4. Alan Weinberger, CEO and Chairman of the Board, ASCII Group

Alan Weinberger founded The ASCII Group in 1984, and the for-profit group now has members selling more than $9 billion in products and services to end users. Weinberger deserves a place in our Top 12 Executives for putting together a deal with Internet giant Google, helping VARs to get advertising credits and use Google AdWords to market their products and services to end users. Alan has also ensured further collaboration between Google and ASCII whereby Google is looking into creating a vertical search capability that will make it easier for customers to reach solution providers. With the power of the world's largest search engine behind them, this deal, fostered by Weinberger, means VARs have a much wider global reach, and therefore wider potential customer base.