IDC Analysts Attending

Ahmad Latif Ali

Associate Vice President, Communications Service Providers

Ahmad Latif Ali leads IDC’s EMEA Telecommunications Insights program, directing research in this area as the telecommunications industry becomes an integral part of cutting-edge technology adoption. He provides strategic insight and perspectives on how European telcos are evolving from traditional CSPs to platform players at the heart of digital ecosystems — deciding where to operate in the digital value chain, who to partner with, and how to manage and orchestrate new technologies.

Key areas of his research include global operations and monetization market shares and forecasts, evolution of the telco to ‘techco’, the effects of emerging technologies on the future telco, next-generation BSS to support 5G services monetization, next-generation OSS for cloud orchestration, impact analysis of integrating AI/ML into network operations, net-zero strategies for sustainable telco operations, and the current and future role of hyperscalers in the telco digital ecosystem.

Ahmad leverages his 15+ years experience and his background has always been in telecommunications. He has held senior positions at Ericsson, Sigma Systems, and Samsung SDS, driving solution strategy in the areas of service fulfillment, network operations, customer experience, and revenue management. In his last role before joining IDC, he led the Technology Alliances Partnerships program at Blue Prism EMEA, and was responsible for researching key trends and evolutions in the OSS/BSS and IoT marketspace, driving joint-value propositions to European telco operators and vendors, alongside technology partners.

He is a professionally registered chartered engineer (CEng), and holds a master’s degree in telecommunications with business from UCL and a bachelor’s degree in computer science from King’s College London. Ahmad also lectures postgraduate students at UCL on the future of network communications.

Aly Pinder

Research Vice President, Worldwide Aftermarket Services Strategies& Co-Lead CX Team

As Research Vice President, Aftermarket Services Strategies, Aly Pinder Jr leads IDC research and analysis of the service and customer support market for the manufacturer, which includes topics such as field service, warranty operations, service parts management, and how these service areas impact the overall customer experience. Mr. Pinder Jr. establishes a roadmap for organizations to better understand how technology can transform service and support functions to drive exceptional customer experiences and customer value, profitable revenue growth, and improved efficiency in the field.

Amy Loomis

Research Vice President, Workplace Solutions

Amy Loomis is Group Vice President for IDC’s worldwide Workplace Solutions.  Amy leads a team of analysts focused on the evolving nature of human resources, skills development, collaboration, and leadership across the employee lifecycle. Her research into the Future of Work explores the influence of hardware and software technologies such as artificial intelligence, data analytics, augmented and virtual reality and automation on the changing the nature of work. Her research also explores how technology and business strategy influence workers’ skills and behaviors, organizational culture and how the workplace itself is enabling the future enterprise.

Amy Machado

Senior Research Manager, Content and Knowledge Discovery Strategies

Amy Machado is a Senior Research Manager for IDC’s Content and Knowledge Discovery Strategies program. She examines the evolution of the content and unstructured data supply chain and its impact on mission-critical operations. Driven by demand for using data to make business decisions and building AI-ready data sets, modern technologies are creating new opportunities for automation and insights for what has traditionally been locked in undefined unstructured data. Ms. Machado’s coverage includes enterprise content management, content sharing and collaboration, knowledge discovery, knowledge management, intelligent document processing, and customer communications management software. She uses primary research to size, forecast, and segment these application markets.

Ms. Machado has over 20 years of analyst experience and has been at IDC since 2011. In addition to content and knowledge services, she has also focused on real-time streaming data and time series analytics, production printing, and industrial printing markets.

Ananda Chakravarty

Research Vice President, Retail Merchandising and Marketing Analytics Strategies

Ananda Chakravarty is Vice President for IDC Retail Insights, responsible for the Retail Merchandising and Marketing Analytics Strategies practice. Mr. Chakravarty’s core research covers in-store and digital retail merchandising, digital tools, artificial intelligence, intelligent store operations, retail marketing, and retail media. It includes application of data and data analytics for retail including pricing, tech, and decision making. Ananda builds actionable strategic research focused on retail business merchandising and marketing.

Andrea Siviero

Senior Research Director, MacroTech, Digital Business, and Future of Work

Andrea Siviero leads IDC’s European Digital Business and Future of Work Research group. The group provides market research insights to foster a purposeful and fair adoption of technologies supporting digital societies, businesses and workforce and empower tech providers in strategic decision making, planning and go-to-market activities. Siviero also co-leads the IDC Worldwide MacroTech Research program, focused on the intertwined connection between the Economical and Digital worlds – analyzing the impact key MacroEconomic factors have on the digital landscape and viceversa, how technologies are impacting economies around the world.

Siviero advises IT players on building a forward-looking digital business and workforce strategy, while providing an in-depth view on future of work technology adoption, key digital use cases, macroeconomic digital impact, and digital regulations and emerging technology, via qualitative subscriptions and custom consulting projects. He has extensive experience with large strategy and go-to-market projects with IT providers. He is a member of IDC’s global Tech Storytellers taskforce and he is passionate about public speaking and customer engagement opportunities.

He joined IDC’s European team in 2014 and has become a recognized independent analyst across Europe and beyond in the vertical markets and digital business space. He is based in Italy and he holds a joint PhD in mathematics between the Université Bordeaux I (France) and the Universiteit Leiden (the Netherlands). During his PhD, he covered scientific research, academic teaching, and vocational training. He is a native Italian speaker and he is fluent in English and French.

Andrew Buss

Senior Research Director, Digital and Datacenter Infrastructure Strategies

Andrew Buss is research director for IDC’s European Enterprise Infrastructure program. Based in London, he is responsible for driving IDC’s research covering present and future trends impacting servers, storage and networking and IT service delivery. Central to this is understanding how on-premises IT is evolving under the emergence of Open Source, Software-Defined Enterprise, multi-Cloud adoption and Cloud-native development practices, and how this will impact everything from the low level silicon underpinnings and system design, through to the design and integration of the different infrastructure components, up to the platform management and service delivery.

His research area focuses on understanding the convergence of different technologies and capabilities and how they need to integrate and work together to deliver efficient, effective and agile IT services from the datacenter or cloud right through to the end user. Andrew works with global, multinational and local vendors to understand the dynamics of business technology desires and needs, technology purchasing and investment, organizational and operations structures and customer mindsets and disconnects in order to help vendors effectively position and communicate their value and proposition.

Andrew is also an experienced public speaker, regularly keynoting at many industry conferences and panel sessions, as well as leading or participating in webinars, customer and partner events.

Arnal Dayaratna

Research Vice President, AI Software Development and Platforms

Dr. Arnal Dayaratna is Research Vice President, Software Development at IDC. Arnal focuses on software developer demographics, trends in programming languages and other application development tools, and the intersection of these development environments and the many emerging technologies that are enabling and driving digital transformation. Arnal’s research examines how the changing nature of software development relates to broader trends in the technology landscape.

Arnal brings over a decade of strategy consulting experience to IDC with expertise directing software development, infrastructure, analytics, and business intelligence initiatives for companies in the healthcare and pharmaceutical verticals. He has experience managing software development in startups and enterprises, with a specialization in actionable business intelligence for operational decision-making. Arnal has led development projects related to the quantification of sales and market share data, risk management, predictive analytics and the creation of enterprise data warehouses and data lakes.

At IDC, Arnal’s coverage includes developer experiences, developer demographics, the change nature of software development as well as the intersection of software development with cloud computing, serverless computing and PaaS environments, artificial intelligence, machine learning, IoT and quantum computing.

