The Silverlinings editorial team is proud to announce the finalists in our first-ever Cloud Innovation Awards Top Cloud Changemaker category.
- Jon Abrahamson, Chief Product and Digital Officer, Deutsche Telekom (OTCMKTS: DTEGY): Abrahamson has worked his way up at DT since 2017. He started as a Vice President of Digital-Europe in June 2017, became the Senior Vice President of Digital in May 2020 and was appointed Senior Vice President of Product and Digital in May 2021. He became Chief Product and Digital Officer in January. Abrahamson told us recently that telcos would need to develop their artificial intelligence (AI) models in order to better serve their needs and reduce costs for the operators.
- Andrew Coward, General Manager of Software Defined Networking, IBM (NYSE: IBM): Coward is leading the charge back into IBM’s historic stomping ground as a network vendor. This step is his latest leap up a ladder that he started climbing in 1994 when he began his career as an engineer at Xylogics. As well as overseeing the acquisition of multiple cloud infrastructure companies, his team announced a significant multi-cloud management solution this year.
- Ulf Ewaldsson, President of Technology, T-Mobile (NASDAQ: TMUS): A former Ericsson CTO, Ewaldsson took over from industry legend Neville Ray at the end of February, and has continued to build on its 5G standalone (SA) leadership with a joint venture with hyperscaler Google Cloud. He now leads the company's information technology services and technology operations. He’s held a range of networking roles at the mobile operator for the past four years.
- Will Grannis, CTO, Google Cloud (NASDAQ: GOOGL): Grannis leads a global team of technology executives and senior engineers who work with Google's largest customers. Before joining Google five years ago, he spent two decades as an entrepreneur, enterprise technology executive and investor.
- Scott Guthrie, Executive Vice President, Cloud and AI Group, Microsoft Azure (NASDAQ: MSFT): Guthrie leads the teams that deliver Microsoft Azure, Dynamics 365, Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, GitHub, .NET, HoloLens, Microsoft SQL Server, Power BI, and Power Apps. He is responsible for the company's cloud, server, OS, hardware, AI, database, and business apps.
- Michael Intrator, CEO, CoreWeave: Intrator co-founded CoreWeave in 2017 with Brian Venturo and Brannin McBee. Initially focused on Ethereum mining, the company now provides cloud infrastructure for AI training and is a specialized cloud provider that delivers a massive scale of GPU-accelerated compute resources on demand. CoreWeave hit unicorn status in September 2023. Current investors include Nvidia and Magnetar Capital. The company is valued at between $5 billion and $8 billion.
- Michael Kagan, CTO, Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA): Kagan joined Nvidia through the acquisition of Mellanox, where he was CTO and a co-founder of the company, founded in April 1999. From 1983 to April 1999, he held a number of architecture and design positions at Intel. Under his leadership, today Nvidia is lauded for its AI chips but its GPUs can be used for 5G acceleration as well. NTT DoCoMo is leading the way with its Nvidia-based 5G vRAN deployment and Softbank plans to use Nvidia to deliver virtual radio access network (vRAN) on the same framework.
- Richard Moulds, General Manager for Quantum Computing Service Amazon Braket, AWS (NASDAQ: AMZN): As the GM for the AWS’ quantum computing service, Moulds focuses on making it easy for customers to knock down the barriers to adopting and learning about quantum computing. In addition to working with his team on roadmaps, he also leads the charge on quantum hardware. McKinsey & Company has forecast the potential quantum technology market could reach $106 billion by 2040, with quantum computing accounting for between $9 billion and $93 billion of that number.
- Chris Nicholas, Senior Vice President, Cloud Solutions Group, Trace3: Nicholas works with a team of highly talented cloud architects and engineers that focus on cloud and hybrid architecture and surrounding solutions in resiliency, security, management and monitoring. His group has established practices built for the enterprise around well-architected, landing-zone foundations, cloud strategy, migration factory and cloud operating models.
- Chris Sambar, President of Network, AT&T (NYSE: T): Sambar leads AT&T’s Network organization and teams responsible for designing, engineering, building, and operating AT&T’s next-generation mobile and fiber networks, its 5G network. Previously, he was Executive Vice President, Technology Operations, responsible for long-term technical initiatives and global planning, construction, and engineering of our mobile, fiber and core network infrastructure build programs.
“Congratulations to the Top Cloud Changemaker finalists in our Cloud Innovation Awards,” said Elizabeth Coyne, Managing Editor. “We are blown away by the accomplishments and impact these finalists have had on the industry and we look forward to seeing who comes out on top at our event next month.”
Due to an overwhelming number of entries, the editorial team is hard at work determining finalists in the remaining categories and will reveal those on Friday, November 10.
The Silverlinings editorial team will announce the Cloud Innovation Awards winners on December 7 at the Cloud Executive Summit, set for the Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn & Spa in Sonoma, Ca. Register today!
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