The Top 25 IT Innovators Of 2025
The ability to drive innovation for technology products, solutions and services is the hallmark of CRN’s Top 25 Innovators of 2025 list.
The most forward-thinking technology executives know that 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.
These executives know such innovations are especially important with the IT world going through a wave of change caused by businesses’ focus on, and questions about, artificial intelligence, threat detection, cloud software and more.
Just as important, these 25 and their 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 2025.
Be sure to also check out the complete list of CRN’s Top 100 Executives Of 2025.
25. Gagan Singh
CEO
Blackpoint Cyber
Since joining Blackpoint Cyber in June, Singh has been leading the initiative to scale up its new unified security posture and response platform, CompassOne. The platform builds on Blackpoint’s MSP-focused MDR offering with new features for security posture rating and cloud posture.
24. Ed Meyercord
President, CEO
Extreme Networks
Meyercord has led the small-but-mighty Extreme Networks for the last 16 years. The company is making strides against its networking rivals with an increasing win rate and a new AI-infused platform that boils down networking and security management for partners and customers.
23. Jason Magee
CEO
Cynet
Magee is leading Cynet into a new era, leveraging his proven track record of scaling companies and empowering partners. Focused on go-to-market expansion and platform evolution, he is positioning Cynet to stay ahead of threats while making cybersecurity intuitive, accessible and partner-driven.
22. Sanjay Mirchandani
Director, President, CEO
Commvault
Mirchandani, who transformed Commvault from a classic data backup and recovery vendor to a leading provider of data resiliency and management technologies, was early in recognizing the need to add cybersecurity protection to data infrastructure, which has led to the creation of the Commvault Cloud Platform.
21. Charles Giancarlo
Chairman, CEO
Pure Storage
Pure Storage under Giancarlo has had a cloud epiphany, with the channel-first company’s hardware and software now cloud-native. Pure Storage most recently introduced the Enterprise Data Cloud, which takes data management beyond the array level to build a cloud across multiple arrays.
20. François Locoh-Donou
President, CEO
F5
Longtime tech leader Locoh-Donou has been at the helm of F5 for the past eight years. In that time, he has shepherded the application delivery and security specialist through some major transformations, including F5’s most recent return to its roots with its refreshed application delivery and security strategy.
19. John Pagliuca
CEO
N-able
Pagliuca is driving N-able’s mission to empower MSPs through innovation and trust. Under his leadership, N-able is delivering offerings that embrace AI to boost automation and efficiency. His clear commitment to partner success is enabling MSPs to scale services, grow upmarket and stay secure.
18. Ken Xie
Co-Founder, Chairman, CEO
Fortinet
In a portfolio expansion initiative spearheaded by Xie, Fortinet has seen a growth surge in its newer product lines, including SASE and SecOps. Recent FortiSASE upgrades have focused on improvements to remote browser isolation and performance enhancements for SD-WAN.
17. David Friend
Co-Founder, President, CEO
Wasabi Technologies
Under Friend’s leadership, cloud storage developer Wasabi has continued to bolster its position as an alternative to the major hyperscalers. Wasabi has sought to stand out in cloud object storage by offering more attractive pricing as well as differentiating on data availability and durability.
16. Sal Sferlazza
CEO
NinjaOne
Sferlazza has steered the company from its early RMM roots into a $1.9 billion endpoint management player. His product-first mindset and engineering background reflect his mission to reduce IT complexity while building seamless integrations—making it not just a tool but a key part of every IT stack.
15. Jed Ayres
CEO
ControlUp
With a keen eye for capturing market opportunity, Ayres has put ControlUp in a leadership position in the Digital Employee Experience market. Total business transacted through partners increased to 68 percent of sales in 2024, up from 58 percent, with an 80 percent increase in global sales pipeline.
14. Sanjib Sahoo
EVP, President, Global Platform Group
Ingram Micro
Sahoo is the face of Ingram Micro’s Xvantage platform and is leading the distributor’s transformation into a global platform ecosystem. His leadership has already delivered transformative results, modernizing legacy systems and scaling platform capabilities across 16 countries.
