Dr. Stefan Ried – IoT Practice Lead & Principal Analyst at the independent analyst firm Crisp Research – is responsible for the research and consulting activities covering IoT and modern platform architectures. He joined Crisp Research in April 2017 from Unify where he has been global CTO. At the communication and collaboration technology vendor Unify, Stefan drove technology innovation in both the traditional Openscape Communications product family, and in the leading-edge collaboration cloud Circuit. He acquired previously at Forrester Research from 2008 to 2014 deep knowledge of the middleware software and cloud market. He spent more than 20 years in leading engineering and product management and product marketing roles at international software vendors such as SAP and Software AG. Stefan published and consulted end users and vendors on product and M&A strategies, portfolio development, the investment in emerging technology to improve business results, and their general business models. Stefan holds a Ph.D. of theoretical and computational physics by the Max Planck Institute in Germany.