Michael Hoch is the VP of Research at RampRate, and oversees the company’s primary research activities, SPY Index development and operations, and IT outsourcing analysis for RampRate clients. His mission at RampRate is to provide all clients with substantiated, field-based research and analysis for strategic and tactical business planning decisions.

Michael joined RampRate in early 2004 after more than five years as a research director and industry analyst at Aberdeen Group, an IT market research firm. At Aberdeen, Michael advised Global 2000 enterprises and the world’s top technology vendors on the business value, market dynamics, competitive landscape, and go-to-market strategies of Internet technologies. His research practice, “Content Delivery and Application Distribution,” covered the delivery elements of Web services, network infrastructure, data center optimization, streaming and digital media, and delivery and distribution technologies (caches, routers, load balancers, server off-load engines).

In his five years at Aberdeen, Michael published dozens of market defining reports and white papers on digital content distribution, digital media in the enterprise, and content networking. He also contributed leading articles to major trade publications, such as the 6-part “Business of Streaming” column to Streaming Media Magazine, “Delivering on Digital Data’s Promise” for Finance Director Europe, and “Real Numbers for a Real Market” in The Streaming Media Industry Sourcebook 2004. In addition, Michael has been quoted widely in worldwide journals and newspapers including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Boston Globe, Boston Business Journal, Streamingmedia.com, CNET.com and Network World.

Michael is co-author of a forthcoming book, The Business of Streaming and Digital Media, to be published by Focal Press in January, 2005. He was also voted one of the “Top 50 Most Influential People in Streaming” two years in a row by Streaming Magazine.

Prior to Aberdeen, Michael worked in the Executive Director’s office at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, as a program director raising sponsorship and organizing research symposia on such diverse topics as “Feeding China in the 21st Century” and “The Future Relevance of NATO.”

Michael earned a master’s degree in business administration from Northeastern University and a bachelor’s degree from Boston University.