These are the men and women who are pushing boundaries and turning the IT market on its ear.
The Top 25 Disrupters of 2024 have been answering the call from partners and customers to help companies improve their efficiency while also modernizing their IT environments.
Whether it’s helping customers and partners to accelerate their migration to the cloud, get the most out of their data or secure their employees—wherever those workers might be—these executives have been stepping up to meet the massive needs in the market. And notably, these vendors and distributors have done so with a strong focus on elevating and expanding the opportunities for solution and service provider partners.
Our list includes executives who’ve continually shown themselves to be game-changers in key industry segments ranging from cybersecurity and data platforms, to data center infrastructure and devices, to cloud software and more.
What follows is our list of the Top 25 Technology Disrupters of 2024.
Be sure to also check out the complete list of CRN’s Top 100 Executives of 2024.
25. Fred Voccola
CEO
Kaseya
Voccola could disrupt any industry with his direct-to-the-point attitude and tell-it-like-it-is style. But for the last decade or so, he has been focused on building Kaseya into a force to reshape the MSP market with a string of major acquisitions and integrations that has built the company into a top MSP platform.
24. Todd Nightingale
CEO
Fastly
Under Nightingale’s leadership, Fastly has expanded its edge cloud platform beyond its established product areas—network services and security—to also include product segments such as compute and observability. Key security offerings include Fastly’s next-generation web application firewall.
23. Sanjay Mirchandani
President, CEO
Commvault
After disrupting Commvault a few years ago, turning it from an old-school backup software and appliance maker into a leading-edge data protection and management powerhouse, Mirchandani is now disrupting the industry with cutting-edge AI technology and Commvault Metallic next-generation SaaS data protection.
22. Evan Reiser
Co-Founder, CEO
Abnormal Security
Reiser has led Abnormal Security to shake up the email security space with a set of AI-powered behavioral analysis capabilities. Meanwhile, Abnormal recently unveiled the expansion of its technologies into additional segments outside email, including identity, collaboration and cloud.
21. Joyce Mullen
President, CEO
Insight Enterprises
Mullen is a disrupter when it comes to IT channel innovation and driving sales, as Insight now has a record $1.76 billion run rate. Mullen led Insight’s evolution to becoming one of the largest integrators in the world thanks to streamlining its services business and broadening its solution portfolio of hardware, software and services.
20. Ghassan Lababidi
Global Partner Marketing Leader
Databricks
The 23-year channel marketing veteran is having a big impact driving the partner-first Databricks go-to-market model to new heights with a 5X increase in MDF for partners. The MDF boost comes as Databricks is doubling down on systems integrators to accelerate the data lakehouse AI revolution.
19. Simon Ewington
Worldwide Channel, Partner Ecosystem Leader
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Ewington has upped HPE’s channel game across the board, bringing a new competitive fire and growth dynamic to the go-to-market model. Among his accomplishments are a breakthrough AI training and enablement program with Nvidia, including joint MDF and new compute and storage specialists helping partners close deals.
18. Kyle Hanslovan
Co-Founder, CEO
Huntress Labs
Hanslovan has been accelerating the expansion of Huntress’ managed cybersecurity platform into new product segments, building on the company’s launch last year of coverage for Microsoft 365 in addition to endpoints. Recent additions have included identity threat detection and response.
17. Kevin Lynch
CEO
Optiv
Lynch has led cybersecurity powerhouse Optiv to double down on massive opportunities including in managed security services and vulnerability management. Meanwhile, the 2023 acquisition of solution provider ClearShark has yielded significant growth in Optiv’s federal business, now known as Optiv + ClearShark.
16. Sridhar Ramaswamy
CEO
Snowflake
Ramaswamy has the cloud data analytics powerhouse sharply focused on making AI “super easy, super efficient” and “broadly accessible” so everyone in the enterprise can build applications. He gets high marks for channel commitment and has improved Snowflake’s security in the wake of cyberattacks against its customers, including new multifactor authentication options.
15. Ryan McCurdy
SVP, President, North America
Lenovo
While McCurdy has been the president of Lenovo’s North American business only since last September, he has already had a sizable impact, with his group hitting a record in regional PC market share and growing revenue faster than industry peers, as he vows a “multi-decade build-out” for AI.
14. Rod Mathews
President, CEO
Axcient
Axcient’s tagline is “redefining data protection” and Mathews is at the forefront of pushing the envelope on that redefinition, leading his team to find new ways to protect data for MSPs’ customers and maintain the company’s maniacal focus on MSPs.