Ashish Nadkarni

Group Vice President/GM, Worldwide Infrastructure Research

Ashish Nadkarni is Group Vice President and General Manager within IDC’s worldwide infrastructure research organization. Ashish oversees seven global research practices: infrastructure software platforms, cloud and edge services, storage and converged systems, performance intensive computing, compute infrastructure and service provider trends, enterprise and emerging workloads, and the future of digital infrastructure. Additionally, he oversees two regional research practices: Canadian infrastructure solutions, and Latin America enterprise infrastructure and cloud services. Ashish and his team also curate BuyerView, an industry leading portfolio of primary research products that provide a voice of the IT buyer on technology and services adoption trends including cloud and edge services, artificial intelligence (AI), high performance computing (HPC), security and networking, xOps, and software development.

Ashish draws upon his experience working in the IT industry to take a constructively critical view on the lifecycle of infrastructure-related services, deployments, systems, platforms, and technologies. Examples of his research coverage include heterogeneous, accelerated, edge, and quantum computing platforms and systems, rackscale, composable and disaggregated systems, memory, flash and other data persistence technologies, high-speed fabrics and interconnects, modern operating system environments, software-defined infrastructure, and physical, virtual and cloud computing software. Ashish takes keen interest in enterprise and emerging (e.g., cloud-native, web3) workloads, and AI and HPC deployments.

Bill Latshaw

Research Director, Business Consulting Services

Bill Latshaw is IDC Business Consulting Services practice research lead. His research focus targets the business imperatives that drive business consulting. Bill provides strategic guidance to consulting and advisory services firms as well as the firms that hire them. He is based in IDC’s Needham office. Bill’s most recent research spanned strategic, operational, and human resource related themes for professional service companies and industry.

Bjoern Stengel

Research Manager, Sustainable Strategies and Technologies

Bjoern Stengel is IDC’s global sustainability research lead. His research focuses on how environmental, social, and governance (ESG) topics impact and shape business strategies and technology usage. He provides insights into market opportunities, adoption strategies, and use cases for sustainability-related technologies and services. Bjoern helps IDC’s clients understand the impact of technology-enabled, sustainable transformation processes in the context of sustainable business strategies, operations, and products and services through research reports, news publications, and speaking engagements at industry events such as Climate Week NYC.

Bob Parker

Senior Vice President, Enterprise Applications, Data Intelligence, Services and Industry Research

Bob Parker is a Senior Vice President responsible for several areas of research at IDC.  Bob leads the global industry research teams which includes coverage of healthcare, government, retail, energy, manufacturing, and financial services as well as a cross industry group looking at emerging topics such as blockchain and robotics.  Additionally, Bob leads our teams in the enterprise applications space, services, and the IDC coverage of data intelligence which includes coverage of artificial intelligence.

Brian Clarke

Group Vice President, Pricing Evaluation and Sourcing Advisory Services

Brian Clarke, Group Vice President of IDC’s Pricing Evaluation and Sourcing Advisory Services, is responsible for managing a global portfolio of research services examining the value of information technology equipment, software and services. Mr. Clarke developed several innovate research practices and tools that bring an understanding to complex and ever changing pricing structures resulting from digital transformation.

Bryan Ma

Vice President, Data & Analytics

Bryan Ma is Vice President of Client Devices research, covering mobile phones, tablets, PCs, AR/VR headsets, wearables, thin clients, and monitors across Asia as well as worldwide. Based in Singapore, Bryan provides insights and advisory services for both vendors and users, and coordinates his team of analysts in building IDC’s core market data, analysis, and forecasts in these sectors.

Bryan has been quoted in a number of publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Financial Times, BusinessWeek, The South China Morning Post, and The New York Times. He has been a featured speaker at numerous industry conferences and appears frequently as a guest commentator on television networks such as CNBC, Bloomberg, and the BBC.

Bryan has been with IDC since 1999, when he joined IDC’s Consumer Devices team in California. He has been the recipient of several recognitions at IDC, including multiple Research Quality awards as well as IDC’s Global Fellowship. Prior to joining IDC, Bryan was a Business Analyst at Arthur Andersen in Los Angeles, where he was part of the firm’s Business Consulting practice specializing in the financial services industry.

Chris Barnard

Vice President, European Telecoms and Infrastructure

Chris Barnard is vice president, European Telecoms and Infrastructure, at IDC. He joined the company in 2000 and is responsible for European research covering all aspects of telecoms and IoT, datacenter infrastructure, networking, unified communications & collaboration, related professional services.

Based in Amsterdam, Chris and IDC’s region-wide team of analysts focus on the major shifts taking place in the markets, as organizations move from physical, premise-based environments to services delivered via virtual and cloud solutions in a business world that is mobility-centric. Chris and team work very closely with a range of telecoms providers and infrastructure vendors, from industry leaders to start-ups, to identify the drivers and opportunities on offer.

He is the author of numerous white papers and trade press articles on telecoms, professional services, convergence, unified communications, ebusiness, infrastructure, and networking strategies. He is widely quoted in the international technology and business press. In 2010, Chris was named telecoms analyst of the year by the Institute of Industry Analyst Relations (IIAR). He is frequently asked to speak at international industry conferences, customer events, and road shows.

In the late nineties he worked for three years at Montreal-based software company Essentus as special projects manager and customer support manager (Europe). Before joining this supply chain management vendor, he was employed by Fast Lane, an Oracle consultancy in the Netherlands. Chris, who holds a master’s degree (cum laude) from Stellenbosch University, also has six years’ experience in content and management roles at media companies.

Craig Robinson

Research Vice President , Security Services

Craig Robinson is a Research Vice President within IDC’s Security Services research practice, focusing on managed services, consulting, and integration. Coverage areas include Managed Detection and Response services, Cyber Resilience, and Incident Readiness & Response services. Mr. Robinson delivers unparalleled insight and analysis, leveraging his unique practitioner experience leading diverse IT teams across several industries. This expertise positions him to provide valuable thought leadership, research and guidance to vendors, service providers and clients worldwide.

Daniel Saroff

Group Vice President, Tech Buyer and Consulting

Daniel Saroff is Group Vice President of Consulting and Research at IDC, where he is a senior practitioner in the end-user consulting practice. This practice provides support to boards, business leaders, and technology executives in their efforts to architect, benchmark, and optimize their organization’s information technology. IDC’s end-user consulting practice utilizes our extensive international IT data library, robust research base, and tailored consulting solutions to deliver unique business value through IT acceleration, performance management, cost optimization, and contextualized benchmarking capabilities.

Mr. Saroff also leads the CIO/End-User Research Practice at IDC. This practice provides guidance to business and technology executives on how to leverage technology to achieve innovative and disruptive business outcomes. IDC’s research enables clients to create grounded business and technology strategies and empowers IT leaders to deliver services and innovation that drive business growth and success.

Mr. Saroff has over twenty years of experience in senior-level positions in both consulting organizations and delivering technology. Prior to joining IDC, he served as the CIO for a major Massachusetts state agency, where he led the agency through cloud migrations, digital transformation, technology modernization, enterprise platform reengineering, security in-depth and zero trust, and defense and response to a major cyber-attack. He also held consulting positions at both Forrester and Gartner and was a IT Director at a major aerospace and defense company. Before joining IDC, he owned a private IT management consultancy.

In addition to his work in technology and consulting, Mr. Saroff co-founded and managed a neuroscience research laboratory focused on Alzheimer’s Disease and published multiple peer-reviewed research articles.

Dave McCarthy

Research Vice President, Cloud & Infrastructure Services

Dave McCarthy is Research Vice President within IDC’s worldwide infrastructure research organiztion and global research lead for the cloud and edge services practice. Dave leads a team of analysts covering research on shared (public) cloud, dedicated (private) cloud, and edge deployments, services, adoption trends, vendor strategies and market dynamics. Benefiting both technology suppliers and IT decision makers, Dave’s insights delve into ways in which hybrid and distributed cloud platforms provide the foundation for next-generation workloads, enabling organizations to innovate faster, automate operations, and achieve digital resiliency. His research is available via syndicated research programs (subscription services), data products (IDC Trackers) and custom engagements.

