The pace of discovery and innovation speeding through cloud computing is staggering. Knowing the right cloud experts to follow is crucial to staying current on the latest developments. We’ve done the legwork for you by sharing our list of top cloud and devoted cyber security influencers; these are the people anyone tasked with optimizing IT spend or responsible for cloud security should be following religiously.

1. Werner Vogels

Followers: 294K
Frequency: 2 per day
Favorite topics: AWS and global startups (Now Go Build)

Vogels has spent the last 14 years as Amazon’s CTO. He’s widely considered to be a central force in building and growing Amazon Web Services (AWS). In 2014, AdvisoryCloud ranked Vogels the top CTO.His personal blog is All Things Distributed.

2. Jeff Barr

Followers: 140.4K
Frequency: 4 per day
Favorite topics: AWS and Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud

Amazon’s Chief Evangelist for AWS is also on our list. Barr was part of the core team that developed AWS. He’s a prolific writer on the AWS blog, where he keeps everyone updated on AWS strategy and particulars.

3. Randy Bias

Followers: 24.5K
Frequency: 3 per day
Favorite topics: OpenDev, OpenStack, and IaaS

Bias has been accurately predicting technology shifts for decades, and he was the first to market Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) in the United States. Bias serves as VP Technology – Open Source Software at Juniper Networks, and sits on the board of The Linux Foundation.

4. Bernard Golden

Followers: 19.5K
Frequency: 4 per day
Favorite topics: Cloud computing and blockchain

Golden is VP of Cloud Strategy at Capital One and CEO at Navica, and has written multiple books on virtualization and cloud computing. He also founded the Emerging Tech foundation “to help companies accelerate their move to blockchain…”

5. Wendy Nather

Followers: 24.3K
Frequency: 17 per day
Favorite topics: RSAC, cloud security, and hackers

Nather is Head of Advisory CISOs, Duo Security, at Cisco. She co-authored “The Cloud Security Rules” and was named by SC Magazine as an “Influencer” in its Reboot Leadership Awards 2018.

6. Simon Wardley

Followers: 28.3K
Frequency: 20 per day
Favorite topics: Wardley maps and organizational models

Wardley has been advising cloud companies for nearly a decade and is a senior principal at the Leading Edge Forum. You can read his explorations of the minutiae of cloud computing at Bits or pieces?

7. Lydia Leong

Followers: 17.2K
Frequency: 2 per day
Favorite topics: DevOps, cloud security, cloud governance

Leong is VP Distinguished Analyst at Gartner and has over 25 years of experience. Her primary focus today is on IaaS and PaaS, especially how the two intersect. Her blog is CloudPundit.

8. Scott Guthrie

Followers: 156.5K
Frequency: 2 per day
Favorite topics: Azure, Kubernetes

Guthrie is Executive VP of the Microsoft Cloud and AI Group. He made his bones as a co-creator of ASP.NET in the late 1990s and is today responsible for Microsoft’s cloud, server, AI, database, business apps, security, management and development tools.

9. Kelsey Hightower

Followers: 80.4K
Frequency: 4 per day
Favorite topics: GCP, Kubernetes and Serverless

Hightower is an engineer at Google in the Google Cloud Platform business. In addition to being a staff developer advocate, he is a prolific speaker in the Kubernetes and open source software communities.

10. Lauren Nelson

Followers: 986
Frequency: 1 per day
Favorite topics: OpenStack, cloud deployment models and optimization

Nelson is a Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, serving as its private IaaS cloud lead analyst. Her expertise extends to the state of cloud standardization, cloud metrics creation, and enterprise cloud adoption trends. Her research is published on the Forrester blog.

11. David Linthicum

Followers: 38K
Frequency: 8 per day
Favorite topics: Cloud computing, AI, IoT, and FinTech

Linthicum is Chief Cloud Strategy Officer at Deloitte Consulting. He is also a bestselling author and speaker, and was named by Apollo Research as the #1 industry analyst influencer in the Technology Specialists category. He blogs at InfoWorld.

12. Corey Quinn

Followers: 14.2K
Frequency: 45 per day
Favorite topics: Cloud, AWS and cost management

As the cloud economist at The Duckbill Group, Quinn specializes in helping companies address AWS bills. Additionally, he is the host of the ‘Screaming in the Cloud’ podcast and curates ‘Last Week in AWS’  a weekly newsletter summarizing the latest in AWS news, blogs and tools.

13. Lori MacVittie

Followers: 8386
Frequency: 2 per day
Favorite topics: Cloud security, DevOps, and IoT

MacVittie is the principal technical evangelist at F5 Networks and specializes in cloud security. She was an award-winning tech editor at Network Computing Magazine, and was on the advisory board at Cloud-Now, a non-profit consortium of the top women in cloud computing.

14. Richard Watson

Followers: 2328
Frequency: 1 per day
Favorite topics: DevOps, Cloud governance, Shadow cloud

Watson is VP Research – Cloud at Gartner. One of his key areas of focus today is cloud governance and security. Watson regularly posts on the Gartner Blog Network.

15. Andy Ellis

Followers: 19.1K
Frequency: 12 per day
Favorite topics: RSAC and CISO issues

Ellis has been CSO at Akamai Technologies for nearly a decade, and was the cloud computing company’s chief security architect the decade before that. Ellis lectures at his alma mater, MIT, and was winner of the CSO Magazine Compass Award in 2011. He recently started to share his thoughts on security and technology at DarkReading. Additionally, he is on Orca Security’s advisory board.

16. Clint Boulton

Followers: 6343
Frequency: 4 per day
Favorite topics: Digital transformation, CIO issues, and AI

A senior writer at CIO.com, Boulton previously worked at the Wall Street Journal and Ziff Davis. His beat is enterprise technology and digital transformation, where he writes about the business of cloud technology and how companies extract value from developments in cloud computing.

17. Charles Babcock

Followers: 5117
Frequency: 1 per day
Favorite topics: Cloud budgets, security, IoT, and OpenStack

The other tech journalist and commentator to make our list, Babcock is the former Editor at large at InformationWeek and author of “Management Strategies for the Cloud Revolution”.

Who’s your go-to cloud expert online? Let us know who you think should be added to our list.