CompITA conducted a poll recently in conjunction with its 25th anniversary celebration. The poll practically asked IT professionals to vote on some of the most influential personalities in the IT industry for the past 25 years.

Bill Gates, took the top spot on the most influential list. Gates, who co-founded Microsoft in 1975, got 84 percent of the 473 IT industry professionals who participated in the web-based poll.

Whereas, Meg Whitman, president and CEO of eBay since 1998, managed to claimed the last spot with 30 percent votes.

Here’s the rest of the list:

1. Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft Corporation.

2. Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple.

3. Michael Dell, chairman of the board of directors and chief executive officer of Dell.

4. Linus Torvalds, a 21-year-old computer science student who wrote the original code for the operating system, Linux.

5. Sergei Brin and Larry Page, founded Google in 1998.

6. John Chambers, chairman and CEO of Cisco Systems.

7. Larry Ellison, CEO and member of the board of directors of Oracle.

8. Vint Cerf, “Fathers of the Internet” and the co-designer of the TCP/IP protocols.

9. Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft.

10. Meg Whitman, president and CEO of eBay.

I think the list is pretty interesting. And it is fascinating to learn how these top 10 personalities have really influenced or changed the IT industry.

What do you think about the list? Do you have any other influential person in mind for this list?

Tags: IT personalities, bill gates, microsoft, comp ita