Podcast: IBM Cloud Pak for Data and Forrester Podcast

Dinesh Nirmal is a C-Level Executive and industry thought leader who leads a global development team to drive billions in annual revenue. He brings over 20 years' leadership in data and analytics transformation, leading strategy and execution for defining technologies spanning machine learning, analytics at the edge, open source, analytics, and database.

Dinesh is currently Chief Product Officer for Cloud Paks, steering IBM’s mission to help customers modernize for a hybrid cloud world. He serves on the Board of R Consortium to help guide the open source R language and is an advisor for Accel.AI.

Prior to this role, Dinesh led product development for Data and AI, driving IBM’s platform strategy and creating a new business with a market-defining data and AI platform built on open source. The platform went from incubation to a production enterprise-ready offering in months, generating significant revenue increasing by double and triple digits YOY over three consecutive years and gaining favorable analyst recognition. Dinesh rebuilt the business to factor AI into every part of the software and hardware portfolio, and drove new customer engagements with some of the largest enterprises in the world in telecom, manufacturing, and other industries by inspiring a vision of data modernization and AI-driven strategy and providing a practical blueprint to achieve it.

Brian’s research helps clients drive innovation through emerging technology to get ahead of trends and become leaders in their markets. His thought leadership also assists CIOs in maximizing the returns on their investments and future-proofing their business against the accelerating pace of change. He is routinely covered in major trade journals, such as the Wall Street Journal, CIO.com, and ZDNet, where his ideas challenge technology leaders to think differently to get better results. His coverage of technologies includes edge computing, edge intelligence, quantum computing, insight and big data platforms, and systems of insight. He is a contributing author to the insights-driven business playbook and the IT transformation playbook. Finally, he leads Forrester's annual top emerging technologies and top technology trends reports, making him the first touchpoint for firms looking to get ahead with new technology.

Brian has 18 years of experience in technology management as an advisor, strategist, architect, and manager. Before joining Forrester, he worked in the financial services and defense industries, where he acted as architecture director for data management and analytics; overhauled enterprise architecture practices and process governance; advised executives on business technology strategy; and managed multimillion-dollar technology investment programs. Brian was in the US Navy for 10 years as an officer in the nuclear submarine force, where he served as an engineering assistant for USS Seahorse (SSN 669), assistant intelligence officer for Submarine Group 7, and operations and navigation officer for USS Bremerton (SSN 698). He attended Texas A&M University, class of ’88, where he was a member of the Corps of Cadets and a Ross Volunteer.