Expertise: Server and Desktop Applications. Unified communications, Office suite, licensing and support.

As research chair, Rob Horwitz keeps Directions focused on its mission of providing clients with clear, concise, and actionable analysis of Microsoft technologies, strategies, product roadmaps, licensing policies and organizational structure. He also writes extensively on Microsoft licensing policies and rules.

Before co-founding Directions in 1992, Rob spent eight years at Microsoft in a variety of software development and technical marketing roles. He was a software developer on the first version of Macintosh Word and marketed Microsoft operating system and server-based products while in the developer relations, networking product marketing, international, and OEM marketing groups.

Rob holds a B.S. in computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an M.B.A. from Wharton.