Welcome to the ISG Index Insider™
The Index Insider is a weekly briefing that delivers the headlines straight to your inbox. It gives you a quick digest on what is happening in the IT and business services industry from Principal Analyst Stanton Jones and a global team of technology services experts.
Meet our team
Stanton Jones
Stanton leads ISG's Index research, helping providers, investors and ISG clients make sense of the global IT services sector. An ISG Digital Fellow, Stanton has been quoted in CIO, Forbes and The Times of London and has appeared on Fox Business News.
Alex Bakker
Alex leads the Primary Research Team where he focuses on study design, panel research, and interview based research for ISG. In addition to leading the Primary Research practice at ISG, Alex also serves as the lead analyst on provider pursuit effectiveness, and helps IT service providers understand how they can improve performance in the competitive process.
Cynthia Batty
Cynthia Batty is the ISG’s Chief Knowledge Officer. In this role she is the ISG service methodology architect and global integrator of the company’s products and services, and is the leader for developing, growing and leveraging ISG’s accumulated intellectual property resources. Prior to this role, Cynthia was a lead in ISG’s Governance and Transformation practices, and maintains a continuing role in the Organizational Change Management practice. She brings 25 years of practical experience to advise clients on their sourcing governance and service management design, as well as organizational change management and maturity development. She is a recognized expert in sourcing governance, vendor and contract management. She has helped more than 50 governance organizations with business management and service management processes in both single-provider and multi-provider environments.
View articles by Cynthia BattyDaniel Gerster
Dr. Daniel Gerster is a Partner at ISG and offers clients more than 22 years of experience in strategic information management, thereof nine years as global CIO in a professional services company and more than 13 years in management consulting. Daniel helps CIOs and leading IT executives to successfully master digital transformation and to increase core capabilities such as organizational agility or resilience. He has a highly successful track record in CIO advisory. He is a well-known specialist for IT sourcing and contracting and covers commercial, legal and data protection aspects. He is a recognized speaker at conferences for IT executives, on IT events such as Sapphire, DSAG, VOICE, and BME IT Sourcing, VOICE Entscheiderforum.
View articles by Daniel GersterDoug Saylors
Doug currently leads the ISG Cybersecurity unit and offers expertise in cybersecurity strategy, large scale transformation projects, infrastructure, Digital enablement, relationship management, and service delivery. Clients benefit from Doug's expertise from years of working with global clients within the life sciences, automotive manufacturing, aerospace, banking, insurance, financial services, healthcare, utilities and retail industries, as well as his deep and current knowledge of the service provider market. Doug routinely performs Strategy and Assessment engagements to assist clients in understanding how to select the optimal organizational and operational models to meet their business needs while minimizing security exposure and risk of loss.
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Kathy Rudy
Kathy Rudy is Chief Data and Analytics Officer of ISG and a member of the ISG Executive Board. She was named to this post in January 2020. Kathy is responsible for the development of ISG data solutions and platforms to deliver new and even more valuable insights to our clients, as part of the overall ISG Platform strategy. She is working across the firm to enhance our data products, develop data-driven consulting assets, and increase our go-to-market effectiveness. Throughout her 20 years with the firm, Kathy has supported hundreds of client organizations as they leverage data to drive greater efficiency and effectiveness in their IT operations, build measurement programs and support critical sourcing decisions. She was responsible for the development of ISG Inform™, the firm’s next-generation data-as-a-service platform solution, launched in 2019. Before joining ISG in 2000, Kathy, a graduate of Michigan State University, was part of the Unisys team that managed the transition from internally delivered IT services to an outsourced environment for the City of Chicago.
View articles by Kathy RudyMissy Lawrence-Johnston
Missy Lawrence-Johnston is a Culture & Change-Leadership expert with a passion for organizational effectiveness and human capital optimization. A recognized speaker and executive coach leading our Americas Operating Models Capability, Missy’s distinct competency is in corporate culture, Executive Coaching, Product Models & Mindset, and cultural change-leadership programs. Her zeal for agile and product team dynamics, C-suite coaching, and empowering psychologically safe environments have landed her on Business First’s Top 40 under 40 Professionals for her Digital Culture and Human Behavior Dynamics Playbooks. Her 20 years of experience are grounded in Brain-based Leadership, Operating Models, IT HRBP, Neuroscience, HCM, HR Mergers and Acquisitions, Organizational Effectiveness & OD, Culture Change, CMMI, enterprise agility, DevOps, and Productizing/Product Oriented Delivery in a variety of industries.
