Vodafone CEO tops Silicon.com's Agenda Setters poll

Chris Gent, CEO of Vodafone AirTouch, is the most influential person in the European IT industry today, according to a panel of Silicon.com experts.

For Silicon.com's Agenda Setters 2000 poll, a panel of seven IT gurus from across the industry voted Gent the number one Agenda Setter for the new millennium.

Vodafone AirTouch has recently completed the largest merger in history, worth £215bn, with German telecoms giant, Mannesmann. His stewardship of the company has also included the record-breaking merger with US mobile operator AirTouch since he became CEO in 1997.

Panel member Rene Carayol, former IT Director of IPC magazines, said Gent should be held up as a hero of UK industry: "From a UK Plc point of view, this man should be one of our national heroes. At last we've got an entrepreneur who does what he says he's going to do."

Fellow panel member David Taylor, president of Certus, said Gent has the vision to drive through the integration with Mannesmann within months.

The decision to give the Vodafone chief the number one spot, indicates the industry's growing faith in mobile phones as the platform for future Internet access.

Steve Case, chairman of AOL, came in second place, despite his company's merger with Time Warner, which combines content with the delivery technology.

Bill Gates, chief software architect and chairman of Microsoft, who has dominated the IT industry for the last 15 years, only made number 12.

Robin Duke-Woolley, senior analyst at Schema, disagreed with the panel's findings. He said although Gent is undoubtedly a significant player in the mobile world, it will be the technology providers rather than the service providers who would set the IT agenda in the future.

"The CEOs of the mobile technology providers such as Nokia, and Ericsson, and IT companies such as Cisco and Nortel Networks, is where the agenda will be set and where the real innovation will occur," he said.

Silicon's Agenda Setters 2000 were chosen by representatives of the UK IT industry, including analysts, IT directors, entrepreneurs and politicians.

The full results and analysis are available on Silicon.com's Agenda Setters 2000 microsite at http://www.silicon.com/agendasetters2000