Dave Pearson

Research Vice President, Compute, Storage, Converged and Hyperconverged Infrastructure, Infrastructure Software, Workloads, Performance Intensive Computing

Dave Pearson is Research Vice President within IDC’s worldwide infrastructure research organization and global research lead for the Storage and Converged Systems practice. Dave is also the research lead for IDC Canada’s Infrastructure Solutions practice. He manages a team of analysts that cover both research domains. For the storage and converged systems practice, Dave and his team provide global insights on storage, integrated, hyperconverged and composable infrastructure technology trends, vendor strategies, and market adoption. It includes storage for performance intensive computing use cases like high-performance computing, artificial intelligence, and analytics. It also includes cloud enabled infrastructure and infrastructure used for cloud deployments. For the Canadian infrastructure solutions practice, he and his team deliver region-specific inisights on compute, storage, networking, security, as well as contributing to edge, cloud, artificial intelligence and infrastructure software technology trends, vendor strategies, and market adoption.

Devin Pratt

Research Director, Data Management

Devin Pratt is a Research Director within IDC’s AI, Automation, Data & Analytics (AAD&A) practice, where he oversees the database management tools and technologies software market. His primary research centers on the evolution of database management tools and technologies, covering both current and future capabilities across various relational, non-relational, and dynamic database systems designed for operational or analytic data workloads. Additionally, Mr. Pratt’s research encompasses related technologies used for data modeling, database development, optimization, and maintenance. By analyzing market trends, buyer behaviors, and the business value of these technologies, Mr. Pratt’s research helps vendors enhance their products and refine marketing strategies, while also guiding end-users in selecting data management solutions for challenges such as cloud migration and AI-driven data initiatives.

Duncan Brown

Group Vice President, Security Products, Sustainability

Duncan Brown leads European research for the Software, Services, Cloud, Security, Sustainability, Digital Business and IPDS areas, as well as the Channel Partner and Ecosystems research teams. He is also responsible for IDC’s European research into the Future of Work, Future Consumer, and Smart Office areas. He has a strong focus on team development and thought leadership, as well as working with sales, marketing, and consulting to help build IDC’s European business.

Brown specializes in providing strategic advice to his clients, informing, and validating their corporate, product, and marketing plans. His analysis and opinions are widely sought by industry leaders and investors, while his comments on industry trends and developments frequently appear in the leading business and trade publications. He established IDC’s market-leading coverage of the global impact of the GDPR on technology companies and their customers.

Brown started his career in the banking sector and then focused on building extensive experience in various roles in analyst firms including Ovum, PAC, and IDC. Most recently he spent time as Chief Security Strategist on the vendor-side where he developed a strong profile in the industry and is a well-known and respected analyst with IDC customers.

Brown leads IDC’s pioneering EMEA Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) research programme.

Eric Newmark

Group Vice President/GM, SaaS, Enterprise Applications, and Workplace Solutions

Eric Newmark is Group Vice President & General Manager of IDC’s SaaS, Enterprise Software, and Worldwide Services Division, which includes several teams of analysts covering Software-as-a-Service, 18 enterprise application markets, industry cloud, software monetization, business platforms and marketplaces, and professional services firms focused on outsourcing services, engineering services, and global services, markets, and trends. Eric also leads or co-leads three of IDC’s cloud data products, including Industry CloudPath, SaaSPath, and Industry AI Path, which collectively provide global intelligence and benchmark information on the cloud, SaaS, and AI markets, across 30 industries. These programs provide strategic guidance and advisory services to both technology providers and industrial companies on technology adoption, maturity, deployment models, best practices, vendor ratings, purchasing preferences, and buyer journeys.

Frank Della Rosa

Research Vice President, SaaS, Business Platforms and Industry Cloud

Frank Della Rosa is Research Vice President responsible for SaaS, Business Platforms, and Industry Cloud. Mr. Della Rosa’s core research analyzes current market conditions and trends and provides strategic guidance to technology suppliers and mid-market and enterprise technology buyers. Ongoing research highlights various SaaS and cloud computing aspects, including hybrid and multi-cloud application deployments, business platforms, cloud marketplaces, buyer behavior, and global trends across vertical and functional markets. Mr. Della Rosa’s research covers emerging ISVs’ journey to SaaS, SaaS management platforms, market forecasts, and supplier market shares.

Frank Dickson

Group Vice President, Security & Trust

Frank Dickson is the Group Vice President for IDC’s Security & Trust research practice. In this role, he leads the team that delivers compelling research in the areas of AI Security; Cybersecurity Services; Information and Data Security; Endpoint Security; Trust; Governance, Risk & Compliance; Identity & Digital Trust; Network Security; Privacy & Legal Tech; and Application Security & Fraud. Topically, he provides thought leadership and guidance for clients on a wide range of security topics including ransomware and emerging products designed to protect transforming architectures and business models.

Heather Hershey

Research Director, Worldwide Digital Commerce Strategy

Heather Hershey is Research Director for IDC Worldwide Digital Commerce practice. Ms. Hershey’s core research coverage includes digital commerce applications targeting businesses of all sizes and industries (B2C, B2B, B2B2C); Product Information Management (PIM) and syndication applications; Commerce personalization, search, and merchandizing applications; CPQ and order management applications; Digital marketplaces; Headless digital commerce; Enterprise partnership/integration strategies among digital commerce, supply chain, marketing, and content management vendors; Commerce experience management across channels, Digital shelf trend; and AI-enabled or Intelligent commerce.

Heather West

Research Manager, Quantum and Analog Computing

Heather West, PhD, is Research Manager within IDC’s worldwide infrastructure research organization and part of the performance intensive computing (PIC) practice. She leads IDC’s quantum, analog and neuromorphic computing research and plays a supporting role in IDC’s research on artificial Intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure stacks and deployments. Dr. West is deeply engaged with her clients on their solutions and services, as well as on their business and technology strategies. Her domain knowledge of the quantum computing industry including proficiency in related workloads and use cases has made Dr. West a trusted advisor to several emerging quantum and analog computing vendors and positioned IDC as the go-to vendor for market research on Quantum Computing.

Jason Bremner

Research Vice President, IT Consulting and Systems Integration Services

Jason Bremner is Research Vice President for IDC’s IT Consulting and Systems Integration Strategies program, providing research insights and thought leadership on the key issues and trends affecting the IT consulting and systems integration services markets globally. His core research includes analyzing customer demand and vendor offerings for IT consulting and systems integration services, and the services ecosystems for leading application software and infrastructure solution providers.

Jeff Janukowicz

Research Vice President, Semiconductors and Enabling Technologies

Jeff Janukowicz is a Research Vice President at IDC where he provides insight and analysis on the SSD market for the Client PC, Enterprise Data Center, and Cloud market segments. In this role, Jeff provides expert opinion, in-depth market research, and strategic analysis on the dynamics, trends, and opportunities facing the industry. His research includes market forecasts, market share reports, and technology trends of clients, investor, suppliers, and manufacturers.

Jennifer Hamel

Senior Research Director, Enterprise Intelligence Services

Jennifer Hamel is a Senior Research Director for IDC’s Worldwide Services team, responsible for the Enterprise Intelligence Services research program. In this research, Ms. Hamel covers the life cycle of project-oriented, managed, and support services related to the deployment of technologies, such as data management, analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and automation, as part of enterprise intelligence initiatives. In particular, her research focuses on how services providers work with organizations to ensure investments in enterprise intelligence technologies result in improved business outcomes.

