Top 10 influential global channel players

10. Ursula Burns: chairman, CEO; Xerox

Burns leads the way with a strategy aimed at growing Xerox's recurring revenue with multiyear contracts. That's the same strategy she has brought to the table for partners with an innovative eConcierge service.

9. Sam Palmisano: former chairman & CEO; IBM

Palmisano handed over the reigns to Virginia Rometty earlier this year but he leaves behind a decade of masterful management- gaining a foothold in emerging global markets and technologies like business analytics.

8. Yang Yuanqing: CEO; Lenovo

Here’s why Lenovo displaced Dell as the second largest worldwide PC maker by shipments: Yang Yuanqing. He’s kept the company sharply focused on producing great notebooks and PCs for the SMB. 

7. Meg Whitman: president, CEO; HP

The former eBay CEO has won over partners by pledging support for hardware products and keeping HP’s PSG business. She’s off to a great start. Look out for more steady moves that build on HP’s legacy. 

6. John Chambers: chairman, CEO; Cisco

The mark of a great leader is he knows when it’s time to get back to what made his company great in the first place. That’s why Chambers is refocusing Cisco on its networking roots. 

5. Paul Otellini: president, CEO; Intel

How do you transform Intel into a cloud computing power? Make sure you have Otellini at the helm- the rollouts of McAfee Deep Defender and tablet-competitive ultrabooks have been key.

4. Larry Ellison: founder, CEO; Oracle

This speeds-and-feeds freak has done the impossible this year by delivering on the Sun acquisition with key product innovation. Ellison’s biggest channel-smart move: hiring Mark Hurd. 

3. Paul Maritz: CEO; VMware

A CEO with 20/20 technology vision who isn’t afraid to make the big bets, Maritz gets the cloud and knows what to do to get his partners there. His misstep with VSphere 5 pricing was quickly corrected. 

2. Joseph Tucci: chairman, president, CEO; EMC

Tucci celebrated his 10th anniversary at EMC by doing what he has always done: extending EMC’s technology and channel leadership. High points include a breakout year for the new VNX and VNXe products.

1. Michael Dell: founder, chairman, CEO; Dell

F. Scott Fitzgerald claimed there are no second acts in American lives. Not ture. Michael Dell, the onetime wild-eyed direct-sales kingpin has remade himself into a fierce channel advocate, and his company into a solution power that plays from the desktop to the data centre. No CEO has done more this year to bring new partners into the fold, working the phones and conference rooms to get VARs on board. And he has built a strong and solid product portfolio by acquiring some of today's hottest tech companies. Dell is every bit as fired up to led the next era of computing as he was in the early days driving the PC revolution.