Jen Thomson has more than 20 years’ experience advising IT Vendors, senior IT, and business execs on their digital business optimization and transformation strategies. She leads European Research for Accelerated App Delivery, Cloud, and Services. Her core goal is to drive synergies and growth across these research areas, with a central focus on thought leadership.

She specializes in providing insights on the investment strategies and decisions of European enterprises as they transition to modern application architectures. Her research explores app dev and delivery capabilities required to operate in a digital economy, and how this impacts enterprise organizational structures, culture, processes, tools, and skill sets. She leads the Future of Digital Innovation research for IDC Europe, exploring software innovation strategies and what this means in terms of end-user strategies, investment priorities, software sourcing, and KPIs. Thomson’s core research also explores enterprise maturity and strategies towards enterprise scale and empowered DevOps.

She is responsible for the execution of a broad range of consulting and advisory projects. As IDC’s European expert on application development and delivery strategies, Thomson is an experienced public speaker and regularly presents at conferences and IDC partner and end-user events.

She started her career at Compaq Computer EMEA as a senior research analyst. She has a bachelor’s degree in international business with German from Sheffield Hallam University (United Kingdom) and Pforzheim Fachhochschule (Germany).

Maya Leibman recently concluded a 30 year career at American Airlines with the last 10 as the EVP and CIO responsible for the technology organization. In that role she led a multi-year transformation designed to deliver business value faster through the use of modern technology tools such as cloud, advanced analytics, machine learning and AI. Critical to the transformation was the adoption of modern technology practices including agile development, a product mindset, and a deep understanding of and appreciation of the role DevOps plays in systems delivery. Maya oversaw the successful integration between AA and US Airways and has led through every major airline crisis of this era including 9/11, the MAX grounding, and COVID. Maya is currently a Non-Executive Director of a $4B publicly traded industrial technology company, serves on the board of the UK Environment Agency, and is Chairperson of an HR related enterprise SaaS company. She is also involved in many non-profits including Breaking Down Barriers which makes the pilot profession accessible to diverse youth. She currently lives in London with her husband and teen son where they are learning to enjoy cucumber sandwiches and how to mind the gap.

George Mironescu is a Research Manager based in Milan, Italy, running IDC’s European Infrastructure & Private Cloud Services subscription service. In his role, George leads IDC’s research program around the European private/hybrid cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) services, including both professional services and cloud provisioning. He also advises clients on various strategic and tactic projects such as go-to-market design and localisation in Europe, competitive positioning, identification of prospects and opportunity mapping.

George joined IDC from Pierre Audoin Consultants (PAC), where he spend 12 years in a number of roles analyzing IT services and application software markets, including covering the cloud and platform services space in the UK and across Europe. George has led research in areas including packaged application services (e.g. SAP, Oracle, Salesforce), the UK IT services market, the European manufacturing IT landscape and the Iberian IT services market. He has led consulting projects in areas such as cloud orchestration, DevOps, cloud-based application delivery ecosystems and cloud vendor mapping & positioning. George has a BA from the Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest in Marketing.

Vince King is Head of DevSecOps for Cloud Transformation at the Bank of England. With more than 20 years’ experience working on software development projects both large and small, he is a reformed developer, SDLC advocate, and secure coding trainer. As a leader of Agile working practices within the Bank, Vince also has experience in supporting awareness and education programmes.

Vince has practical expertise in strategic leadership across multiple cyber security disciplines, including, incident response, risk management, vulnerability management, and Cloud transformation. He is a CISSP and CITP, and is passionate about mentoring others to achieve recognition for their work through engagement with the British Computer Society.

Lauren is a forward-thinking strategist with a deep passion for cultivating client-centric IT capabilities and launching innovative digital products. With a proven track record spanning over a decade, she has consistently achieved strategic objectives by leading cross-functional teams in diverse sectors, including finance, insurance, healthcare, and corporate wellness.

Lauren thrives in fast-paced, complex environments and excel in senior and executive-level managerial roles, specializing in key IT-related functions such as Product Management, IT Delivery, Programme Management, and Project Management. She has a successful history of implementing Agile methodologies, including SAFe and ‘Tribe’ models, within various organizations, earning recognition as an Agile Champion.

Her leadership experience extends to managing teams of varying sizes, from small groups to large teams of 250 members, to effectively deliver products and projects across the entire IT development lifecycle. She is passionate about driving positive change, optimizing processes, and achieving excellence in client-centric solutions.

Her commitment to excellence has earned several notable awards and recognitions, including the esteemed Next CIO 2023 Award.

Archana Venkatraman is a Senior Director for IDC’s European Datacenter Research. She covers datacenter technologies including software-defined infrastructures, storage and data management, virtualization, containers, hyperconverged infrastructure, infrastructure performance monitoring, systems management, application development, and cloud services.

Archana also leads IDC’s European thought leadership program on open source technologies. She also contributes to European Digital Transformation, DevOps, Blockchain and IoT research practices.

Before joining IDC, Venkatraman was the datacenter editor at Computer Weekly, the digital magazine and website for IT professionals based in London, where she focused on datacenters, server virtualization, storage, open source technologies, software-defined infrastructures, and cloud computing, liaising with enterprise CIOs and technology vendors to develop deeper insight into the enterprise IT industry. Venkatraman has a master’s degree in journalism from Mumbai University.

Jain is a Solutions Architect at SUSE with a deep understanding of container orchestration and cloud-native technologies. Jain works closely with organizations to design, deploy, and manage Kubernetes-based solutions that improve operational efficiency, enhance scalability, and streamline application development. Whether building new Kubernetes environments or migrating existing workloads to Kubernetes, Jain is dedicated to helping organisations to realise the full potential of this powerful technology and to achieve their digital transformation objectives.