Our jury of experts
Peter Burghardt
Peter Burghardt is both Managing Director and co-founder of techconsult GmbH. His main areas of work are the analysis of the ICT-midmarket, the design of go-to market concepts for ICT vendors, ICT service providers, as well as the support of top-account clients.
Over twenty years ago, techconsult was founded with the aim of providing high-quality marketing consulting. With the concentration on the ICT market and the combination of analyst expertise and intelligent market research, Peter Burghardt and co-founder Andreas W. Klein addressed a market need so successfully that techconsult’s position has not been challenged since. Burghardt and Klein are supported by nine analysts and a market research and statistics team consisting of five.
Mr. Burghardt has authored various studies and publications on the ICT market. His spectrum ranges from technology-driven market analysis to the presentation of segmentation approaches for ICT marketing. He is the head of the Market Trends Forum at BITKOM, the German Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media.
Dr. Wolfgang Martin
Wolfgang Martin Team is one of the top ten IT consultancy firms in Europe on business software topics. Dr. Martin’s specialty is examining the impact of technological innovations on organizations, enterprise culture, business architecture and business processes. In 2001, InfoEconomist magazine designated him one of the ten most influential IT consultants in Europe.
Dr. Stefan Ried
Stefan Ried is Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, where he is responsible for platform strategies. He has in-depth expertise in the middleware, SOA, and integration markets, thanks to 15 years’ leadership experience in software development, product management, and marketing teams at various international manufacturers. Mr. Ried primarily publishes and advises manufacturers on product and M&A strategies, as well as investments in new technologies and business models. Software as a Service (SaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) are two focal points of his current research. Before joining Forrester as an analyst, he was Senior VP for product management for SAP’s Netweaver platform, then headed product management for integration technology at Software AG.
Frank P. Sempert
Since 2008, Frank P. Sempert is Senior Program Executive, Europe, at Saugatuck Technology Inc., an American IT research company providing strategy consulting. He is also the Managing Director of Open Source Business Foundation e.V. Prior to this, Sempert held executive positions as CEO and President of a number of IT companies, such as Ericson Information Systems, Teamco, and Informix, and was Managing Director Central Europe at Gartner.
Prof. Dr. Stefan Tai
Since November 2007, Dr.-Ing. Stefan Tai has been professor at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Faculty of Economics and Business Engineering, Institute of Applied Informatics and Formal Description Methods (AIFB). Since April 2008, Prof. Tai is also Director at FZI Research Center for Information Technologies in Karlsruhe; additionally, from April 2011, he is Scientific Director the newly founded FZI branch in Berlin. Before joining the faculty at KIT, Prof. Tai spent eight and a half years as a researcher at IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in New York.
Dr. Carlo Velten
Carlo Velten is Senior Advisor at Experton Group. As Practice Leader for “Cloud Computing & Innovation”, he is responsible for strategic consulting and market research on all Internet-centered topics. His specialties are cloud computing, big data, social media, smart energy, web 3.0, and mobile innovations.
Carlo Velten holds a M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Management and Business IT. He was a research fellow at San José State University in California and wrote his doctorate on the subject of venture capital.
Dr. Mathias Weber
Mathias Weber holds a university degree in Business Mathematics (Diplom-Wirtschaftsmathematiker) and studied Economic Cybernetics 1973-78 at Lomonosov State University in Moscow. He concluded his research work at the Institute for Innovation Management at Hochschule für Ökonomie Berlin (Berlin University of Economics) with a Ph.D. in 1982. He then held positions in an industry research center (until 1985), at the Akademie der Wissenschaften (Academy of Sciences) (through 1991), in several IT companies (until 2000) and at the European University Viadrina. Mathias Weber was the co-founder and CEO of Unternehmensverband Informationssysteme e.V. that merged with BITKOM in 2000. Since 2001, Mathias Weber is Divisional Director at the German Federal Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media (BITKOM) with a focus on IT services. He coordinates the projects in the areas of cloud computing and outsourcing, among others.
Horst Westerfeld
In June of 2008, Horst Westerfeld was appointed State Secretary in the German State of Hesse’s Ministry of Finance. He is CIO and the authorized representative responsible for Hesse’s e-government and information technology. In this role, he is member of the IT planning council. His career began with studies in Engineering, Mathematics, and Physics. From 1978 to 1985, his employers included Control Data and Computervision. From 1986 until June 2008, he held executive positions at Siemens in Marketing, Sales and Consulting. Most recently, he managed the project Deutschland-Online-Infrastruktur (Germany’s online infrastructure).
Alongside his position as State Secretary, Mr. Westerfeld is also active in other areas, such as teaching at the Business IT Institute at Goethe University (Frankfurt/Main) and co-founding the non-profit research associations E-Finance Lab, ISPRAT, and House of IT.