Jennifer Glenn

Research Director, Information and Data Security

Jennifer Glenn is Research Director for the IDC Security and Trust Group and is responsible for the information and data security practice. Ms. Glenn’s core coverage includes a broad range of technologies including messaging security, sensitive data management, encryption, tokenization, rights management, key management, and certificates. As part of this research, Ms. Glenn will demonstrate the critical role of data security in top enterprise initiatives such as generating customer trust and digital transformation.

BACKGROUND
Ms. Glenn has an extensive background in cybersecurity enabled by more than 20 years of marketing experience with leading providers. Most recently, she was a content director for IBM Security, where she established and led the organization’s go-to-market efforts for Zero Trust. Prior to IBM, Ms. Glenn held senior product marketing roles with SailPoint Technologies, Arbor Networks (now NetScout) and TippingPoint Technologies (now Trend Micro). She started her career as a public relations associate with Lois Paul & Partners, where she found her love of cybersecurity and helped build the security practice.

Jerry Silva

Program Vice President, IDC Financial Insights

Jerry Silva is Program Vice President for IDC Financial Insights leading the global financial services research programs across banking, insurance, and capital markets. He draws on 40+ years of experience in the financial services industry covering a variety of topics, from digital infrastructures to AI, data management, and IT governance.

Before coming to IDC, Jerry ran his own technology consulting company assisting both vendors and institutions with product strategy, marketing, and acquisition and deployment of technology solutions in financial services. Prior to that, Jerry was responsible for product strategy at a US-based software company, creating solutions for consumer and small business online banking, mobile banking, and payments. He started his professional career working in operations, technology, and line of business groups and supporting transformational projects for First national Bank of Chicago, BayBank, and BankBoston.

As a respected domain expert, Jerry has chaired and speaks at various banking technology symposiums, including the Financial Services Technology Forum, the Identity Theft and Fraud Symposium, Money20/20 and SIBOS. He is a frequent contributor to publications including the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, the New York Times, American Banker, and others.

Jevin Jensen

Research Vice President, Infrastructure and Operations, FinOps, and Automation

Jevin Jensen is Research Vice President, Intelligent CloudOps Market service at IDC where he covers infrastructure as code/GitOps infrastructure Automation, cloud cost transparency, DevOps, hybrid/public/multi cloud management platforms, and edge management.

Jim Mercer

Program Vice President, Software Development, Platform Engineering, DevOps and DevSecOps

Jim Mercer is a Program Vice President managing multiple programs spanning application lifecycle management (ALM), modern application development and trends, emerging generative AI software development, DevOps, DevSecOps, open source, PaaS for developers, and cloud application platforms. His focus areas are DevOps and DevSecOps Solutions research practices. In this role, he is responsible for researching, writing, and advising clients on the fast-evolving DevOps and DevSecOps markets. Mr. Mercer’s core research includes topics such as rapid enterprise application development, modern microservice-based packaging, platform engineering, GitOps, application security, software supply chain security, and automated deployment and lifecycle/management strategies as applied to a DevOps practice. In addition, he examines how the move to DevOps methodologies impacts enterprise use of open source and preferences for using on-premises computing and development platforms vs. public cloud services. Further, He examines how organizations prioritize DevSecOps and use automation to insert security assessments into the DevOps delivery pipeline (i.e., shift left). Mr. Mercer advises Senior IT, business, and investment executives globally in creating strategy and operational tactics that drive the execution of digital transformation and business optimization.

Jitesh Bhayani

Research Vice President, Communications Services

Jitesh Bhayani is a Research Vice President in the WW Network and Telecommunications group, serving as a Research Lead and Thought Leader across a diverse set of Telecom Services, collaborating across IDC’s team of telecom research analysts. He provides strategic direction and advisory services across a variety of disciplines such as wireless, wireline, voice, and managed services. Jitesh is a key collaborator with IDC’s Consulting Services Team and serves as a trusted advisor to multiple Communications Service Providers, Cloud Services Providers, and IT Solutions vendors.

Jordan Jewell

Sr. Research Director, Persuasive Content and Digital Experience

Jordan Jewell is a Sr Research Director for IDC’s Persuasive Content and Digital Experiences practice. Mr. Jewell’s core research coverage includes web content management (WCM) applications, headless content architectures, managed web hosting solutions, and SaaS template website builders; digital asset management (DAM) and dynamic media software; digital experience platforms (DXPs); content personalization applications; GenAI search disruption; video platforms for marketing and enterprise uses; and creative tools, among other areas. His research emphasizes how content is evolving in the age of AI and agentic commerce.

BACKGROUND
Prior to joining IDC in 2026, Mr. Jewell spent a decade as a thought leader and analyst in the digital commerce software space. Most recently, he spent four years at VTEX, where he served as Analyst in Residence and led the U.S. content team, producing research-backed content and thought leadership. Earlier, Mr. Jewell served as a Research Director at IDC, where he launched the Digital Commerce practice and supported IDC’s Enterprise Applications team.

Katie Norton

Research Manager, DevSecOps and Software Supply Chain Security

Katie Norton is a Research Manager for IDC’s DevSecOps and Software Supply Chain Security research practice. She is responsible for researching, writing, and advising clients on the fast-evolving DevSecOps and software supply chain security markets. With her background in research administration and data analytics, Katie takes a data-first approach in her market analysis.

Katie’s core research areas include the integration of security into the software development lifecycle, development team ownership of security and collaboration with AppSec teams, and examining the drivers of DevSecOps adoption. She also explores buying patterns and trends for DevSecOps and software supply chain security tooling. Katie’s industry-leading research defines the software supply chain security market and helps end users understand software factory security. Other topics include ASPM and application vulnerability management, securing AI applications, AI use cases in DevSecOps, and SBOM generation and management.

Keith Kmetz

Program Vice President, Imaging, Printing & Document Solutions

Keith Kmetz is the Program Vice President of IDC’s Imaging, Printing & Document Solutions programs. He is responsible for all written research in these areas, including analysis on the printer, multifunction peripheral (MFP) and 3D printing markets as well as related transformational hardcopy software/services developments. Based on his 20+ year experience at IDC, Keith’s research coverage has spanned a wide variety of significant print industry topics with an emphasis on both forecast and survey analysis; vertical market opportunities; and client go-to-market strategies.

Kevin Permenter

Research Director, Financial Applications

As a research director, Kevin M. Permenter provides insights and analysis across multiple Fintech market segments including accounting, revenue management, corporate tax, accounts payable, accounts receivable, treasury and enterprise payment management. Kevin leads qualitative research efforts which drive a series of technology buyer-focused documents including Marketscapes, buyer perspectives, Peerscapes and end-user surveys. He also leads several quantitative research efforts within financial applications that feed key technology supplier-focused documents like Market Shares, Market Forecast, Market Glance, Market Analysis Perspectives. Kevin’s research includes a particular emphasis on the interplay, challenges, and trends driving financial application deployment and its role in the evolution of the complex financial technology ecosystem.

Kevin Prouty

Group Vice President & General Manager, Tech Buyer Business

Kevin Prouty is Group Vice President and General Manager for IDC’s Tech Buyer business unit. He is responsible for managing a global group of analysts and consultants that provide research-based advisory, benchmarking, consulting, and career development services for technology executives. Kevin also specializes in industrial and operational research.

