As Group Vice President, Worldwide Research, Rick Villars guides IDC’s research into broad ICT industry trends, particularly the strategic adoption of technology by Global 2000 businesses and the industries in which they compete. He is a member of IDC’s worldwide management team, as the leader of IDC’s Future of Digital Infrastructure research practice.

Mr. Villars leads IDC’s global cloud research team, driving the ongoing development of IDC’s widely-used cloud services forecasts and the tracking of cloud services adoption. He also leads the development of IDC’s annual Worldwide FutureScapes themes and predictions that focuses on the transformation of the IT industry (and other industries) in this time of accelerated innovation.
Over the past decade, he has been a keynote speaker at IDC’s annual Directions conferences in the U.S. and in many other countries as well as at CIO and Partner Summits and other major industry events. He also regularly interacts with buy-side, sell-side and private equity financial analysts to discuss the implications of emerging ICT trends on leading ICT companies.

Prior to taking on this role, Mr. Villars has spent over 30 years assessing the evolution of network, storage, and server infrastructure as well as advising companies on the impact of the cloud on existing IT practices. The role included developing IDC’s viewpoints on the workloads driving the adoption of converged and software defined IT solutions as well as public and private cloud solutions. He also led IDC’s ongoing assessment of the evolution of datacenter design, placement, and management strategies. And advised clients on the impact of new IT consumption models and technologies on organizations’ infrastructure, deployment, procurement, and management practices.

Mr.Villars holds a Bachelor’s of Science in Foreign Service (B.S.F.S.) from Georgetown University with a concentration in science, technology, and international affairs.