Ricardo Villate is responsible for the management and direction of IDC's consulting and research business across the Latin America region.

Mr. Villate has more than 20 years of experience in the IT and financial industries in Latin America. During his tenure at IDC, he has held various positions within the organization. Prior to becoming Research and Consulting Vice President for Latin America, he was General Manager, Southern Cone (Argentina, Chile, Peru). Before that, he was a Director of hardware, software, services and telecom research programs for the Latin American region. His knowledge comes through his years as an IT market consultant combined with his background in the financial services industry.

Mr. Villate spends much of his time traveling throughout Latin America presenting at industry and vendor events on the evolution of ICT, Latin America in the context of Emerging Markets, cloud, mobility and consumerization of IT, intelligent industries, big data and analytics, data center transformation, emerging technologies, and partnering strategies among other topics.

He is a frequently quoted analyst in the Latin America media including the Wall Street Journal, America Economia, LatinTrade, and BNAmericas.

Prior to joining IDC, Mr. Villate worked as a director for Fiduciaria Popular, a financial institution in Colombia, and in IBM Colombia.

Mr. Villate is a graduate from the Universidad Javeriana in Bogota, Colombia, with a degree in Industrial Engineering. He also holds a marketing degree from the University of California at Berkeley and an Economics degree from the Universidad de los Andes in Bogota. While in the Colombian army, Mr. Villate lived in the Middle East.  He is a native Spanish speaker.