BACKGROUND
Prior to his current role, Kevin led the worldwide manufacturing and energy research groups in IDC’s Industry Insights business. Before joining IDC he was SVP of Research at Aberdeen Group. He also spent over five years as Sr. Director of Manufacturing and Energy Solutions at Motorola and was the resident expert on technology’s role in continuous improvement. Prior to Motorola, he was Research Director for Manufacturing and Automotive at AMR Research and Gartner, where he spent a cumulative six years. Leading up to his research role, Kevin spent over 15 years as both a user and system integrator of operations software. Twelve of those years was as a plant manager and project manager at a global manufacturer, managing a large workforce and business that produced tooling for automotive and industrial companies. He was responsible for all automation of the facility and energy plant, including integration of automated process and information systems into all aspects of the business. In addition, Kevin helped lead the re -engineering team that implemented ERP and shop floor systems throughout the company. Kevin also managed the building, start up, and initial operation of a plant in China from 1992 to 1993.

Kitty Fok

Managing Director, IDC China

As the managing director of IDC China, Kitty Fok manages over 80 specialized analysts and leads all research for the China region. Kitty’s expertise includes an in-depth understanding of the IT market, with a focus on emerging technologies, the impact of the Chinese government’s policies, and digital transformation, as well as the fundamentals of forecasting, business development, and strategic planning/analysis.

She is often invited to be a guest speaker in the industry’s leading events and is regularly interviewed by the mainstream media, including the BBC, CNN, Bloomberg, CCTV, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, South China Morning Post, and China Daily.

In addition, she is a senior advisor to the Guangzhou Municipal Government Internet Industry Committee, an expert judge at the GSMA’s Global Mobile Awards and the Global Mobile Applications Development competitions, and an advisor for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

She joined IDC in 1996 with a master’s degree in Management (Operations Research) from Lancaster University.

Kuba Stolarski

Research Vice President, Compute Infrastructure

Kuba Stolarski is Research Vice President within IDC’s worldwide infrastructure research organization and global research lead for the compute infrastructure and service provider trends practice. Kuba leads a team of analysts that deliver industry and market insights on computing systems, platforms, and technologies as well as the service provider space. In the compute infrastructure domain, Kuba is IDC’s lead server analyst. His research on compute covers areas such as OEM and ODM Direct vendor strategies, server and non-server form factors, processors and function-offload accelerators, memory technologies, edge computing infrastructure, cloud and non-cloud deployments, bare metal, virtualized and containerized infrastructure, and confidential computing. Kuba oversees research on high-end, accelerated, in-memory and heterogeneous computing infrastructure systems, platforms, and technologies. These include servers with discrete and embedded accelerators (e.g., GPUs, FPGAs, and ASICs) deployed in the cloud, at the core, and at the edge. It spans mission-critical computing platforms, mainframes, and RISC-based systems as well as their associated operating environments (e.g., Linux, z/OS, UNIX). He also oversees IDC’s service provider research which includes insights on demand (buyers) and supply chain (sellers). Kuba’s flagship research on cloud infrastructure delivered as a multiclient study and now in its eighth year, uniquely positions IDC in the service provider infrastructure research domain. Kuba and his team also contribute to IDC’s Enterprise Infrastructure Trackers, notably Buyer, Cloud and Edge Deployment, and ODM-Direct Trackers. Kuba also oversees the global server forecast for IDC’s Server Tracker.

Lars Goransson

Vice President, Research, Worldwide Services

Lars Goransson is Vice President of Research, Worldwide Services at IDC. He leads IDC’s global research and advisory for IT and business services, focusing on how technology suppliers and buyers can navigate market shifts, innovation, and business transformation. Lars’s research explores the evolving dynamics of the worldwide services landscape, providing clients with trusted tech intelligence and evidence-based insight to make confident decisions in a fast-changing digital economy. His work illuminates the path forward for organizations seeking to anticipate demand, validate investments, and seize new opportunities.

Laurie Buczek

Group Vice President, Executive Insights

Laurie Buczek is the Group Vice President of Executive Insights at IDC, where she spearheads the global research initiatives that shape the industry’s understanding of digital business transformation, evolving buying behaviors, and technology investments. She leads IDC’s premier research practices, including the CMO Advisory Practice, C-Suite Tech Agenda, and Digital to AI Business Transformation.

As the principal analyst for the CMO Advisory Practice, Laurie advises senior marketing leaders on driving business growth through deeper customer connections and the strategic evolution of the marketing function, with a keen focus on AI’s transformative impact. Her expertise and thought leadership empower executives to navigate the intersection of technology, business strategy, and customer engagement in today’s dynamic digital landscape.

Leslie Rosenberg

Research Vice President, Network Life-Cycle Services and Infrastructure Services

Leslie Rosenberg is Research Vice President for IDC’s Network Life Cycle and Infrastructure Services programs examining professional services trends and market dynamics for the enterprise. Ms. Rosenberg’s research coverage spans life cycle services portfolio development across network, server and storage infrastructure technologies encompassing the dynamics of software defined infrastructure, automation, service delivery platforms, new consumption models and the evolution of services impacting people, process, tools and methodologies around the globe. Ms. Rosenberg’s research evaluates services delivered by technology manufacturers, global systems integrators and telcos as they look to compete more effectively in the enterprise market.

Lynne Dunbrack

Group Vice President, Public Sector – Health Insights & Government Insights

Lynne Dunbrack is Group Vice President for Public Sector, which includes IDC Government Insights and IDC Health Insights. She manages a group of analysts who provide research-based advisory and consulting services for payers, providers, accountable care organizations, IT service providers, and the IT suppliers that serve those markets. Lynne also leads the IDC Health Insights’ Connected Health IT Strategies program. Specific areas of Lynne’s in-depth coverage include mobile, constituency engagement, interoperability, digital transformation, privacy, and security. Technology coverage areas include clinical mobility (physician facing) and mobile health (consumer facing), end-to-end remote patient health monitoring for health, wellness and chronic conditions, Internet of Things (IoT), telemedicine and virtual care, and digital therapeutics

Lynne Schneider

Research Director, Data Collaboration & Monetization, and Location & Geospatial Intelligence

Lynne Schneider is Research Director leading IDC’s Data Collaboration & Monetization, and Location & Geospatial Intelligence market research and advisory practices. Ms. Schneider’s core research coverage in DaaS includes data sourcing and delivery services from traditional and emerging data providers along with evolving data aggregation and dissemination platforms. The breadth of coverage includes services that enable an organization to externally monetize data generated as part of the organization’s ongoing operations, value-added information derived from this data, and the marketplace for combining data with other solutions. This research analyzes the supply and demand side business and technology trends of this emerging category.

The Location and Geospatial Intelligence coverage includes encompasses data providers, location and geospatial analytics and visualization, mapping, navigation, geospatial developer tools and platforms and other supporting technologies.

Madhumitha Sathish

Research Manager, AI and High Performance Computing Infrastructure Stacks

Madhumitha Sathish is Research Manager within IDC’s worldwide infrastructure research organization and part of the performance intensive computing (PIC) practice. She leads IDC’s artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure research and plays a supporting role in IDC’s research on high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure stacks and deployments. In her role, Ms. Sathish delivers syndicated and custom qualitative and quantitative insights, including market size and forecast studies, and custom market models.

BACKGROUND
Previously, Mrs. Sathish was a senior analyst at CGI, a Canadian multinational information technology consulting company. She has a strong background in primary and secondary research, market sizing and forecasting, data analytics and visualization, industry trends and competitive landscape analysis. She has also been a market research analyst at Infiniti Research, Eaton and Frost & Sullivan covering topics such as Industry 5.0, digital transformation, IT solutions adoption by various industry verticals, managed IT services, social media analytics for NPD, energy-efficient lighting systems, SAE levels of driving automation – emerging technologies adoption for consumer convenience and safety, among others.

