As Group Vice President, Software Development and Open Source, Al Gillen oversees IDC's software development research portfolio. Research disciplines in this group include developer research covering census, demographics and developer activities; platform as a service and cloud application services for developers, and developer lifecycle and quality assurance products. In addition, Mr. Gillen jointly oversees IDC's DevOps research program, and runs a program focused on the ecosystem of open source software pan-industry.

During his career at IDC, Mr. Gillen participated many studies that tie platform research and system software research together, including mapping workloads to software markets, business value, ROI and cost of ownership studies, the business value of virtualization, and server platform migration. This research has been conducted across operating systems including Linux, Windows and Unix.

BACKGROUND

Prior to joining IDC, Mr. Gillen served as editor-in-chief for two computer industry trade publications. Mr. Gillen began his career as a software developer, and performed embedded system design and developed real-time software applications for a 10-year period.

EDUCATION/INDUSTRY ACCOMPLISHMENTS

• B.S. degree in Computer Science from New Jersey Institute of Technology
• Participated at numerous industry events as a keynote presenter, moderator, and as a subject matter expert at product launches
• Advisor to major server vendors, infrastructure software vendors, and numerous companies participating in the open source ecosystem, as well as to end-use organizations.
• Frequently quoted in trade and business publications around the world