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Mrinal Rai
Mrinal Rai is the principal analyst for Digital Workplace and Conversational AI. His area of expertise is digital workplace services, enterprise social collaboration and conversational AI both from a technology and business point of view. He covers key areas around the Workplace, End User computing domain and conversational AI viz., modernizing workplace, Enterprise mobility, BYOD, VDI, managed workplace services, service desk, enterprise social software, content/ team collaboration, chatbots and intelligent virtual agent platforms. He has been with ISG for last 8+ years and has more than 13 years of industry experience. Mrinal works with ISG advisors and clients in engagements related to chatbots, virtual assistants, workplace modernization, social intranet, collaborative workplace, cloud-based VDI, end user computing and service desk.
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Namratha Dharshan
Namratha Dharshan is director and principal analyst for ISG. With more than 16 years of experience in IT/BPO outsourcing research, she has developed expertise in business processing outsourcing and customer experience broadly focused on horizontals such as finance and accounting and contact center. Her research focuses specifically on customer experience as it relates to digital transformation, omnichannel, analytics, AI and automation.
View articles by Namratha DharshanRon Exler
Mr. Exler is a Director and Principal Analyst with the ISG Provider Lens (IPL) service, a part of ISG Research. His focus is on the disruptive and progressive influences on businesses – and the experiences of their customers - of the Internet of Things (IoT), location intelligence, Digital Workplace and application modernization. Ron is lead analyst for the IoT Services 2021 IPL study as well as the Healthcare and Life Sciences Digital Services 2020 and 2021 IPL studies. He is also the owner of the IPL subscriptions services for enterprises and service providers. Ron bridges the gap between business and technology through active analyses and clear communications of issues and opportunities.
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Sashidharan Balasundaram
Mr. Sashidharan is an Assistant Director and Data Analytics Group Lead at ISG and has over 12 years of experience in Operations, Strategy, Technology Research and Procurement Consulting within IT Services for Banking, and Insurance, Energy, and Manufacturing Verticals. He has expertise in consulting, competitive intelligence and formulating strategies for go to market approach. Mr. Sashidharan is responsible for the ISG Research Data & Analytics Function, ISG FutureSource Provider Qualification (CPQ) process, ISG Momentum Contracts KnowledgeBase, Research Solution Design and Delivery. He plays a critical role in creating, managing and leveraging the core data assets for ISG and our clients. He frequently meets with ISG clients, presents to the senior client stakeholders about the state of IT outsourcing market, future trends, and their performance in ISG led opportunities.
View articles by Sashidharan BalasundaramSteve Hall
Steve Hall is responsible for the firm’s Europe, Middle East & Africa region, as well as its global Digital Advisory Services business. During his time with ISG, Mr. Hall has led some of the company’s largest and most complex engagements with clients as diverse as United Airlines, Symantec, BP, World Bank, CEMEX and Motorola. He is a seasoned professional who brings considerable experience in emerging technologies to ISG clients. Prior to his position at ISG, Mr. Hall held senior roles at a number of renowned IT services companies, including Unisys and MCI. He also led large-scale eBusiness initiatives for technology solutions providers C-Bridge and CBSI and gained deep outsourcing and offshore software development experience as a delivery executive with Covansys. Mr. Hall co-authored Managing Global Development Risk: A Guide to Managing Global Software Development. He earned his degree in Computer Science from Regis University.
Sunder Sarangan
Sunder Sarangan is focused on the success of the provider ecosystem at ISG. He leads various programs and products as part of the leadership team for ISG Research. Additionally, he is responsible for new products that address the specific needs of niche and specialized providers and their market success.
View articles by Sunder SaranganTroy Williams
Troy Williams leads a team that provides independent governance and advisory services to help clients with their digital transformations. Leveraging ISG’s market leading research and governance tools, Troy helps clients reduce operational costs through enhanced vendor governance, technology sourcing strategies and as a service delivery models, whilst improving customer and employee experience by advising clients on how to digitally transform and leverage data-driven personalization through automation and AI.
View articles by Troy Williams