The Top 23 Cloud and #DevOps Influencers to Follow on Twitter

Staying on top of the latest industry news and trends is a big part of the job for any IT pro, and Twitter is a great resource, but with 243 million active users, it can be difficult to parse the good from the bad.

Lucky for you, we’ve combed through the Twittersphere (all 243 million users, I swear) and pulled the top 23 DevOps and Cloud influencers and thought leaders in the Twittersphere, presented here in no particular order.

For a more concise and printable overview of the state of cloud computing in 2016, check out Solutions Review’s all-new 2016 Cloud Platforms Buyer’s Guide, and don’t forget to follow me (@cloudtechreview) for cloud and information security news and best practices.

James Urquhart @jamesurquhart

Years ago (2010?) I predicted VMW’s peak revenue year would be 2016. I’m beginning to think I may have nailed it. https://t.co/HUCjv4YMaQ

— James Urquhart (@jamesurquhart) March 1, 2016

A leader in cloud computing with a background in business system development with distributed service based systems, Urquhart is a frequent guest on the popular The Cloudcast podcast and has been named one of the 10 most influential people in cloud computing by MIT Technology Review.

Aaron Delp @aarondelp

https://twitter.com/aarondelp/status/706993674878652416

Aaron Delp is one-half of the team that makes up The Cloudcast (as featured in our top cloud podcasts list) and the director of cloud solutions at Solidfire. With four years of podcasting and over 200 episodes under his belt, it’s fair to assume that Delp knows his way around the cloud.

Brian Gracely @bgracely

Microsoft continues to become more OS-agnostic under Nadella. https://t.co/z0xo8vaZ4g

— Brian Gracely (@bgracely) March 7, 2016

Brian Gracely co-founded the Cloudcast with Delp in 2011 and has since established himself as an authority on all things cloud computing. Gracely is currently the lead Cloud/DevOps analyst at Wikibon.

Randy Bias @randybias

You know you are out of ops practice when you make two simultaneous changes assuming that there won't be any interaction…

— Randy Bias (@randybias) March 3, 2016

An early vocal supporter of the OpenStack project, Randy Bias is currently VP of Technology for EMC, and previously served as CEO of Cloudscaling.

Jeff Sussna @jeffsussna

https://twitter.com/jeffsussna/status/706900359755599872

An early proponent of DevOps and Public Cloud, Jeff Sussna is an author with over twenty years of experience in the design, development and delivery of cutting-edge software and services.

John Willis @botchagalupe

Cloud in Government: Promise and Practice .. I'm talking #devops and #docker .. https://t.co/xdEXpeIMkx

— Better angels playing mystic 9th chords of memory (@botchagalupe) March 2, 2016

A frequent guest on the Cloudcast, Willis recently began work with Linux container company Docker, arguably the hottest company in the cloud today. For container news and insights, Willis’s feed is a no-brainer.

Jeff Barr @JeffBarr

This looks intriguing: VoiceOps: Command & Control #AWS ENV with Amazon Echo & Lambda – https://t.co/zgfk71xH3U pic.twitter.com/a3FLIJo7jK

— Jeff Barr ☁️ (@ 🏠 ) 💉 (@jeffbarr) March 8, 2016

As Chief Evangelist for Amazon Web Services, Jeff Barr should be your go-to guy for the latest news and chatter about the world’s most popular public cloud.

Marc Benioff @Benioff

I didn't understand how bad it's been for @IBM over the last two years until they laid off 1/3 of their employees. pic.twitter.com/YZhaUobrH5

— Marc Benioff (@Benioff) March 7, 2016

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is a great source of… you guessed it… Salesforce information. Benioff regularly tweets about new products and information from the Software as a Service (SaaS) giant.

Mike Olson @mikeolson

Because I care about the English language, I insist that “leverage” is not a verb. Because I am a software engineer, I insist that “404” is.

— Mike Olson 🇺🇸 (@mikeolson) February 26, 2016

Mike Olson is the Chief Strategy officer for Cloudera, but that doesn’t mean he limits himself to posting about the big data platform. Olson is an excellent source for big data news and thought leadership, as well as pithy one-liners.

Dana Gardner @Dana_Gardner

#Gartner warns IT leaders about the perils of using private platform as a service #PaaS #cloud #containers https://t.co/fqgjSknj15

— Dana Gardner (@Dana_Gardner) March 8, 2016

Dana Gardner is a creative thought leader on enterprise software, cloud, mobile, big data and social strategies, and also a prolific blogger and podcaster.

Barb Darrow @gigabarb

Mountain to Mohammed: Microsoft Brings SQL Server to Linux! https://t.co/8Pk7faodZv

— Barb Darrow (@gigabarb) March 8, 2016

Barb Darrow is a cloud reporter for Fortune, formerly of Gigaom. Darrow is a prolific tweeter and a consistent source of the latest industry news.

