary: $1,742,000

Total Compensation: $25,146,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

Stephenson has spent his entire career in the telecom business, starting out at Southwestern Bell Telephone in 1982. The executive moved up the ranks with Southwestern Bell to eventually become senior executive vice president and CFO, and then COO until 2007 when he was named CEO of Dallas-based AT&T following its acquisition of Southwestern Bell in 2005.

Under Stephenson's direction, AT&T has made several large-scale acquisitions, including DirecTV in 2015 for $49 billion. The carrier giant also has a $85.4 billion deal on the table right now for media powerhouse Time Warner.

13. Dion Weisler, President, CEO

HP Inc.

Base Salary: $1.2 million

Total Compensation: $28.69 million

Fiscal Year Ended Oct. 31, 2016

Weisler's total compensation in fiscal year 2016 was up 53 percent to $28.69 million from $18.72 million in the prior fiscal year.

Weisler's base salary in fiscal year 2016 jumped 55 percent to $1.2 million, up from $774,999 in the prior fiscal year.

The 53 percent total compensation increase came with HP Inc.'s shares up 5 percent from $13.83 at the start of the fiscal year on Nov. 2, 2015, to $14.49 on Oct. 31, 2016.

Weisler is credited with driving an innovation revolution at HP Inc. that includes the world's thinnest laptop – the HP Spectre -- to an A3 printer product line and a JetFusion 3-D printer launch that redefined the economics in the production manufacturing market.

HP Inc.'s sales in fiscal year 2016 were down 6 percent to $48.23 billion compared with $51.46 billion in the prior fiscal year. Net earnings in the fiscal year declined 45 percent to $2.49 billion compared with $4.55 billion in the prior fiscal year. HP Inc. returned $2.0 billion to shareholders in the form of dividends and share repurchases in fiscal year 2016.

12. Ruth Porat, CFO

Alphabet

Base Salary: $395,000

Bonus: $5,000,000

Total Compensation: $31,051,000

For Year Ended: Dec.31, 2015

This former Morgan Stanley executive, with a long and accomplished career in investment banking, took over the CFO position at Google from Patrick Pichette in May 2015.

The high-profile job came just before the company's restructuring into new holding company Alphabet.

In her first full quarter with Google, which happened to be the last full quarter before the split to several subsidiaries under the new parent company, Google saw $18.68 billion in sales. By the next quarter, ending Dec. 31, 2015, Alphabet took in $21.3 billion in revenue and the stock price climbed by 20 percent.

11. Nir Zuk, CTO

Palo Alto Networks

Base Salary: $388,000

Total Compensation: $32,221,000

For Year Ended: July 31, 2016

As co-founder and chief technology officer at Palo Alto Networks, Zuk is a technical visionary who has helped the security vendor establish the market for next-generation firewalls and pivot the company to be one of the leading platform security vendors. That platform growth has continued to drive rising sales at Palo Alto Networks, up 49 percent year over year to $1.4 billion, and an increasing stock price, up 29 percent year over year to $149.64 during that period.

10. Marc Benioff, Chairman of the Board, CEO

Salesforce.com

Base Salary: $1,550,000

Total Compensation: $33,363,000

For Year Ended: Jan. 31, 2016

Benioff founded Salesforce.com in 1999 to pave the way for a new kind of enterprise software company based on the pay-as-you-go business model. Under his leadership, Salesforce has grown to a Fortune 500 company and the largest CRM company. The company continued to power through the fiscal year ended January 2016, with an increase in revenue of up to 32 percent year over year for fiscal 2015.

9. Meg Whitman, President, CEO

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Base Salary: $1.5 million

Total Compensation: $35.56 million

Fiscal Year Ended Oct. 31, 2016

Whitman's total compensation in fiscal year 2016 jumped 108 percent to $35.56 million, up from $17.13 million in the prior fiscal year.

Whitman's base salary of $1.5 million, however, remained the same in fiscal year 2016.

The 108 percent total compensation increase came with HPE's shares soaring 55 percent from $14.49 at the start of the fiscal year on Nov. 2, 2015, to $22.47 on Oct. 31, 2016.

Whitman is widely credited with returning financial stability and partner confidence to HP Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise in the wake of the ouster of former HP CEO Leo Apotheker in 2011.

HPE's sales during the fiscal year ended Oct. 31, 2016, were down 4 percent to $50.1 billion compared with $52.1 billion in the year-ago period.

HPE's net earnings for the fiscal year ended Oct. 31, 2016, were $3.16 billion, up 28 percent from $2.46 billion in the year-ago period.

HPE ended the fiscal year with $7.6 billion in cash – a dramatic turnaround from the $12.5 billion in debt Whitman inherited on the balance sheet when she took the helm in 2011.

