About the Authors

Carey Azzara a co-founder and managing partner of The AlignIT Group is an executive level research professional with over 20 years of experience. Azzara is currently developing new research offerings and working with several organizations to provide products and services aimed at making the IT purchase process more efficient and effective for buyers and suppliers. He was the Chief Research Officer at Hurwitz Group and prior to that Director of the Corporate Computing Vertical Views Program at IDC. Azzara holds a Bachelor of Science in psychology and a minor in business from Upsala College. He received his Master’s degree from Fairleigh Dickinson University in Applied Social Psychology and completed doctoral training in Survey Research and Statistics from Boston College.

Steve Garone is co-founder and managing partner of The AlignIT Group. Previously, Steve served as Chief Technical Strategist for Sun Microsystems' Software Marketing organization, where he was responsible for software vendor competitive intelligence as well as customer intelligence. Steve was also Program Vice President at IDC, where he led a team of senior analysts responsible for characterizing, sizing, and forecasting the markets for Web services, enterprise integration software, application and integration servers, application design and construction tools, and products that support Java and XML. Steve has also held marketing and engineering positions at Cadre Technologies, Digital Equipment Corporation, GTE Systems, and RCA Corporation.

About The AlignIT Group

The AlignIT Group offers full-service market research and analyst capabilities with the mission of helping IT decision makers formulate better purchase decisions faster. It leverages independent, peer-based primary research, unique ROI expertise, and the viewpoints of highly experienced and knowledgeable analysts.