This year’s Gartner Symposium/ITxpo Africa will feature analysts from all over the world, covering areas of interest to IT and Business professionals everywhere.

Neil Chandler - Research Director   Neil Chandler is a Gartner research director with the Business Applications and Processes Team where he focuses his research on corporate performance management and business intelligence. Neil has had 18 years of experience in strategic product marketing, project management and implementation projects in the field of Corporate Performance Management and Information systems. Working at Gartner gives me a fantastic opportunity to use my experiences from the software vendor world to assist clients with their corporate performance management and business intelligence initiatives. The mix of market and vendor analysis and client interaction means every day is stimulating and different. It is extremely satisfying to know that you have helped clients to harness technology for the betterment of their organization.     Massimiliano Claps - Research Director   Massimiliano Claps is a Research Director with Gartner, where he is responsible for government end-user research. Massimiliano covers domain-specific application areas, such as tax and revenue and grants management. He has a strong focus on local government issues, which include IT governance and sourcing topics, such as shared services, ERP, CRM and domain-specific applications (such as permit and licensing and public works). His research also investigates IT cost cutting and funding issues across levels of government. Before joining Gartner, Massimiliano was a research director with IDC, where he advised IT vendors on their market entry and go-to-market strategies for the European government and healthcare sector. Previously, he worked at Monitor as a case team member.     Joseph Feiman - Research Vice President & Gartner Fellow   Joseph Feiman, Ph.D., is a Research Vice President and Gartner Fellow in Gartner Research. Joseph focuses on applications' security: technologies and methodologies enabling secure software life cycle, data privacy, security of large systems and packaged applications, legacies, SOA, Web 2.0, cloud computing security and security as a service. Joseph's research earned him a Gartner Thought Leadership Award for two consecutive years — 2003 and 2004. In 2007 he became Gartner Fellow. His background includes system and application programming, research and development, and management and consulting. Prior to joining Gartner, Joseph was manager of advanced technologies at American Greetings.     Brian Gammage - Vice President, Gartner Fellow   Brian Gammage is a Vice President and Research Fellow with Gartner, where he works in the Infrastructure and Operations area as part of the Client Computing research team. His areas of specialisation include the development of client computing architectures and technology. Brian is also a leading expert on the development and application of virtualisation technology within client computing. Prior to joining Gartner, Brian worked with a number of IT companies, including BMC Software, Olivetti and Hewlett-Packard. Although covering a wide range of activities and technical disciplines, he has specialised in computing hardware and has 20 years of experience in the PC industry.     Will Hahn - Principal Research Analyst   Will Hahn is a principal analyst in Gartner Technology & Service Provider Research, where he is part of the worldwide communications group. He assists with a variety of worldwide and public sectors, including public services in the Middle East and Africa. He tracks an eclectic slate of projects around carrier opportunities in the converging market, including submarine cable, the digital home, carriers in education and health care and virtual operators. Prior to joining Gartner, Mr. Hahn worked as an inquiry analyst for Northern Business Information in New York City. Before that, he taught ancient medieval history for 13 years at private preparatory schools in upstate New York.     Johan Jacobs - Research Director   Johan Jacobs is an Enterprise Application Analyst focusing on CRM and ERP and specialising in Web self-service channels, processes and technologies. Johan has held several key roles in IT and financial services companies and is well-known as an authority on CRM Web customer service and ERP competency centers, with a keen focus on all contact center multi-channels. As the Gartner lead analyst for Web customer service, Johan focuses on Web chat, knowledge base for self-service, e-mail response management, virtual assistants, collaborative browsing and mobile communication for CRM service. Within ERP, Johan is passionate about competency centers and ERP-related support. Before joining Gartner, Johan was an industry IT analyst focusing on CRM, contact centers and business intelligence.     Rene Jacobs - Managing Director, Gartner Africa   René has been associated with Gartner in Africa for sixteenyears. René established the Gartner presence in South Africa and for the last fifteen years has been the Managing Director of IT Management Advisory Services (Pty) Ltd, Gartner’s exclusive distributor in the territory of Sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian Ocean Island regions. Under René’s leadership, IT Management Advisory Services has established and grown the Gartner membership base in the territory to more than 150 clients, representing many of the Top 100 companies in South Africa, as well as having clients situated in other parts of Africa. Prior to her association with Gartner, René spent nine years at SPL as Divisional Manager and seven years at ICL in various local and international marketing positions, preceded by four years in a systems development capacity and as a mathematical statistician at Mutual and Federal and Johannesburg City Council. René holds a masters degree in business leadership from Unisa, preceded by a B.Sc (Hons) in information systems from Unisa and a B.Sc (mathematics and computer science) from the University of Potchefstroom.     