Gartner Expert
Richard Watson
VP Analyst
Richard Watson is Vice President, Analyst in Gartner for Technical Professionals (GTP). He advises infrastructure and operations teams on cloud and data center operations.
Mr. Watson rejoined Gartner in 2014 after 18 months of working as a Product Manager for Engine Yard's PaaS. Prior to that role, he was analyst at Burton Group and then Gartner since 2008. He was previously VP of architecture for Credit Suisse investment bank, leading efforts to adopt SOA, reference data architecture and enterprise Java. With more than 25 years of experience in software development, Mr. Watson has led engineering teams developing mission-critical software for startups, enterprise IT organizations and software vendors, including Cape Clear, IONA Technologies, Nokia and Siemens.
Previous experience
At Engine Yard, Mr. Watson was product manager for its cloud application management platform (PaaS), translating customer requirements into engineering and go-to-market action. At the investment banking division of Credit Suisse, he led initiatives to adopt SOA, reference data architecture and Java platforms. Mr. Watson also led architecture review boards, patterns and practices initiatives, and capital expenditure reviews for the CTO architecture group.
Professional background
Engine Yard
Product Manager
Gartner
Research Director
Credit Suisse
Enterprise Architect
Areas of coverage
IT Operations and Cloud Management for Technical Professionals
Cloud Computing for Technical Professionals
Application Architecture and Platforms for Technical Professionals
Education
B.A., Computer Science, University of Dublin, Trinity College
Top Issues That I Help Clients Address
1Cloud computing - choosing IaaS and PaaS cloud platforms, adoption patterns, governance
2Infrastructure agility - using containers in an enterprise
3Gartner's Cloud Decisions tools
4DevOps and Platform Ops