Gartner Expert

Richard Watson

VP Analyst

Richard Watson is Vice President, Analyst in Gartner for Technical Professionals (GTP). He advises application and platform teams on cloud-native platforms and architecture. Richard's published research focuses on Kubernetes, cloud adoption and architecture, cloud application migration and platform ops.

Previous experience

Richard rejoined Gartner in 2021 after working as a Product Manager for VMware's Tanzu Kubernetes Grid team.

Prior to that role, he was analyst at Gartner since 2014-2020, product manager with cloud application platform Engine Yard, 2013-2104 and analyst at Gartner and Burton Group (2008-2013). Richard was VP of architecture for Credit Suisse investment bank 2005-2008.

With more than 28 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.

Professional background

VMware

Product Manager

Gartner

VP Analyst

Credit Suisse

Enterprise Architect

Areas of coverage

Software Development for Technical Professionals

Application Architecture and Integration for Technical Professionals

Education

B.A., Computer Science, University of Dublin, Trinity College

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Top Issues That I Help Clients Address

1When should I use Kubernetes? How can I implement Kubernetes as part of my application architecture?

2Which public cloud application platforms will meet my specific use cases? How do the major cloud app platforms compare?

3How do we migrate our custom on-premises applications to the cloud? How do I migrate applications to the cloud?

4How do we manage containerization/Docker as part of our application development lifecycle? Are containers the solution to our app development needs?

5How do I choose a container management vendor?