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.

Kimberly Lanier is a Managing Director in our People Advisory & Organizational Change Segment. In this role, she is responsible for leading the Human Capital Reporting segment of HR Transformation. Kimberly has over 20 years of experience in HR, Performance and People Analytics and has worked with many F500 global brands to quantify and amplify the value of their workforce. She is a frequent speaker, author and advisory board member of organizations such as University of Houston C.T. Bauer College of Business, Enterprise Engagement Institute, and Hoopla. Kimberly has been noted as a Top 100 Global Influencer on Inspiring Workplaces since 2016 and is a judge for the 2021 Global Employee Engagement Awards.

Patrick Anderson has over 25 years of experience in IT and Technology, specializing in AI, cloud computing, cloud economics, data strategy and analytics, program and project management, agile transformation, and organizational change management. He holds numerous certifications, including Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, Agile Scrum Master, Data Protection Officer, and Generative AI Solutions with Azure OpenAI Service.  Patrick has been working with linguistic processing since 1998 and ML/Predictive since 2017.

Patrick has impacted organizations ranging from startups to Fortune 30 companies and has extensive experience in the retail industry.  Throughout his career, Patrick has formed alliances and channel teams focused on Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud Platform. He has also authored four partner playbooks for starting a cloud alliance with Microsoft.

Will is a Managing Director currently leading Protiviti’s Cloud Optimize practice within the Global Enterprise Cloud segment and serves as the Global Microsoft Azure lead, collaboratively partnering with Microsoft across solution and account teams to participate in key partner programs and client services. He has twenty-five years of experience managing cross-functional teams to deliver cloud-native and web-based solutions on an array of platforms with a proven ability to bridge technology and business goals to provide productive solutions. He is an excellent communicator, with an emphasis on building strong client relationships, supports clients to continuously mature cloud offerings within the enterprise and works to establish centralized systems which provide clarity and optimization to overall cloud operations.