Ian Hughes is a Senior Analyst for the Internet of Things practice at 451 Research. He has 30 years of experience in emerging technology as a developer, architect and consultant through key technology trends.

Ian has 20 years of experience at IBM in cross-industry application development. This included automotive, global sporting events, retail and telecommunications.

Ian was early to the Web development space in 1998 and social media in 2004, and was influential in virtual-worlds adoption in 2006-09. He has spent the past seven years at his own consulting company, where he presented a regular emerging technology feature on a UK Saturday morning children's TV show, built virtual disaster simulators for hospitals, pitched startups to investors, wrote a technology column for a fashion magazine and wrote two sci-fi novels. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Technology from Southampton Solent University in 2018.