
The global data centre landscape continues to shift, as operators are forced to confront new AI and sustainability challenges. In order to stay ahead of the game, innovative and forward-thinking leadership is required to not only remain competitive as a business, but to maintain customer satisfaction.
As 2025 gets well underway, Data Centre Magazine showcases some of the most powerful data centre leaders currently figureheading the industry. The leaders featured in this list disrupted the enterprise data centre landscape throughout 2024, with their respective companies continuing to lead by design
10. Jonas Bogoshi, CEO at BCX
Revenue: R3.5 billion (US$443.34m)
Employees: 6,000+
Founded: 1996
Jonas Bogoshi is a determined and principled leader who was appointed as CEO of BCX in 2018. He holds a deep knowledge and expertise of the ICT sector, having worked within it for nearly 30 years, which he brings to his leadership role.
As CEO, his aim is for BCX to build an agile ecosystem by partnering with small and medium-sized companies, in addition to building upon existing partnerships already established with bigger players. One of his goals is also to see BCX providing effective and efficient pay-per-consumption services when migrating clients into cloud computing.
9. John Eland, CEO at STACK Infrastructure EMEA
Employees: 100-200+
Founded: 2019
As CEO of STACK’s EMEA region, John Eland first entered the sector around 15 years ago, when he joined Data City Exchange as CEO in 2008. Here, he developed and delivered an early-stage box modular solution in the UK, Europe and US before leading the data centre investment programme for AXA Investment Managers.
He explains, as previously reported by Data Centre Magazine: “There really wasn't much of an industry as we know it today, and in terms of educational path there was really no route directly into the data centre industry. For me, it was a focus on the international business arena and general business management.”
He has been CEO of STACK Infrastructure EMEA since 2022.
8. Snehar Shah, CEO at IXAfrica
Employees:100-200+
Founded : 2020
Appointed as CEO at IXAfrica in September 2023, Snehar Shah now oversees the leading developer and operator of hyperscale-ready data centres in East Africa. With an extensive background in the telecommunications space, having worked for the likes of Orange, Snehar is using his expertise in building and running businesses to drive the company to new heights.
Snehar has previously held key leadership roles in finance and strategy across the UK, Europe and East Africa.
7. Olivier Micheli, CEO at DATA4 Group
Revenue:US$24m (2024)
Employees:100-200+
Founded :2006
Olivier Micheli is President & CEO of DATA4, having been appointed in 2014. In his role, he leads one of the leading data centre investment firms in Europe, permanently providing customers secured access to their data hosted on D4 infrastructures with superior added-value services in the most eco-friendly environments.
He has been the recipient of several awards and accolades, including the “First 100 days” prize from KPMG and EIM. In 2016, Olivier became chair of France Datacenter, an association which unites every data centre stakeholder in France and advances the sector as a pillar of the digital economy.
6. Danielle Rossi, Global Director - Mission Critical Cooling at Trane Technologies
Revenue:US$5.44bn (Q3 2024)
Employees:40,000+
Founded :1885
Danielle Rossi is an experienced enterprise system engineer with a demonstrated history of working in the mission critical data centre and secure power industries. Her expertise lies in data centre technologies, secure power applications and Software as a Service (SaaS), including infrastructure, data centre infrastructure management (DCIM), cooling and power systems.
Her current work with Trane finds her pioneering data centre cooling with sustainability in mind, which you can read about in Data Centre Magazine’s report HERE.
Prior to working at Trane, Danielle worked at Schneider Electric for more than 11 years and was Enterprise Systems Engineer until 2020.
5. Susanna Kass, Co-Founder at InfraPrime
Employees:100-200+
Founded :2020
Susanna Kass is a renowned Cloud Sustainability Executive and Clean Energy Advisor, committed to driving higher ESG standards across the industry. She is a stellar advocate for sustainability across the data centre industry and beyond, acting as a consistent voice across the sector working towards the common goal of a more sustainable, greener future.
Susanna’s work at InfraPrime has allowed her to aid countless organisations to achieve their carbon neutrality goals by 2028-30. Her goal is to accelerate the clean energy transition within the data centre industry.
4. Andrew Power, President & CEO at Digital Realty
Revenue: US$5.48bn (2024)
Employees: 3,600+ (2023)
Founded: 2004
Andrew (Andy) Power has served as Digital Realty’s President since 2021 and holds responsibility for its global portfolio operations, technology development and innovation. He has also overseen the service provider’s enterprise customer solutions, asset management and information technology, in addition to its financial functions, during his tenure.
Prior to joining Digital Realty, Andy held positions of increasing responsibility at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, with his most recent role being Managing Director of Real Estate, Gaming and Lodging Investment Banking.
3. Jensen Huang, CEO at Nvidia
Revenue: US$26.04bn (April 2023-April 2024)
Employees: 29,600+
Founded :1993
Jensen Huang has been a transformative leader in the tech industry for a number of years now, having driven Nvidia to the forefront of graphics processing and AI technology.
Since co-founding Nvidia in 1993, Jensen has overseen the development of groundbreaking GPUs that power everything from gaming to data centres and AI applications.
Under Jensen's leadership, Nvidia became the first semiconductor company to reach a market valuation of over US$1tn in 2023 and since has had a huge impact on the global tech sector.
2. Matt Garman, CEO at AWS
Revenue: US$27.5bn (Q3 2024)
Employees: 136,000+
Founded: 2006
Having been appointed CEO at AWS in June 2024, following Adam Selipsky’s resignation, Matt Garman vision has been significant already in helping the company to progress even further in the global cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) race.
Having first started at Amazon in 2005, Matt holds more than 20 years of experience within the company as he strove to help build his knowledge and a strong customer base. Having worked as an MBA intern, he joined the company full-time in 2006 as one of the first product managers at AWS.
When appointed he spoke on the importance of keeping data safe, stating: “Delivering secure and operationally excellent services for our customers is, and will forever remain, our top priority. Our customers are not simply using AWS as a ‘nice-to-have’. They’re literally trusting us with their critical business operations, with their most important data and with how they serve their own customers.”
1. Dr Lisa Su, Chair and CEO at AMD
Revenue: US$24.295bn (September 2024)
Employees: 26,000+
Founded: 1969
Dr Lisa Su is a long-term technology executive with more than 15 years of experience in the semiconductor industry. Working at the helm of AMD as its Chair and CEO, she has enabled the company to undergo a significant transformation to refocus its strategy, market approach and product development moving forward.
Her continued passion for global technology teams and bringing innovative products to market has been instrumental in AMD's resurgence, prompting the company’s shares to spike massively in 2024. Successfully steering AMD towards becoming a leader in high-performance and adaptive computing, it is now one of the fastest-growing semiconductor companies worldwide.
To read the full article in the magazine, click HERE.
Explore the latest edition of Data Centre Magazine and be part of the conversation at our global conference series, Tech & AI LIVE and Data Centre LIVE.
Discover all our upcoming events and secure your tickets today.
Data Centre Magazine is a BizClik brand