Nick Jones - Vice President & Distinguished Analyst   Nick Jones is a Vice President and Gartner Distinguished Analyst. Nick’s research focuses primarily on mobile business, mobile technology, mobile applications and emerging technologies. His research coverage includes business-to-employee (B2E) and business-to-consumer (B2C) mobility; mobile commerce and payments; machine-to-machine (M2M) applications and technology; wireless technology; the impact of emerging technologies on mobility; and mobile application development. His research interests also include emerging trends/technologies, technology road mapping, and the social impact of technology. Prior to joining Gartner, Nick gained wide experience in IT from both the user and vendor perspectives. He has worked for consulting organisations and software tools vendors in a variety of roles including technical consulting, product management, product selection and evaluation, globalisation and product architecture.     Andy Kyte - Vice President & Gartner Fellow   Andy Kyte is a Vice President and Gartner Fellow in Gartner Research and is a member of the Application Strategy and Governance team. With more than 25 years of experience in the applications arena, his research now concentrates on the challenges facing CIOs and business management teams in maximising the return on assets for the application portfolio. This involves developing an understanding of best practices in application strategy and application life cycle management, covering both packaged applications and application development. His work on application strategy is centered on the major theme of IT Modernisation. As a senior member of the Gartner Research community, Andy is in great demand as a keynote speaker on the future of business use of IT, having participated in events in 38 different countries during the last 10 years. Andy joined Gartner in 1997. Prior to joining Gartner, Andy was with ICL Retail Systems, where he was involved in application architecture and design for point-of-sale systems. Before ICL Retail Systems, Andy spent several years in application development and design for manufacturing systems. Andy began his career by working in various roles in mechanical engineering. His involvement with information technology started in 1982 when he undertook a temporary assignment from the production engineering team to the IT department - and never found his way back. He is passionate about applying engineering disciplines to the development and deployment of application software.     Chris Lafond - Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer   Chris Lafond is Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer in Gartner Worldwide Financial Operations. He is responsible for worldwide finance, pricing, tax, treasury and investor relations, as well as having direct client responsibilities. He is a member of the University of Florida MBA Advisory Board. Since joining Gartner in 1995, Chris has held numerous positions in the finance organisation including Senior Vice President for worldwide finance operations and CFO for Gartner North America & Latin America, Group Vice President & Controller, Vice President & Assistant Controller, Vice President of finance and Director of finance. Prior to joining Gartner, Chris held finance positions at IBM and J.P. Morgan Investment Management.     Debra Logan - Vice President & Distinguished Analyst   Debra Logan, VP and Distinguished Analyst, has been with Gartner for ten years. Currently, she is doing research in the area of legal IT, investigating the effects of regulations and rules changes on IT infrastructure, applications and staffing. Debra’s other research interests include systems of knowledge organisation, taxonomies and metadata, content, document and records management, process management and the application of enterprise information management technologies and concepts in business.     Jan-Martin Lowendahl - Research Director   Jan-Martin Lowendahl, Ph.D (Chemistry) is a research director in Gartner Research, where his research area is higher-education technology strategies including administrative and academic systems, learning technologies, identity and access management, governance as well as European higher education issues such as the Bologna Process. Prior to joining Gartner, Jan-Martin had 15 years of experience in higher education, including research and teaching and IT management. Most recently he served as CIO, where his main focus was infrastructure strategies and governance. Jan-Martin has also worked collaboratively in the academic community and has served on several Boards.     John Mahoney - Vice President, Distinguished Analyst   John Mahoney is Research Area Director for Transformation of IT Management. An experienced strategic leader and executive board member, his personal research agenda includes leadership and strategy for IS organisations and for IT-driven companies. Most of John's 29 years of experience have been in senior management executive board positions in high-profile, world-class companies, which makes him very familiar with top leaders' perspectives. At Gartner, he has written about strategy, leadership and organisation, has spoken at many high-profile events in over 30 countries and has led in-house, board-level workshops. Prior to joining Gartner, John was director of IS at the British Library, leading development of award-winning systems and a major program to embed digital technologies into the organisation's culture, championing IT/business fusion, restructuring IS and the wider enterprise, and using outsourced service partners. He has experience with in commercial and public sectors.     