John Chambers, President and CEO / Cisco Systems

Chambers, who lists His Majesty King Abdullah II of Jordan and former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell among the most interesting people he has met, is one of the most respected, influential CEOs in the industry. His clout garners audiences with top world and business leaders, and his strategy for Cisco helps shape the industry.

In his nearly 11 years at the helm of the San Jose, Calif.-based company, Chambers has cultivated Cisco into a $24.8 billion company, more than 20 times the size it was in 1995 when he took on the role. Perhaps that&'s why when Chambers ushers Cisco into new markets, as he did earlier this year when the company entered the WLAN switch space via its $450 million acquisition of Airespace, the industry sits up and takes notice.

“He sets the vision and the philosophy of the organization,” says Tim Hebert, COO of Atrion Networking, a solution provider in Warwick, R.I. “Cisco is coming out with products that change the marketplace and validate it, therefore making it easier for us to sell.”

In addition to new technology segments, Chambers also is steering Cisco and its channel partners to put more focus on the SMB and vertical market customer segments. This summer Cisco continued overtures to court SMB solution providers when it added D&H Distributing as a partner, its first new distributor in 10 years. The company also launched the Solutions Incentive Program to encourage partners to pursue vertical markets.

Chambers called on solution providers attending the Cisco Partner Summit earlier this year to work with the vendor to tackle vertical markets. “There&'s really no change more dramatic, if we do our job right as a team, than moving from horizontal networking sales [with] storage and security and wireless to really understanding our customers&' businesses and beginning to talk about it by vertical,” he said.