Duncan Brown is associate vice president, European Security Practice, at IDC EMEA and leads the firm’s security research program in Europe. He specializes in providing strategic advice to his clients, informing and validating their corporate, product, and marketing plans. Brown is an expert in analyzing the security market globally, and his list of security-related clients includes enterprises, central banks, government organizations, and security product suppliers and services providers. Brown’s expertise spans the gamut of security topics including incident response, threat intelligence, and global privacy issues. He established and leads IDC’s coverage of the global impact of the GDPR, the RPEC (ePrivacy Directive update) and NIS Directive on technology companies and their customers. 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.

You can find Duncan on Twitter here.

Meike Escherich is an associate research director with IDC’s European Future of Work research service, based in the UK. In this role, she provides coverage of key technology trends across the Future of Work, specializing in how to drive and monitor productivity in a flexible work environment. This includes research into workforce management, agile performance measures, employee engagement/innovation programs and AI driven wellness solutions.

Prior to joining IDC, Meike was a Principal Analyst at Gartner (20 years) – covering Personal Computing, IT Services and Consumer Technologies – and a freelance consultant working with several UK analyst firms and international technology providers (3 years). An expert at identifying and solving strategic pain points Meike has worked with C-level executives across a multitude of industries such as IT, Education, Government, Health, Media, and Finance.

Having studied in Germany (University of Konstanz), Switzerland (University of Geneva, ERASMUS) and the UK (University of Exeter, ERASMUS) Meike holds a bachelor’s degree in Law as well as a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology.

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.

Rob O’Connor is Insight’s EMEA CISO and is a business technology innovator focused on advancing cybersecurity across diverse industries. He leads regional security strategy, resilience planning, and risk alignment, helping organisations strengthen their security posture while enabling digital transformation. With expertise spanning cloud security, threat management, and modern security operations, Rob is known for translating complex risks into clear, actionable strategy and driving pragmatic innovation that accelerates business outcomes.

Technical Design Authority with 25+ years’ experience in IT architecture and solution design, specialising in Microsoft technologies. Stefan works across public and private sectors to define business requirements and translates them into secure, scalable solutions. He designs and implements complex on‑premises and cloud services, aligning technology with organisational risk and goals. With deep technical expertise and experience leading major digital transformation programmes, Stefan brings a collaborative, pragmatic approach focused on delivering clear business outcomes.