Paul Miller @PaulMiller

Always worth pausing the #FutureOfData of data conversation, from time to time, to look out of the window. pic.twitter.com/vrdwWNyAld

— Paul Miller (@PaulMiller) March 1, 2016

Paul Miller is a UK-based writer, speaker, and cloud computing and  big data analyst and consultant. Miller is a former Gigaom research analyst and a current  Forbes contributor.

Ralph Loura @RalphLoura

#ForbesCIOSummit @tonyscottcio FITARA has been biggest single thing that puts IT governance at the forefront for US agencies

— Ralph Loura (@RalphLoura) March 7, 2016

Ralph Laura is CIO of the Enterprise Group at Hewlett Packard. Laura blogs regularly and is a frequent guest at high-profile events and summits.

Adrian Cockcroft @adrianco

Not the quote I would have picked, I was mostly telling my version of the @NetflixOSS story. https://t.co/IMf7HyYcsA

— Adrian Cockcroft – now @adrianco@mastodon.social (@adrianco) March 4, 2016

Cockcroft is a technology fellow at Battery Ventures, previously of Netflix, eBay Research Labs and Sun Microsystems. Cockcroft speaks at various conferences around the world and advises startups in IT infrastructure.

Cameron Haight @haightspeech

As always some good thoughts to ponder from @allspaw – An Open Letter To Monitoring/Metrics/Alerting Companies: https://t.co/PaV3loSgyX

— Cameron Haight (@camhaight) May 6, 2015

Cameron Haight is a a Senior Vice President at Gartner and an experienced expert on all things Cloud, DevOps, and Web-Scale IT.

Bridget Kromhout @bridgetkromhout

Printed up some DevOps Against Humanity cards, as one does. pic.twitter.com/TX09SqiFMQ

— Bridget Kromhout (@bridgetkromhout) May 1, 2014

Bridget Kromhout is principal technologist for Cloud Foundry at Pivotal and Co-organizer of Velocity and DevOps Days.

Bryan Cantrill  @bcantrill

If this is your first tech bubble, let me give you some advice that was once given to me: enjoy the party, but dance close to the door

— Bryan Cantrill (@bcantrill) March 4, 2015

Bryan Cantril is Joyent’s chief technology officer and the author of a popular blog. Cantril was named by MIT as one of the top 35 technologists under the age of 35.

Dave Farley @davefarley77

If heartbeat was a clock cycle, retrieving data from fastest SSD is equivalent to crossing whole of London on foot @__Abigor__ #qconlondon

— Dave Farley (@davefarley77) March 8, 2016

Dave Farley is the co-author of the award-winning book Continuous Delivery, an independent dev and consultant, and a thought leader in the DevOps space.

Kelsey Hightower @kelseyhightower

Nice getting started with rkt post by @lukeb0nd. https://t.co/Nw30I7gX4i

— Kelsey Hightower (@kelseyhightower) March 8, 2016

Kelsey Hightower is the author of Kubernetes: Up and Running, developer advocate for Google Cloud Platform and previously an employee of CoreOS, New Relic, Monsoon Commerce, and Puppet Labs.

Tim Crawford @tcrawford

"400 Million new servers needed by 2020 – Think Different or Lose" by @mthiele10 on @LinkedIn https://t.co/GA5iku1vOX <Grt start. Need more!

— Tim Crawford (@tcrawford) March 8, 2016

Tim Crawford is a CIO strategic advisor and thought leader who curates content on cloud, DevOps, IoT, and BigData.

Chris Murphy @Murph_CJ

How the Idea of Industry-As-A-Platform Will Drive a Wave of Disruption, from @dberlind #IoT https://t.co/e8dYAHutxb

— Chris Murphy (@Murph_CJ) February 23, 2016

Chris Murphy is the director of cloud content at Oracle, and formerly an editor for Information Week. Murphy tweets on cloud, IoT, and analytics.

Andrew Hay @andrewsmhay

In 20 years I expect to see more dogs in airports than humans…

— Andrew Hay (@andrewsmhay) March 8, 2016

Andrew  hay is the CISO at Data Gravity Inc. and has been a featured contributor to The Washington Post, Forbes, USA Today, and Bloomberg Businessweek.

Andrew Storms @st0rmz

Why #DevOps needs #Security https://t.co/nEYuqz9A8O

— Andrew Storms @St0rmz at most places (@st0rmz) March 7, 2016

Andrew Storms is vice president of security services at New Context and a DevOps.com contributor. Storms tweets on information security, cloud, DevOps, and secure agile development.

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