Agenda Setters 2007

The shift in the balance of tech power from West to East identified in last year's Agenda Setters rankings continues in 2007. Tony Hallett scans the Top 50 for the Asian continent's biggest influencers.

It's become a tech cliché to think about IT services and hardware when we refer to Asia because of the strength of India and China in these two fields. This year's Top 50 provides fodder to reinforce that association but also shows the wider influence of individuals from the world's largest continent.

Standing at 17 is Nandan Nilekani, CEO and co-founder of Indian IT service giant Infosys. He's up from 40 in last year's poll and for the first time seems to have put some distance between himself and the well-known leaders of TCS and Wipro, the other two big Indian players, led by S Ramadorai and Azim Premji respectively.

Richard Sykes, consultant, former CIO and outsourcing expert, said he now considers Infosys "well ahead of the game" against arch rivals TCS and Wipro - at least in terms of its approach to hiring.

"I think Infosys has now broken ground forwards among the Indian players in offshoring by moving in a very definitive way to globalised talent," he said.

CEO Nilekani has overseen the company's pursuit of the best talent in France, Italy, the UK and the US to bring them to work in India.

Sykes added: "They've realised that they've got to become a global talent pool - they're not just about marketing the best talent that India has."

Others on the Agenda Setters 2007 panel also pointed out it was Infosys that was rumoured to be eyeing a bid for major European IT services player Capgemini.

Generally, the discussion about the leading Indian individuals who made this year's list wasn't about cheap offshoring. Ernst & Young director James Bennet said: "The Indian firms are incredibly impressive. It's the knowledge economy bit that's interesting rather than call centres."

Wipro's Premji still makes the 50, in at 31, while TCS's Ramadorai doesn't make the cut this time round after leading the Asian charge last year at 22. Representatives from the following pack of Cognizant, HCL, Satyam and the like don't yet get singled out.

Last year's Agenda Setters project had several East Asian names of note who don't figure this time. Jack Ma from online trading success Alibaba.com just missed the top tier at 11, Oh Yeon-Ho, the man behind South Korean citizen journalism site OhMyNews.com, was at 16, and Stan Shih, the founder of Taiwanese Acer, was at 35.

This year, there are two Japanese names of note. Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata debuts at 19 and, in many ways, is aping the success of Steve Jobs at Apple. While Jobs took the category of digital music players and recast his company as the one that brought that platform to the masses, Iwata at Nintendo launched the Wii, bringing gaming to millions who had never before picked up an Xbox or PlayStation. His company is equally resurgent.

CNET.co.uk editor and site director Michael Parsons said: "The Wii is the best-selling console… but more interestingly, as well as being a commercial success, it's taken the idea of social gaming and letting new people in"

Others on the panel preferred to single out Shigeru Miyamoto, also on the Nintendo payroll but perhaps best known simply as the world's most famous games designer. He comes in at 28.

Culturally, as the man who created characters such as Mario, Donkey Kong and Zelda, his influence affects hundreds of millions around the world but whether he should chart above Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei is open to debate.

Ren this year comes in at 30, down from last year's 25 and 18 in 2005, and there are those that would say Huawei's influence as the provider of much of the equipment for the plumbing for things such as the internet and mobile networks points to greater power in his hands.

However, his fall in the rankings could be down to the rise of arch rival John Chambers at networking leader Cisco, who has now committed to several more years at that company's helm. He's in at 4 this year, up from 26 last year.

Of course defining individuals by their country of birth or main place of work is always a slightly false approach. For example Vinod Khosla, a venture capitalist and co-founder of Sun Microsystems, at 34, and JP Rangaswami, now at BT Global Services and in at 48, are both Indian by birth but known for their work in the US and UK respectively over many years.

The tech sector is full of émigrés - from just about every corner of the globe to most others - and the global tech talent haul of Infosys, led by Nilekani, goes to show it's a trend that continues.