13. Rami Rahim
EVP, President, GM, HPE Networking
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Rahim, Juniper Networks’ CEO for over a decade, has been focused on two huge opportunities: AI for networking and networking for AI. Now he is taking on his next challenge as the leader of HPE’s $9.6 billion networking business following the HPE-Juniper deal.
12. Ryan McCurdy
SVP, President, North America
Lenovo
McCurdy is a strong advocate for channel partners, who he says have been “integral” to the company’s success across its device, infrastructure and services businesses. To help partners seize on PC refresh opportunities, he is taking a use-case-driven approach to promoting AI PCs.
11. Bruce McCully
CEO
Galactic Advisors
Key Galactic Advisors services that McCully has spearheaded have included third-party assessments, security consulting, penetration testing and compliance. A recent focus has been on helping MSPs with documenting the security measures they are implementing for their clients.
10. Dave Baggett
Founder, CEO
Inky
Under Baggett, recent major innovations for Inky have included new capabilities that utilize GenAI to analyze every email intended for a customer’s inbox. The capabilities in Inky’s behavioral email security platform aim to stand apart from other tools that only analyze a portion of emails using GenAI.
9. Sheila Rohra
CEO
Hitachi Vantara
Rohra aims to become the leader in “energy-efficient, sustainable data management through the thoughtful application of AI and innovative infrastructure solutions.” This includes the new Hitachi EverFlex AI Data Hub as a Service and cyber resilience capabilities in its Virtual Storage Platform One.
8. Jeff Ready
Co-Founder, CEO
Scale Computing
Ready has been a thundering champion of the everyman who has been put off by Broadcom’s tactics around its acquisition of VMware, enticing channel partners with incentives and investments in huge upgrades to Scale’s platform designed to meet the AI era.
7. Yotam Segev
Co-Founder, CEO
Cyera
Segev has overseen massive growth at Cyera for its data security posture management offering, which specializes in providing rapid visibility into data and identity access through an agentless approach. Recent additions to the Cyera platform have included AI-powered capabilities for data loss prevention.
6. Charles Liang
Founder, Chairman, President, CEO
Supermicro
Liang is making sure Supermicro is offering the latest components for server and storage system builders. And thanks in part to his close relationship with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, he keeps his team first in line when it comes to access to technology for building AI infrastructure.
5. Danny Jenkins
Co-Founder, CEO
ThreatLocker
Under Jenkins’ leadership, ThreatLocker has been moving aggressively to expand its portfolio in a bid to make it easier for MSPs and customers to adopt a deny-by-default cybersecurity strategy. Recent moves have included new products and capabilities in patch management, web filtering and cloud control.
4. Sridhar Ramaswamy
CEO
Snowflake
In his 18 months as CEO, Ramaswamy has overseen Snowflake’s ongoing evolution from its cloud data management roots to providing a comprehensive lineup of analytics, AI, data engineering and data-intensive applications—all while maintaining one of the IT industry’s fastest growth rates.
3. Matt Hicks
President, CEO
Red Hat
With Hicks at the helm, the open-source standard-bearer is keeping the technology at the forefront of how AI becomes democratized, secure and scalable in a business context while also seeing a surge in new business from legacy virtualization customers seeking a better way to future-proof IT environments for the AI era.
2. Cristiano Amon
President, CEO
Qualcomm
Under Amon, Qualcomm is making its biggest effort yet to challenge Intel and AMD’s x86 duopoly with its energy-efficient Snapdragon X Series CPUs for AI PCs. But the CEO has wider ambitions, with plans for Qualcomm to re-enter the server CPU market, boosted by a new partnership with Nvidia.
1. Renen Hallak
Founder, CEO
Vast Data
AI has proven to be a data-hungry technology. Data must not only be stored, but also ingested, annotated, preprocessed and transformed before it can be used to train AI models.
Under Hallak, Vast Data is a leader in feeding the AI beast. The company has over time moved from its roots as a flash storage vendor to build a data platform that can reach into all of a company’s structured and unstructured data to target the full array of AI use cases.
And that shift is clearly working.
In late 2023, only four years after exiting stealth, the company said it passed $1 billion in cumulative software bookings. Two years later, that figure doubled. The company’s technical prowess has not gone unnoticed, with Nvidia and Dell Technologies investing in the company.
Hallak also knows the value of partners and has committed Vast Data to being a channel-only vendor.