Dave Girouard - Agenda Setters 2009

Name: Dave Girouard

Title: President, Google Enterprise

Position: 14    Last year: Not ranked

Why? Heading up Google's move into business technology

Agree with panel rating?

• Lord Stephen Carter
• back to list
• Vivek Kundra

Dave Girouard heads up Google's enterprise business division which has grown steadily over the past 12 months and is looking like it will become an increasingly important part of the search giant's business.

Having previously worked for Apple's marketing he knows a thing or two about building brands, and Google is also delivering the technology to back it up, something which is clearly going to concern more traditional business software giants like Microsoft.

Businesses can run their email, calendars, office applications, collaboration tools and security (using the Postini technology) on Google's infrastructure which is becoming an increasingly attractive option.

The main reason why the Agenda Setters judges included Girouard alongside his CEO, Eric Schmidt, is that he has led Google's successful expansion of its business-to-consumer model to the business-to-business arena. The company has also won some big customers along the way.

One panellist said: "Mainstream corporate customers are buying into the vision which strongly endorses [Google's] strategy."

Prior to joining Google, Girouard was senior vice president of marketing and business development at Virage, a provider of multimedia search and content management software. Before that he was at Apple and before that an associate in Booz Allen & Hamilton's Information Technology practice in San Francisco.