Patrick Meehan - Vice President and Research Director   Patrick Meehan is a vice president and research director in Gartner's CIO Research group and role service director for Gartner Executive Programs Business Unit CIO program. His specific research areas include CIO communication strategies, business performance management, business intelligence, and decision impact and agility; as role service director, he provides focus on the business innovation and contribution opportunities facing business unit CIOs. Before joining Gartner, Patrick was CIO of Phillips, dePury & Luxembourg, the Luxury Goods and Fine Arts Division of French holding company Louis Vuitton-Moet & Hennesy (LVMH). LVMH's business model is to buy historic brands that have "lost their luster" and are therefore undervalued. It functions as a highly dynamic acquisitions-based growth environment, followed by a two- to three-year period of intensive transformational investment. The transformation strategy relies on building strength in three dimensions: creative talent, finance and IT. Consequently, as CEO direct report, Patrick focused on business processes and systems that permitted rapid integration of acquired assets, transformed the use of market information in the workplace, and expanded customer channels.     Dan Miklovic - Vice President & Research Director   Dan Miklovic is a Vice President in Gartner's Industry Advisory Services, where he is the Service Director for Gartner's Manufacturing Research Team. His research agenda is focused on enterprise asset management; environmental, health and safety systems; quality management systems, compliance with industry specific regulations such as REACH and ITAR, manufacturing-specific service provision; and business transformation through the application of Lean and Six Sigma. Dan is a certified manufacturing engineer and a certified lean sensei. Prior to joining Gartner, Dan had 20 years of industry experience with companies such as Mallinckrodt Chemicals, Emerson Electric, Weyerhaeuser and Scott Paper, as well as several consulting companies and software supplier Aspen Technology. In addition, Dan was an adjunct faculty member of Central Washington University for 16 years. He has served on the program advisory boards for Central Washington University, Pierce College and ITT Technical Institute, advising on industry and academic partnering issues. Dan is the author of a college text on data communications; the author of chapters in numerous engineering handbooks related to data acquisition, statistical process control and computer-integrated manufacturing; and the author of more than 30 technical papers. He appeared on the PBS, in-flight and CNBC series World Business Review as a technical expert for eight years, first with host Caspar Weinberger and then host Al Haig. Dan has associates, bachelors, and masters degrees in Nuclear Technology, Electrical Engineering and Management Science after attending the Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy, University of Missouri and the University of Southern California.     Tina Nunno - Vice President & Research Director   Tina Nunno is a Research Vice President in Gartner's CIO Research Group based in Stamford, Connecticut. Tina is responsible for conducting research and developing publications aimed at helping CIOs and their organisations around the world improve their performance and contribution. She specialises in CIO-related management issues including working with the board of directors, executive communication strategies, change leadership and governance strategies. She also focuses on issues specific to women in technology. Tina's most recent research deals with navigating complex CIO decisions and sensitive organisational politics issues. She focuses on specific strategies and tactics for managing IT political land mines. Tina also explores the use of more extreme political tactics in her research titled, "Machiavelli's Guide to IT." Prior to joining Gartner in 1997, Tina worked for the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress. As part of her work for the Congressional Research Service, she led inter-parliamentary technical assistance programs. She also conducted research on a variety of issues related to international affairs, national defence and United Nations-related issues.     Daryl Plummer - Managing Vice President, Chief of Research and Chief Gartner Fellow   Daryl Plummer is a Managing Vice President, Chief of Research and Chief Gartner Fellow. Daryl manages the Gartner Fellows Program, which is designed to allow senior analysts the opportunity to explore new research ideas and to elevate the Gartner culture and brand with clients. He is chief of Research for emerging trends, business process management (BPM), and enterprise architecture. In this capacity, Daryl is a primary analyst in cloud computing, service-oriented architecture, BPM and emerging trends. With Gartner for 14 years, Daryl has more than 30 years of experience in the IT industry. Prior to joining Gartner, he was division director and technology coordinator for the State of Florida's Department of Management Services. Daryl was also data center director of the Technology Resource Center, at the time one of the largest data centers in Florida. In this capacity, he managed the introduction of statewide client/server systems and methodologies. He was instrumental in the creation of the state's TCP/IP network and designed and implemented the Florida Communities Network — Florida's economic Internet presence.     