The Technology Garden

Jon Collins has nearly 20 years' experience working in IT. He speaks regularly at IT conferences (keynote at Storage Expo) and writes a number of trade publications including Silicon.com and The Register. He is the author of numerous reports and articles on IT. Jon has an end user background, having worked as an IT consultant, network manager and software engineer. He is now a principle analyst at Macehiter Ward-Dutton - an IT research and analysis company that focuses on Business/IT alignment.

Dale Vile is Research Director at Freefrom Dynamics, a leading IT research and analysis company. He specializes in monitoring how IT industry developments map onto practical needs in the Enterprise and SMB mainstream. Prior to this role, Dale was responsible for setting up and directing a primary research over a 4-year period, serving the needs of blue chip clients such as IBM, Microsoft and Cisco. Dale's career has involved a combination of technical, management and business development roles.

Neil Macehiter is a founder of Macehiter Ward-Dutton (MWD), an advisory form focused on the challenge of IT-business alignment. He has almost 20 years' experience of the IT industry having worked in consulting, product and technology strategy roles. Neil joined Ovum consulting practice advising clients on a variety of IT strategy issues and then became the Director of Software Infrastructure Research. He has acted as an advisor to leading vendors such as IBM and Microsoft.

Neil Ward-Dutton is co-founder of MWD. With over 15-years' experience of the IT industry - in a mixture of consulting and industry analysis roles. He started his career as a business analyst at ICI. A decade on, he was directing all the company's technology research programs - but his ambitions turned to new pastures, and in early 2005 he founded MDW.