13. Nick Schneider
President, CEO
Arctic Wolf
Schneider has led the major expansion of Arctic Wolf’s security operations platform, which now combines managed detection and response with capabilities such as vulnerability management, managed security awareness and cloud security. The platform leverages data from hundreds of native and third-party sources.
12. Sheila Rohra
CEO
Hitachi Vantara
Under the leadership of industry veteran Rohra, Hitachi Vantara is doubling down on its enterprise storage, AI and hybrid cloud strategy through the introduction of new products like the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform One and expanded partnerships with Nvidia, Google Cloud, Cisco and Veeam.
11. Mark Barrenechea
CEO, CTO
OpenText
Under Barrenechea’s leadership, OpenText has been finding major traction with its broad portfolio of cybersecurity and data protection capabilities. Recent expansion moves have included the acquisition of the Pillr managed detection and response platform from security solution provider Novacoast.
10. John Pagliuca
President, CEO
N-able
Ever since N-able’s 2021 spin-out from SolarWinds, Pagliuca has looked to disrupt the MSP platform business with new ways to bring monitoring, security and more to MSPs. His most recent play is his effort to help them transform their business with AI and GenAI, starting with the auto-creation of scripts to manage mundane tasks.
9. Jed Ayres
CEO
ControlUp
Ayres is delivering big profits for partners in the fast growth Digital Employee Experience (DEX) market. The channel-savvy CEO has invested multiple millions of dollars into the channel with an eye on tripling ControlUp recurring revenue. Partners are already seeing results and expect a big sales boost from the end of Microsoft support for Windows 10.
8. Scott Chasin
CEO
Pax8
The freshly minted CEO is changing the channel landscape with an AI-powered Cloud Marketplace that allows partners to leverage customer data insight to grow their business. His vision for how AI transforms the traditional channel model is big, bold and ambitious. “We are the marketplace of the future,” he said.
7. Gary Steele
President, Go To Market
Cisco Systems
The former Splunk CEO in just a few months on the job has already begun delivering on the ambitious Cisco-Splunk integration efforts, including linking Cisco XDR with the Splunk Enterprise Security platform, and Splunk’s Observability Cloud with Cisco AppDynamics, all this while keeping the Splunk innovation engine going at full speed.
6. Dan and Michael Schwab
Co-Presidents
D&H Distributing
The indefatigable dynamic duo continues to disrupt the old-world distribution model, this time putting partners into the AI fast lane. Among the notable D&H offerings: the “Go Big AI” program to help partners monetize AI with Microsoft Copilot and a multimillion-dollar AI PC sales blitz to get 5,000 partners selling the systems.
5. Sanjib Sahoo
EVP, Global Chief Digital Officer
Ingram Micro
Sahoo leads Ingram Micro’s digital transformation business, helping solution providers and MSPs navigate AI, the cloud and other technologies needed to help customers prepare for their own transformation in part with streamlined automation provided by the Ingram Micro Xvantage platform.
4. Bill Scannell
President, Global Sales, Customer Operations
Dell Technologies
Scannell is the driving force behind Dell’s Partner First for Storage sales strategy, which pays Dell reps more for closing storage deals through partners. He also has more partners winning with Dell Apex as a service and is working to ensure partners capture the AI opportunity with Dell AI Factory with Nvidia.
3. Jay Chaudhry
Founder, Chairman, CEO
Zscaler
Chaudhry has continued to pilot Zscaler’s ascendancy as a major disrupter of traditional network security players. Key recent moves have included the launch of the Zscaler Zero Trust SASE, an offering that introduces the company’s first SD-WAN system with the aim of routing traffic using zero trust security capabilities.
2. Cristiano Amon
President, CEO
Qualcomm
Having taken the helm of Qualcomm three years ago, Amon is leading a revolution in the PC market with the company’s new high-performance, energy-efficient Snapdragon X processors for laptops, which are one of several big bets the chief executive is making to bring intelligent computing everywhere.
1. Assaf Rappaport
Co-Founder, CEO
Wiz
Since Rappaport and his co-founders launched Wiz in 2020, the company has seen surging growth essentially from the get-go with its offering that accelerates the delivery of visibility and security for cloud environments.
As Wiz has grown, so has its focus on working with partners. Rappaport recently told CRN that Wiz is making its channel efforts a priority as it looks to enable faster partner-driven growth in cloud and AI security.
“In cybersecurity, partners are super, super important in the success of a company. So we’ve always [seen that] this has huge potential for us to tap into,” he said. The areas where partners can work with Wiz to serve customers now cover the spectrum from securing code repositories to protecting applications during runtime, he said. Whether it’s about securing the cloud or AI, he said he will “make sure we are aligned with the partners to fulfill the huge demand that we’re seeing in the market.”