Steve Prentice - VP & Gartner Fellow   Stephen Prentice is a VP and Gartner Fellow working in the Executive Leadership and Innovation Group (part of CIO Research). He takes a specific interest in emerging trends and the long-term future of technology - looking at the intersection of technology, business and society. Current research interests include the nature of innovation, the consumerization of IT, and the growth of virtual worlds and social computing and their impact on businesses     Derek Prior - Research Director   Derek Prior is a research director specializing in SAP customer issues connected with technology, operations, COEs and life cycle support. He also covers environmental sustainability issues from the engineer's perspective. Before joining Gartner, Dr. Prior had roles involving real-time system engineering and process and quality control manufacturing applications. He also spent many years as an SAP competence manager. In this role, he was pivotal in developing the SAP/HP partnership during the 1990s when R/3 was established and HP was its dominant infrastructure partner. Other responsibilities included SAP sizing and technology services in the U.K.     Peter Redshaw - Research Vice President – Financial Services: Banking and Investment Services   Peter Redshaw is a research vice president within the Industry Advisory Services team, where he focuses on outsourcing and vertical business processes for banks and investment services firms (ISFs) such as stock exchanges, investment banks and wealth managers. His research agenda for 2009 includes business process outsourcing, IT spending patterns, offshoring, IT’s impact on efficiency and the use of IT to support supply chains and end-to-end processes in financial services.     Neil Rickard - Vice President   Neil Rickard is a Vice President in Gartner Research. He provides Europe, the Middle East and Africa coverage of networking issues, and focuses on LAN and WAN technologies, equipment and vendors, as well as data-oriented carrier services. His coverage includes Ethernet and wireless LANs, IP VPNs MPLS and application-fluent networking, as well as voice data convergence and network sourcing. Prior to joining Gartner, Neil was responsible for business development with service provider customers at Cisco Systems. Neil’s previous experience in the networking industry has included technical and marketing roles with StrataCom, Nortel, Timeplex and Marconi, totaling more than 20 years of networking industry experience.     Peter Sondergaard - Senior Vice President   Peter Sondergaard is a Senior Vice President in Gartner, where he is the global head of Gartner Research. Peter is responsible for the management and direction of the global research organisation, which includes Hardware and Semiconductors, Software, Communications, IT Services and IT Management, Client Segments, Research Operations Management, Global Editing and Research Japan. Prior to this position, Peter was the head of Research for the Technology & Services Sector. His previous roles included Hardware & Systems Sector Vice President in Gartner Research and General Manager for Gartner Research EMEA, responsible for research integrity, integration and methodology. Peter started at Gartner more than 12 years ago as a Program Director for Gartner's personal computing research area, specialising in the overall desktop computing issues of European users. Prior to joining Gartner, Peter was Research Director at International Data Corporation in Europe, where he concentrated his efforts on PC analysis and consulting projects for large European users and vendors. Peter also worked for Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS), where he was responsible for the integration of PCs between hotels and SAS Data. Peter has been a contributor to and writer for various European trade & business publications.     Valentin T. Sribar - Group Vice President   Val Sribar is Group Vice President and leader of the Applications Research Group. The Applications Research Group covers both application packages (e.g. CRM, ERP, Supply Chain)and application development & integration. This coverage includes the entire applications lifecycle from business requirements analysis through design/package selection, testing/QA, deployment, and on-going application maintenance and support. The group includes experts in web technologies(e.g. web 2.0, portals), Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), agile methodologies, application platforms, and enterprise service buses. A wide variety of application sourcing and delivery alternatives, including Software as a Service (SaaS), are also covered by applications analysts. Val's personal areas of expertise focus on overall application strategy and governance. He works with clients on application portfolio management, application organizational models, staffing & skills, sourcing, strategic vendor relationships, and application financials. Val was most recently responsible for META Group's Executive Directions and Industry Services. Previously, he was an Executive Directions analyst working one-on-one with CIOs and other IT leaders. During his 12 years at META, he served as general manager of infrastructure, operations, security and customer relationship transformational offerings, called Infusions. He also ran META's Global Networking Strategies service.