Satya Nadella Tops The List of Influential Tech Leaders 2015

Some of the executives on Juniper Research's list of Top Technology Leaders, Influencers, and Visionaries for 2015 are the names you would expect, but others wield their power a little bit more quietly. Not every person who made the list holds the top job at his or her company and not every top influencer works at a top-tier, front-of-mind brand for the public.

To create its list Juniper ranked leaders using eight criteria (in its words):

1. Innovation: How new, differentiated and disruptive their contributions are to the industry.

2. Scalability: How easily their contribution can be applied to multiple markets and product types.

3. Reach: How much impact does this person and their contribution have on a geographical scale?

4. Business Model: The crunch side of innovation; how new is the business proposition of the person's contribution.

5. Personal Capital: How much the person's individual connections, personality, philosophy, etc., is able to complement their business.

6. Outside Impact: The probable impact that the person's contributions will have on their sector outside the growth of their business.

7. End-user Impact: How big a difference the contribution will make to the lives of end users.

8.Vision: How complete a picture of the future the person can make. Do they make a convincing case for the applicability and/or potential of their product?

Using those criteria, Juniper created a list that shows the executives who have the most impact -- a surprising mix of names you know and less-famous leaders. It's a ranking as notable for who did not make it as who did. You won't see Apple's (NASDAQ: AAPL  ) Tim Cook or Amazon's (NASDAQ: AMZN  ) Jeff Bezos, and none of Google's (NASDAQ: GOOG  ) (NASDAQ: GOOGL  ) top executives made the top five.

1. Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft
Nadella taking the top spot not only marks a triumph for him but a victory that shows just how much he has changed Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT  ) . The CEO has taken a company that had grown staid and complacent and transformed it. Microsoft is no longer a dying king clinging to a shrinking kingdom. Instead, it's a company with dynamic ideas, which makes its signature products available across all platforms, not just its own Windows operating system.

In his short time at the helm Nadella has created a more nimble Microsoft and delivered a new vision for company. He has pushed the company into the cloud and has led the creation of a new version of Windows that has actually sparked excitement. Nadella has made Microsoft a tech leader, pulling it from the brink of being a dying company relying on legacy products.