Mark Leary

Research Director, Network Observability, Automation and AI

Mark Leary is Research Director for Network Analytics and Automation responsible for worldwide technology market research and analysis. Mark’s core research coverage focuses on the advancement and adoption of network performance management solutions (both on-premises systems and cloud-based services) and the development of network automation capabilities by both technology suppliers and enterprise operators. Sample key areas of interest include end-to-end visibility, predictive analytics, AI/ML-driven insights, digital experience management, open-source technologies, cloud service monitoring, and “programmed” automation as they apply to a secure, dynamic, and predictable network environment. Based on his current work and background, Mark’s research also examines the evolution of enterprise and cloud network technologies; adoption of cloud services and software-defined systems; buildout of professional support services and partner ecosystems; fortification of network management best practices; and the reformation of IT staff roles and skills in this demanding hyper-connected digital era.

Marlanna Harrington

Research Analyst, Data, Analytics, AI, and Automation

Marlanna Harrington is a Research Analyst on the data, analytics, AI, and automation team. Ms. Harrington’s research concentrates on data platforms, including data warehouses, lakes, and lakehouses, focusing on data storage and management. She examines core technologies for implementing analytic data platforms across various environments, data modeling techniques, and emerging open table structures. Her research closely aligns with the data control plane that helps govern and manage data, all in preparation for analytics that provide data-driven solutions to impact business operations.

BACKGROUND
Marlanna has covered a wide range of research topics during her time at IDC. She started out in consumer research analyzing consumer attitudes, behaviors, technology usage, spending, brand perceptions, etc. When transitioning over to the data and analytics team at IDC, Marlanna focused on data analytic tools and their impact on enterprise decision-making. Her research was centered around business intelligence, geospatial data management and analytics as well as enterprise performance management software.

Matt Eastwood

Senior Vice President, Enterprise Infrastructure, Cloud, Security, ITOps and Developers

Matt Eastwood is Senior Vice President of IDC’s enterprise infrastructure, cloud, telecom, security, developers, channels and enabling technology research groups. Mr. Eastwood and his team research people, process and technology trends affecting the enterprise technology marketplace worldwide. Mr. Eastwood first joined IDC in 2000 as part of the server team and his responsibilities have evolved and expanded during his tenure. In his current role, he leads a team of more than 100 analysts providing insights and analysis to IT suppliers, buyers, investors, and distributors through more than 75 syndicated research programs. Mr. Eastwood also leads IDC’s BuyerView primary research programs which are focused on defining emerging trends in cloud, developers, service providers, edge, AI and security.

Meredith Whalen

Chief Research Officer

As IDC’s Chief Product, Research & Delivery Officer, Meredith Whalen leads the company’s global product, research and data, and delivery organizations. Under her leadership, IDC delivers cutting-edge intelligence to the world’s leading technology vendors, enterprises, and investors as they navigate the evolving AI economy. Meredith sets the strategic direction for IDC’s global analyst community, shaping research methodologies and agendas that generate industry-leading data and actionable insights to drive high-impact business decisions.

With more than 20 years at IDC, Meredith has been a catalyst for some of the company’s most transformative initiatives. She founded IDC’s Industry Insights and Tech Buyer business units and pioneered the industry’s first comprehensive business use case taxonomy. She also led the creation of IDC’s DecisionScape methodology—a strategic framework that empowers organizations to better plan, implement, and optimize their technology investments.

A recognized thought leader and sought-after speaker, Meredith regularly delivers keynotes at major global technology events and advises senior executives on the trends shaping the future of business and technology.

Meredith holds a B.A. with honors from Wellesley College and an MBA with honors from Babson College’s F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business.

Michelle Abraham

Senior Research Director, Security and Trust

Michelle Abraham is a Senior Research Director in IDC’s Security and Trust Group responsible for the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), Exposure Management and Related Artificial Intelligence Technologies practice. Ms. Abraham’s core research coverage includes SIEM platforms, exposure management platforms, attack surface management, breach and attack simulation, cybersecurity asset management, and device vulnerability management alongside AI-related security topics.

Mickey North-Rizza

Group Vice President, Enterprise Software

Mickey North Rizza is Group Vice-President for IDC’s Enterprise Software. She leads the Enterprise Applications & Strategies research service along with a team of analysts responsible for IDC’s coverage of next generation of enterprise applications including digital commerce, employee experience, enterprise asset management and smart facilities, ERP, financial applications, HCM and payroll applications, procurement, professional services automation and related project-based solutions software, supply chain automation, and talent acquisition and strategies. In her role, Mickey and the team advises clients on these intelligent, modern, and modular enterprise applications for businesses of all sizes with an emphasis on the key trends, opportunities, innovation and the IT and Business Buyer concerns, requirements, and buyer behaviors.

Mukesh Dialani

Research Vice President, Digital Engineering and Operational Technology Services

Mukesh Dialani is a Research Vice President for IDC’s Worldwide Digital Engineering and Operational Technology Services research. He is responsible for executing field research and custom research projects across the entire lifecycle of hardware and software products. Based on this background that included working with end customers in the engineering services domain, his core focus also includes operational technology and emerging technology areas related to Industrial IoT, Computer Vision, Robotics, AR/VR and digital transformation pertaining to engineering services.

Nancy Gohring

Senior Research Director, AI

Nancy Gohring is a senior research director, co-leading IDC’s GenAI and Agentic AI Strategies program. Nancy covers big picture trends related to enterprise adoption of AI, including GenAI and agentic AI. Key research themes include business, organizational, and technology architecture transformation, in the context of AI and GenAI. As part of the Worldwide AI, Automation, Data & Analytics Research practice, Nancy supports a range of clients across the technology stack including hyperscalers, developer tool providers, enterprise application vendors, professional services organizations, automation frameworks providers, and infrastructure suppliers.

Peter Chahal

Research Director, Communications Service Providers

Peter Chahal is a Research Director at IDC’s Network and Telecommunications research practice covering telecommunication services and strategies. Some of the key areas of his research includes mobile broadband services, 5G monetization, SD-WAN, wireline broadband services, and other emerging telecom digital services. Peter’s also looks at telecommunication service providers’ broader strategies and how those strategies influence telecommunication providers’ digital transformations. His research helps telecommunication service providers and vendors have a better understanding of the worldwide telecommunications market and discover new opportunities for growth.

Peter Marston

Research Director, Worldwide Intelligent Application Services

Pete Marston is Research Director for IDC, responsible for the Worldwide Intelligent Application Services practice. He develops research focused on the lifecycle of application delivery and related services markets that include Custom Application Development (CAD), testing, Application Management (AM), also referred to as ADM (Application Development and Maintenance), and Hosted Application Management (HAM). Mr. Marston’s research also reviews how modern application delivery, leading edge technology platforms and tools, and application lifecycle management methodologies are evolving and shaping the application services markets and contractual relationships. His research has a particular emphasis on services like agile and DevOps, artificial intelligence and automation, containers and microservices, cloud (i.e. SaaS, PaaS), and mobility help organizations achieve digital transformation objectives, as well as how modern application delivery practices and technologies are creating new opportunities and challenges for application service providers.

Phil Goodwin

Research Vice President, Infrastructure Software Platforms, Worldwide Infrastructure Research

Phil Goodwin is Research Vice President within IDC’s worldwide infrastructure research organization and global research lead for the infrastructure software platforms practice. He leads a team of analysts that provide detailed insights and analyses on evolving infrastructure software trends, vendor performance, and the impact of new technology adoption. Mr. Goodwin’s own research focuses on multi-cloud data management, data logistics, on-premises and cloud-based data protection as-a-service, cyber protection and recovery, and recovery orchestration. He takes a holistic view of these markets, and covers risk analysis, service level requirements and cost/benefit calculations in his research. Mr. Goodwin also contributes regularly to IDC’s CIO advisory practice.

