The company founder is an industry thought-leader respected for his innovative approach to business decision-making based on market research, sophisticated analytics and deep industry knowledge. 

He has over 20 years’ experience as an executive, entrepreneur and consultant for global leaders including IBM, HP, Microsoft, British Telecom, Portugal Telecom, Alcatel, Cisco Systems, ATT/Bell South,  VARBusiness (UBM Publishing.) and other leading Telecommunication and IT vendors.

Bob was also co-founder of Perseus Development Corp. (now Vovici). Perseus was one of the first online survey research management companies and leader in the development of the Enterprise Feedback/Response Management market.

Earlier in his career, while in graduate school, He partnered with a colleague to form a consulting firm which implemented medical billing systems for doctors and small hospitals. He also served as Vice President of Strategic Marketing with Matrix Software, and Regional Manager with Entre Computer Systems of America.

Bob has a PhD and MA in Economics from Northeastern University, where he also taught courses in Economics, Econometrics, Statistics and Research Methods while completing his Dissertation. 

Bob loves the ocean, and enjoys boating and fishing with his family and friends on Cape Cod. 

Michael Sullivan-Trainor -   

 Despite all the disruption of cloud, the complexity of its many business and technology models is driving CIOs into the arms of established vendors. This is a key finding from Edge Strategies recent in depth interviews with Fortune 500 CIOs across key industries.

The most pressing issue for these executives is resolving the uncertainty about the vision of cloud that will deliver the required business value results. To answer this pressing question, CIOs are turning to large suppliers who can address cloud strategically because they have the combination of enterprise professional services and cross-domain management and implementation skills to understand and carry out the vision. 

Key drivers cited by the CIOs are cost reduction or cost avoidance and computing investment utilization. While the early stages of private cloud deliver these benefits through virtualization and automation, the business value is less clear when choosing which cloud model best fits the enterprise. Is it worth the investment to create a robust private cloud or will a managed service provider offer superior ROI? What about public cloud? Are there commodity services that the organization can safely acquire from public cloud providers?

Most CIOs are addressing these questions along two tracks: (1) Strategically what IT model best fits the organization? Public, hybrid or private? Is IT a utility, a secure bastion within a commodity environment, or totally sacrosanct within the walls of its own private infrastructure? (2) Tactically, which applications benefit from which cloud model and how does the organization identify and migrate them? What about security of data and information management?

These are among the questions that lead CIOs into renewed dialogue with large traditional suppliers. Suppliers are expected to have answers from experience solving similar problems across the industry. Despite the clarity of these questions neither suppliers nor most CIOs have developed the ultimate answer. Private cloud remains a joint journey that requires a new level of trust and collaboration between supplier and buyer.