In May, Palmisano rang the bell to open a day’s trading at the New York Stock Exchange in celebration of the 90th anniversary for IBM’s listing. But these days Palmisano is less concerned about IBM, the American icon, than he is about the “I,” for international. He convened IBM’s annual employee meeting outside the United States — a first for the company — holding it in India to emphasize how much attention he is giving there. He promised to triple investment in India to $6 billion over the next three years. Those funds will cover initiatives such as a new research organization for delivering global services.
Seidenberg sure does love his fiber and his video — but then again, he’s got to bulk up on those two broadband technologies to keep Verizon a powerful competitor on all market fronts. He’s got his nationwide carrier, and his pervasive wireless. What’s wrong with a little IPTV? Nothing — or so he asserted early in 2006 while testifying before the Senate Commerce Committee about how Verizon has proven the need for local TV franchising reform. Seidenberg’s powerful message: “The time for a national, streamlined franchising process is now, because the era of broadband video is here.”
Let’s call Tucci a master cultivator. Over the last five years, he has shown the tech world how to acquire and successfully grow companies. Under his care, EMC is flourishing as it grows well beyond its traditional storage hardware roots and into a diverse software company with document management, systems management, virtualization and, with this year’s buyout of RSA Security, security management offshoots. With financials blooming too, Tucci’s thorniest challenge going forward will be getting Wall Street to appreciate the EMC garden.
> Power elite
Edward whitacre
TITLE
Chairman, CEO
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AT&T
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This Bell System career man continues his aggressive battle against the market tides pulling traditional telecom companies down. This time his buoy is the fast-growing wireless services business of Cingular Wireless, the joint venture company AT&T will gain control of through its BellSouth acquisition (still awaiting the FCC’s go-ahead as of late December). Whitacre will certainly go down in the industry record books as power broker extraordinaire if he can successfully integrate the Cingular wireless infrastructure with the traditional wired networks and deliver desirable advanced, converged IP services to enterprises and consumers.
