Thomas Bittman is a Vice President and Distinguished Analyst with Gartner Research. Bittman has led the industry in areas such as cloud computing, virtualization, and edge computing. He was an early pioneer for the concept of private cloud computing and invented the term "real-time infrastructure" in 2002 (a precursor to private cloud computing). Bittman served for three years as a member of Gartner's Senior Research Board. In 2005, he earned Gartner's Analyst of the Year Award. He has served as Gartner's Lead Analyst covering IBM, Microsoft and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. His primary focus of research is edge computing and the future of infrastructure.