Laura DiDio is a highly visible technology industry analyst and consultant, a professional writer and a veteran investigative reporter with 25+ years experience in the high technology industry. 

Ms. DiDio’s current area of focus is the emerging Internet of Things (IoT) arena, which she has covered for the past three years. Prior to joining The 451 Group, she most recently served as Director of IoT Systems Research and Consulting at Strategy Analytics in Boston.  In that capacity, she conducted surveys on IoT deployment trends and timetables, authored reports on the crucial business and technology issues involving IoT, and participated in client consulting engagements. Ms. DiDio has extensive expertise in constructing and fielding independent and custom surveys on a wide range of technology and business topics. She also conducts competitive analysis, market intelligence, SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) and battle scorecards across a wide range of vertical and horizontal markets.  

Arrow’s sales and channel development efforts that broaden channel capabilities around key IT solutions with its extensive enterprise security portfolio including Symantec, Fortinet, Gemalto, Intel Security, Palo Alto, RSA, Splunk, Trend Micro and more. With McWilliams’ 20-plus years of experience in leadership roles at national business partner firms and running his own application development business, he understands how to apply practical technology solutions that meet business challenges in an environment that is changing more rapidly than ever before.  His deep knowledge of the growing cybersecurity and cloud computing markets positions him as a thought leader and key resource for partners interested in delivering real value to their customers through the implementation of business solutions. He is a member of Arrow’s IoT Foundry, a collection of company executives from across the business, brought together to define and execute its IoT strategy.  Arrow has a sensor-to-sunset strategy called Things Evolved that engages with all of Arrow’s various business units.  Since joining Arrow in 2010, McWilliams has focused on expanding Arrow’s ecosystem of value-added resellers and suppliers for key solutions in the marketplace including big data, analytics, security, mobility and cloud.  He earned a bachelor’s degree from Florida Southern College and an MBA from Florida State University.

Tolga Tarhan serves as  Sturdy Networks lead solutions architect and business development manager. He has 18 years of experience leading software development and DevOps teams (way before DevOps became the buzzword du jour). His cross-functional expertise across different technology areas gives him unique insight into the best approaches for building complex systems and applications. He has successfully led numerous deployments involving web-based, mobile, Internet of Things, and real-time telecommunications applications. Tarhan also holds an MBA from Pepperdine University and helps customers strategize beyond technology solutions to improve their business and grow their bottom line. Tarhan also serves as the chief technologist for NetBrains and Usability.Pro. He served as the director of operational readiness and director of homeland security for the Civil Air Patrol.

Luis Morinigo leads the IoT and Advanced Analytics group at New Signature, a two-time Microsoft partner of the year with headquarters in Washington, DC. Luis is responsible for building and delivering IoT and Advanced Analytics offerings, driving the go-to-market strategy, and leading a team of data scientists and analytics architects. His team is focused on delivering end-to-end initiatives that span strategic envisioning down to implementation.

Luis and his team delivered the predictive analytics solution for Hershey that enabled the optimization of the Twizzlers production process. The predictive capabilities were based on machine learning algorithms, which resulted in significant cost savings. By focusing on an approach that encourages a Start Small, Think Big strategy, his team helps organizations reduce complexity by driving quick time-to-value solutions.

Previously, Morinigo worked at Synteractive Corp. as a business productivity consultant and JP Morgan in London as an equity capital markets analyst.

He received a dual degree in Applied Math and Economics at the University of Maryland, College Park. He also received a Master’s of Science in Operations Research from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Brian Blanchard serves as the VP, Cloud Solutions for 10th Magnitude. In the last decade, he has led the growth of three consultants through YoY revenue and headcount growth. This growth has been focused building consultative and solution based approaches to tackling strategic IT challenges, much of the time this has focused on Cloud and IoT transformations. The focus on Azure transformation began over seven years ago, during that time his teams have helped customers with more than 3000 migrations into the cloud, which includes a large percentage of the Fortune 500. Further, Mr. Blanchard has been working in the IoT space for almost 15 years, with a long history of connected devices in a variety of verticals.

Stephen DiFranco most recently lead the acquisition of Broadcom’s IoT business unit where he served as VP & GM of Broadcom Ltd.’s IoT BU.   He was responsible for the 450 member hardware engineering, software development, platform, sales and marketing team.  These teams design, develop and marketing industry leading communication products for consumer, commercial and automotive IoT customers.  DiFranco also oversees the company’s community of developers, VARs & IoT partners and alliances.  In February 2016 DiFranco lead the process to identify a buyer for the group.  The acquisition to Cypress Semiconductor was closed on July 5, 2016.