As Vice President, Datacenter & Cloud, Richard Villars is a senior member of IDC's IT Infrastructure research team, which assesses the development and adoption of solutions for datacenter transformation and exploitation of rapidly evolving technologies in the areas of Big Data and Cloud. He develops IDC's viewpoints on the evolution of converged IT infrastructure as well as the adoption of public and private cloud solutions. He advises clients on the impact of open systems, software and network efforts on organizations' infrastructure, deployment, procurement, and management practices.

Mr. Villars is a frequent speaker at industry and Wall Street conferences. Most recently, he spoke to IT managers in the US, South American, and Asia on compute and storage solutions for the "cloud," managing storage capacity growth associated with Big Data analytics, and the impact of converged IT solutions on datacenters and IT staffs. 

Mr. Villars has spent over 25 years at IDC assessing the emergence of network, storage, and server solutions as well as advising companies on the impact of the Internet and information growth on existing IT and general business practices. He has a bachelor of science in Foreign Service (B.S.F.S.) from Georgetown University with a concentration in science, technology, and international affairs.