8. Thomas Kurian, President, Product Development

Oracle

Base Salary: $800,000

Total Compensation: $35,743,000

For Year Ended: May 31, 2016

Kurian has been in Redwood City for 20 years, during that tenure holding many of Oracle's critically important engineering and product positions. Now he's taking the lead in repurposing Oracle's legacy products in the cloud, reporting directly to company founder and CTO Larry Ellison.

Kurian has been a driving force in developing Oracle's business applications, especially the Fusion Middleware suite that spans developer tools, integration services and business intelligence products.

7. Gil Shwed, CEO, Director

Check Point Software Technologies

Base Salary: $14,000

Total Compensation: $35,744,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

As a founder and CEO, Shwed has helped lead Check Point Software Technologies to be one of the leading firewall companies in the market, as well as helping the company transform to meet emerging security market needs around mobile, cloud and more. Check Point has continued to see success in the ever-competitive security market, with its sales of $1.74 billion and its stock up 29 percent year over year to $98.96 during that period.

6. Mark Anderson, President

Palo Alto Networks

Base Salary: $694,000

Total Compensation: $37,966,000

For Year Ended: July 31, 2016

Anderson joined Palo Alto Networks in 2012 from F5 Networks, ascending to the role of president in August of last year. During the past year, when Anderson was executive vice president of worldwide sales and then president, he has been at the helm of high growth at Palo Alto Networks, expanding the company's security platform and seeing sales rise 49 percent year over year to $1.4 billion. The company's stock rose 29 percent year over year to $149.64 per share during that period.

5. Mark Hurd, Co-CEO

Oracle

Base Salary: $950,000

Total Compensation: $41,122,000

For Year Ended: May 31, 2016

Hurd landed at Oracle in 2010 after leaving his high-profile job as Hewlett-Packard CEO. Larry Ellison was a longtime supporter, and Oracle's founder and chairman rewarded Hurd by seeing him elevated to take his place as chief executive, along with co-CEO Safra Catz, in September 2014.

In the fiscal year that started in June 2015, Oracle stock slightly slipped from $43.49 a share to $40.20. Revenue in that period also declined from $10.71 billion to $10.59 billion.

4. Safra Catz, Co-CEO

Oracle

Base Salary: $950,000

Total Compensation: $49,944,000

For Year Ended: May 31, 2016

This one-time investment banker worked her way up to the CFO position at Oracle, then was named a co-CEO, along with Mark Hurd, when founder Larry Ellison stepped down from the position in September 2014.

Before taking the top job, Catz was widely seen as the person driving decisions on prominent acquisitions like Sun Microsystems and PeopleSoft.

In the fiscal year that started in June 2015, Oracle stock slightly slipped from $43.49 a share to $40.20. Revenue in that period also declined from $10.71 billion to $10.59 billion.

3. Larry Ellison, CTO

Oracle

Base Salary: $1

Total Compensation: $41,519,000

For Year Ended: May 31, 2016

The man who famously described talk of cloud computing as "gibberish" and "insane" has been leading Oracle's aggressive charge to become a leading cloud vendor since taking the top technical job at the software giant.

Oracle founder and chairman Larry Ellison looks to be enjoying the CTO position he filled in September 2014 after stepping down as CEO.

In the fiscal year that started in June 2015, Oracle stock slightly slipped from $43.49 a share to $40.20. Revenue in that period also declined from $10.71 billion to $10.59 billion.

2. Patrick Pichette, Former Google SVP, CFO

Alphabet

Base Salary: $652,500

Total Compensation: $56,617,000

For Year Ended: Dec. 31, 2015

Pichette left Google in May 2015 before the restructuring that created parent company Alphabet. He'd served as Google's CFO for seven years and said it was time to shift focus from career to family.

As Google's financial leader, Pichette was widely credited for imposing spending discipline on a company that often irked Wall Street by throwing money at fantastic moonshots. After retiring, he stayed on as an adviser to Alphabet execs.

Google stock, opening at $526.40 on Jan. 1, 2015, only advanced slightly in Pichette's final months, but has surged by almost 300 points since.

1. Sundar Pichai, Google CEO

Alphabet

Base Salary: $652,500

Total Compensation: $100,632,000

For Year Ended: Dec.31, 2015

In August 2015, when Google split into several sister companies under newly created parent Alphabet, Pichai was elevated to lead the Google subsidiary behind the company's core internet-related businesses.

Pichai had been a superstar at Google for years, spearheading product development in the Chrome and Apps divisions. Since his promotion, he's emphasized the advent of artificial intelligence and Google's potential to lead that emerging market.

In the quarter before Alphabet's creation, ending September 2015, Google saw $18.68 billion in sales. By the next quarter, Google, generating 98 percent of Alphabet's total sales, notched $21.2 billion in revenue.