Philip D. Harris, CISSP, CCSK

Research Director, Governance, Risk and Compliance Services

Phil Harris is the Research Director for GRC Services and Software. He is responsible for developing and socializing IDC’s point of view on risk, advisory, and privacy services including governance, risk, and compliance with enterprises, IT suppliers and service providers. Phil develops research on business strategies, the impact of relevant service offerings on enterprises. Phil also works with other worldwide and regional analysts to develop a holistic set of thought leadership and actionable research for IT Buyers and Suppliers.

Phil’s primary focus will be advising technology-based clients on business strategies related to their investment in risk, privacy, governance, and compliance advisory and management services and software.

BACKGROUND
Phil Harris is an accomplished Information Security Practitioner with over 25 years of experience and expertise in the areas of Security Strategy, Architecture, Risk Management, Governance and Compliance, Cryptography, Security Operations across a wide range of industries such as Insurance, Banking, Finance, Manufacturing, and Retail. Phil has built world-class security teams and programs, provided executive security leadership and cultivated cross-organization buy-in.

Rick Villars

Group Vice President, Worldwide Research

Rick is IDC’s leading analyst guiding research on the future of the IT Industry. He coordinates all IDC research related to the impact of Cloud and the shift to digital business models across infrastructure, platforms, software, and services. He helps enterprises develop effective strategies for using their diverse portfolio of cloud investments and applications. He supplies early guidance on implications of critical innovations such as the shift to cloud-based control platforms for deploying/managing infrastructure, data, and code delivery as well as the emergence of AI as a critical IT workload and part of all IT products/services.

Rob Brothers

Program Vice President, Infastructure Services

Rob Brothers is a Program Vice President for IDC’s Datacenter and Support Services program, as well as a regular contributor to the Infrastructure Services and Financial Strategies Programs. He focuses on worldwide support and deployment services for hardware and software and provides expert insight and intelligence on how enterprises should be addressing key areas for datacenter transformation and edge deployment and management strategies. IT hardware services covered include IoT devices, converged infrastructures, storage, servers, client devices, networking equipment, and peripherals. Software covered includes software defined infrastructures, cloud support, operating systems, databases, applications, and system software. He also has expertise in the latest consumption models which includes as-a-service models such as device-as-a-service. Mr. Brothers draws on decades of industry experience to provide insights and actionable advice to assist vendors in developing, marketing, and delivering IT services. His areas of expertise include, but are not limited to, enterprise storage, server, networking, client device and high-availability and mission-critical support services, virtualization and transformational services and channel and partnering strategies.

Rob Tiffany

Research Director, Cloud Services

Rob Tiffany is Research Director within IDC’s worldwide infrastructure research organization and part of the Cloud and Edge Services practice. He leads research on dedicated cloud infrastructure strategies and trends to deliver actionable insights to technology providers and enterprise decision makers. Based on his background in building cloud and edge solutions to digitally transform companies, Rob is uniquely positioned to deliver guidance on the public, private, hybrid, and multi-cloud infrastructures needed to succeed with next-generation workloads.

Roger Beharry Lall

Research Director, Advertising Technologies and SMB Marketing Applications

With over 25 years’ experience leading technology driven marketing programs, Mr. Beharry Lall is now a Research Director with IDC covering Advertising Technologies and SMB Marketing Applications. He brings a unique multidisciplinary perspective, evangelizing the innovative and pragmatic use of both martech and adtech solutions for companies of all sizes.

Early in his career Rog worked with an IBM subsidiary expanding into the Asian Market and subsequently, he spent over a decade at RIM (BlackBerry) building marketing leadership across new industry segments, geographies, and product categories. This background fuels his perspective as he researches enterprise customers engagement tools and tactics across the unified omnichannel,

More recently, over the past decade, Roger served in a variety of senior marketing and product roles at scale-up companies leading them through pre-IPO/funding, ABM/Demand implementation, and strategic pivots. His experience leading scale-up marketing teams drives his additional focus on martech solutions that address the unique needs of the SMB segment.

Passionate about marketing and the responsible (and effective) application of technology to improve customer centric campaigns, Roger is an engaging speaker, opinionated commentator and delivers a variety of reports (competitive assessments, market forecasts, maturity models, best practice guidance, etc.) to vendors and brands across the industry.

Ryan O'Leary

Research Director, Privacy and Legal Technology

Ryan O’Leary is a Research Director in IDC’s Security and Trust research program covering Privacy and Legal Technology. In this role, Mr. O’Leary leverages his legal experience to provide perspective on changes in laws, shifting regulation, and other market forces that affect technology decision making today for both law firms and corporations. He also provides thought leadership that technology suppliers and technology buyers may use to develop effective strategy for the future. Mr. O’Leary’s core research coverage includes the evolution of eDiscovery and legal technology. As well as, the evolution of privacy compliance technology and impacts of new and emerging data privacy regulation.

Ryan Reith

Program Vice President, Worldwide Device Trackers

Ryan Reith is the Group Vice President for IDC’s Worldwide Device Tracker suite, which includes mobile phones, tablets, wearables, and most recently AR/VR. His teams research focuses on the quantitative aspects of the mobile device industry, including market sizing, forecasting, vendor market share analysis, and technology trends. His current responsibilities include engaging with mobile device OEMs, supply chain, distributors, and the financial industry to discuss market trends and forward looking analysis.

Mr. Reith has an extensive background in mobility that started with IDC’s Mobile Phone research team back in 2005. For the 5 years following his start with IDC he worked as Senior Analyst for IDC’s Mobile Phone Tracker research program, focusing on market sizing and forecasting for the mobile phone market. In 2010 he left IDC to join Palm (now HP) where he managed Competitive Intelligence as well as contributing to the product planning and marketing process for its Smartphone Product Marketing team.

Overall Mr. Reith brings years of experience analyzing device market trends, forecasting future technologies, and vendor analysis to the industry. The research programs he manages provide global insight into market opportunities and technology landscapes. Mr. Reith earned his bachelor’s degree in Computer Information Systems from Suffolk University in Boston, Massachusetts.

Sam Abadir

Research Director, Risk, Financial Crime, and Compliance

Sam Abadir is Research Director for IDC Financial Insights responsible for the Risk, Financial Crime and Compliance practice. Mr. Abadir’s core research coverage includes compliance regulators around “bad actors” including AML, eCDD, and KYC and other regulatory programs such as GDPR and compliance watchlists (e.g., OFAC and PEP). Additionally, Mr. Abadir’s research will cover different aspects of risk and compliance in financial services and how technology can support mandated and best practices in areas such as DORA, GDPR, and other regulations that impact financial services.

Sandra Ng

Senior Vice President, ICT Industry

Sandra Ng is the Senior Vice President for IDC, overseeing research across the ICT industry. Based in Singapore, she advises both technology buyers and vendors, providing critical guidance on technology investments, financial strategies and go-to-market approaches.

Sandra leads a team of Research analysts who are at the forefront of emerging ICT trends and changing landscapes as well as provide deep insights and advice to clients on both the sell and buy sides. Her team collaborates with IDC’s various divisions to deliver comprehensive market intelligence, customized go-to-market services, strategic financial advice and cost-effective decision-making support in IT investments.

With more than 20 years of experience, Sandra is known for her expertise in the ICT industry across industries, giving advice to the C-suite particularly in large sectors like FSI, Manufacturing, Telecommunications, Public Sector and Life Sciences/Pharmaceuticals. She frequently shares insights with tech and business executives on the buyer side, looking into their strategies, business models, internal processes, and ecosystem partnerships.

Sandra partners with vendor clients on go-to-market narratives and positioning, sales-enablement workshops, product value propositions, ecosystem partnership models and more. She is a frequent speaker at IDC and industry events, executive roundtables and board meetings.

Before IDC, she worked with Gartner/Dataquest. Sandra holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from the National University of Singapore and is fluent in English and Mandarin.

