Agenda Setters: Where are they now... Sam Palmisano

As the countdown begins in earnest to silicon.com's fifth year of its exclusive Agenda Setters poll of tech's 50 most influential individuals, it is time to look back at those individuals who held top 10 positions in 2003. Up today, how the last 12 months panned out for IBM's Sam Palmisano.

IBM CEO Sam Palmisano came in at number seven last year, as the Agenda Setter panel praised the success of the company's services business and bold support of Linux. If Palmisano still lives in the shadow of his predecessor Lou Gerstner, the panel reasoned, he can be forgiven.

But what has he done for us lately?

Palmisano appears to have done well out of the uncertainty following the HP-Compaq merger, taking market share from HP in both servers and services. Big Blue now leads the pack in servers and databases (over Oracle, even) and the services business continues to go great guns.

What of financials? Revenue jumped 10 per cent last year as the company grew for the first time since 2000.

Big Blue's undertaken a slew of acquisitions and the open-source connection continues to flourish, with IBM vowing to support Linux patents strongly, unlike some other large software company we know.

Not that Palmisano hasn't had his challenges, such as the complicated lawsuits and countersuits with the SCO Group over IBM's use of Unix and Linux, the trial for one of which will start only in November 2005

And there's the flat software sales and the late July shakeup in sales management to right struggling iSeries business.

Yet Palmisano maintains his bullish stance on the future, saying the company will hire 19,000 people this year, and is aggressively pursuing emerging markets with technologies such as Linux and grid computing.

Does this sound like someone living in anyone's shadow?

Sam Palmisano is an Agenda Setter for sure. And an impressive year should put him near the top... but in the top 10? Stranger things have happened.

silicon.com's Agenda Setters panel, made up again of CIOs, analysts, VCs, consultants, lawyers, academics and other experts, will be convening this September at our London offices, with our results revealed at the end of that month. If you want to pass on your comments for our experts, about Sam Palmisano or any other contender, drop us an email at editorial@silicon.com.