As 2015 comes to a close, the SiliconANGLE Media team is taking a look back at top interviews on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s leading live interview show covering enterprise technology and innovation, to reveal the visionaries in the technology industry.

A visionary is described as a person of unusually keen foresight. All of our picks below provided insight and an understanding of the future of technology and its impact on the world.

John Cleese

One of the most interesting guests to visit theCUBE was John Cleese, distinguished professor at Cornell University, writer, comedian and doctor of laws. SiliconANGLE chose Cleese as one of our “Best Visionaries” of 2015 due to many of his profound insights. However, his view on the “Dunning–Kruger effect,” a study done by Cornell professor David Dunning was the most intuitive.

“There’s a whole lot of people out there who have no idea what they’re doing, but they have absolutely no idea that they have no idea what they’re doing. And those are the ones with the confidence and stupidity who finish up in power. That’s why the planet doesn’t work,” he said.

Click below to watch theCUBE hosts interview John Cleese at ServiceNow Knowledge15. Cleese talks about our “vacuous civilization with the celebrity culture at the heart of its rottenness” … and you won’t want to miss one of the most unexpected exits on theCUBE.

Pat Gelsinger

At VMworld 2015, Pat Gelsinger, CEO for VMware, Inc., delivered a visionary keynote speech where he put into context the futuristic long-term perspective of the technology business. Gelsinger joined theCUBE to describe the road ahead for technology for the enterprise. For this reason, SiliconANGLE chose him as one of the “Best Visionaries” of 2015.

Click below to watch the video and learn why Gelsinger calls the cloud the “engine of innovation,” as well as why applying Moore’s Law to the cloud is not a physics law, but an observation in the economic and technology.

Dave Donatelli

This year’s Oracle OpenWorld 2015 introduced the company’s latest innovations from the chip to the cloud. SiliconANGLE chose Dave Donatelli, executive VP of converged infrastructure at Oracle, as one of the “Best Visionaries” of 2015. During his interview on theCUBE, Donatelli spoke about converged infrastructure and the viability of on-prem solutions.

Click below to watch the video to hear Donatelli talk about the realities of today’s market and where it is going in the future. Also find out why infrastructure developers who are not in the public cloud will be hit economically and with development issues.

Michael Dell

Michael Dell, founder and CEO of Dell, Inc., surprised the industry at Dell World 2015 by announcing a merger with EMC. SiliconANGLE chose Dell as one of the “Best Visionaries” of 2015 because of his insight into new opportunities for innovation throughout the ecosystem. Dell provided an exclusive interview to theCUBE hosts where he outlined his strategy for a new company.

Click below to watch Dell explain the EMC acquisition as creating an absolute enterprise powerhouse.

Inhi Cho Suh

SiliconANGLE chose Inhi Cho Suh, VP of strategy and business development of IBM Analytics, as one of our “Best Visionaries” of 2015 for her insight into bringing the value of analytics to the enterprise. Suh and her team at IBM are redefining the user experience and unleashing the superhero power of analytics for all customers.

Click below to watch theCUBE interview during IBM Insight 2015 where Suh explained the strategy behind IBM’s $17 billion analytics business.

Abhi Mehta

“The ABCD of our ecosystem would be analytics, Big Data, cloud and decision sciences,” said Abhi Mehta, CEO of Tresata, Inc., a software platform provider for real-time customer intelligence management. SiliconANGLE chose Mehta as one of our “Best Visionaries” of 2015 for his insights into the automated data pipeline.

Click below to watch theCUBE hosts talk to Mehta during BigDataNYC 2015 about retrieving actionable intelligence from Big Data.

 Photo by SiliconANGLE