Sarah Lee

Research Director, Manufacturing IT Strategies

Sarah Lee is Research Director for IDC Manufacturing Insights responsible for the IT Priorities & Strategies (ITP&S) practice. Sarah’s core research coverage includes IT investments made across the manufacturing industry and manufacturers’ progress with digital transformation. Based on her background covering the manufacturing space, Sarah’s research also includes an emphasis on the technology enablers that help manufacturing executives make better-informed operational decisions.

Shari Lava

Research Vice-President, AI and Automation

Shari Lava is Research Vice-President, AI and Automation. Ms. Lava’s core research coverage includes the fast-changing Integration and API Management software space in an AI and agentic world. This includes an emphasis on the market understanding and adoption of these key technologies and how they are powering AI to drive better business outcomes. Because connectivity-automation sits at the nexus of AI and Data, Ms. Lava also frequently contributes to other AI and Data research. She is remote based in Toronto, Canada.

Previously, Shari led small and medium business program at IDC, helping suppliers better understand the nuances of the SMB ecosystem. Prior to joining IDC, she was a VP, Marketing Intelligence at Greystone Managed Investments, an asset management firm, using data to build success at each stage of the customer journey. Prior to that Ms. Lava led the Vendor Advisory Services practice at Info- Tech Research Group, providing market insights to technology vendors. Before joining Info- Tech, Ms. Lava was a management consultant with Deloitte’s CRM and Information Management practices specializing in implementing and connecting applications for clients of all sizes across several industries.

Stephen Elliot

Group Vice President, Application Development and IT Operations

Stephen Elliot manages multiple programs spanning IT Operations, Enterprise Management, ITSM, Agile and DevOps, Application performance, Virtualization, Multi-Cloud Management and Automation, Log Analytics, Container Management, DaaS, and Software Defined Compute. Mr. Elliot advises Senior IT, Business, and Investment Executives globally in the creation of strategy and operational tactics that drive the execution of Digital Transformation and business growth.

Stephen Minton

Group Vice President, Data & Analytics

Stephen Minton is a group vice president with the IDC Data & Analytics group, focusing on ICT spending and macroeconomics. Mr. Minton is responsible for Worldwide ICT Spending programs, including the Worldwide Black Book, Worldwide 3rd Platform Spending Guides, and Worldwide Telecom Services Tracker.

Mr. Minton’s research expertise includes global ICT and economic analysis, and he tracks market data across hardware, software, services, telecom and emerging technologies. He is the author of papers that focus on the economic impact of IT, and is a regular speaker on the subject of IT spending. In 2002 he addressed the United Nations in New York, speaking to UN ambassadors on the subject of the Information Society.

Mr. Minton previously worked with Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), before joining IDC in 1998. Originally from Hartlepool in the North of England, he graduated from the University of Salford in 1995. He has also worked in the field of consumer market research with Millward Brown International.

Steve White

Program Vice President, Channels and Alliances

Steve White is Program Vice President for the WW Channels and Alliances research team. He manages a group of channels and alliances analysts as well as their related research products, with extended teams in EMEA & APeJ.

The Channels and Alliances research team focuses on research around changing partner ecosystem dynamics, following the trends and best practices to allow benchmarking. As part of the channels subscription programs, the WW team also run ‘Leadership Councils’ where industry channels and alliances leaders & their peers attend twice a year to discuss the latest research, trends, and drive the future research agenda. These councils enable unique analyst hosted conversations around the burning partner ecosystem topics.

Prior to joining IDC, Steve spent over seven years at Microsoft both in the United Kingdom and Canada, and has over 20 years experience in senior marketing roles in enterprise, services and partner businesses with leading technology vendors such as Microsoft, Compaq and Digital Equipment Company in the UK.

Originally educated and trained as a management accountant in the UK, Steve progressed via business analyst roles into marketing early in his career, and enjoys working with clients on their partner ecosystem challenges with a focus on better outcomes for vendors and their partners. He is located in IDC’s Toronto office.

Stewart Bond

Vice President, Data Intelligence and Integration Software

Stewart Bond is Vice President of IDC’s Data Intelligence and Integration Software service. Mr. Bond’s core research coverage includes watching emerging trends that are shaping and changing data movement, ingestion, transformation, mastering, cleansing and consumption in the era of digital business. Having worked in the IT industry for over 30 years, from early experience in database and application development, through solution design and deployment, to strategic architectural consulting, Stewart has worked through some significant changes in the IT industry. His depth of field experience coupled with market insight gives him a unique perspective, valued by his customers and peers.

Tom Mainelli

Group Vice President, Device & Consumer Research

Tom Mainelli heads the Device & Consumer Research Group, overseeing a wide array of hardware and technology categories that cater to both home and enterprise markets. His team’s research spans PCs, tablets, smartphones, wearables, smart home devices, thin clients, displays, and virtual/augmented reality headsets. He also co-manages IDC’s supply-side research team, which monitors display and ODM production across various categories. IDC’s consumer research, anchored by the Consumer Market Model, employs regular surveys and proprietary models to forecast numerous consumer-focused activities and spending across hardware, software, and services.

As Group Vice President, Tom collaborates closely with company representatives, industry contacts, and other IDC analysts to provide comprehensive insights and analysis on a diverse range of commercial and consumer topics. A frequent speaker at public events, he travels extensively, enjoying every opportunity to engage with colleagues and clients worldwide.

Tom Meyer

Senior Group Vice President, GM, Services, Telecoms, Market&Business Intelligence

Thomas Meyer joined IDC in January 1999 and is currently responsible for managing IDC’s Research Division in EMEA. This includes Practices focused on Digital Transformation, Cloud, Artificial Intelligence, IoT, Blockchain, Intelligent Process Automation and Accelerated Application Development as well as Core ICT (Software, Services, Infrastructure and Devices) and Industry-specific teams (Financial, Manufacturing, Energy, Retail, Healthcare, Government and Telco Insights)

Meyer frequently speaks at IDC, industry, customer and CIO events such as IDC’s EMEA CIO Summit Series, IDC’s Datacenter and Cloud Conferences and the Mobile Commerce Conference. He often contributes to articles in publications across Europe, including the Wall Street Journal, Die Zeit, Focus, Le Monde Informatique, and IT Week, and has also appeared on the BBC World Business Report and Breakfast Business Update.

Before joining IDC, Thomas Meyer worked as an IT media analyst. He holds degrees from the University of London in economics and German and an MA with a focus on European management concepts.

Tony Olvet

Group Vice President, Worldwide C-Suite and Digital Business Research

Tony Olvet is Group Vice President, Worldwide C-suite and Digital Business Research at IDC. His team’s global research focuses on the connection between business transformation and digital investments across enterprises. Tony’s analysis and insights help vendors, IT professionals, and business executives make fact-based decisions on technology strategy and digital business.

Wayne Kurtzman

Research Director, Social, Communities and Collaboration

Wayne Kurtzman, Research Vice President, Collaboration and Communities, is a frequently quoted source on the future of enterprise collaboration, communities, and the customer and employee experience. He is responsible for the IDC Social, Communities and Collaboration practice.

Prior to joining IDC, Wayne led emerging technology programs for global companies, leveraging community, collaboration, and social media platforms to drive employee and customer engagements, new revenue channels, and efficiencies. He has developed global community, social, and analytics practices as well as award-winning knowledge management and advocacy programs. Wayne is an active collaborator with the IDC Future of Work and Future of Customer Experience practices, among others.

A frequent speaker, presenter and panelist, Wayne has spent ten years as an adjunct university instructor. A former journalist, he volunteers with non-profit organizations building the next generation of creativity, collaboration, and problem-solving skills for students around the world.

Wayne holds a B.A. in Communications from Hofstra University.