About Forrester
Forrester Research, Inc. is an independent research company that provides pragmatic and forward-thinking advice to global leaders in business and technology.

Alex serves CIO Professionals. His coverage includes business technology strategies, business sustainability, business-driven governance frameworks, process-oriented organizational design, change management, and continuous improvement. He is also a leading expert on best practices for making technology organizations more effective and business relevant through the implementation of service-oriented structures and process frameworks.
Alex helps clients partner with business peers to drive growth and customer engagement; develop business technology people and processes for future success; and adopt business process management (BPM), Lean, and Six Sigma to deliver business outcomes.
Prior to taking on his current role, Alex focused his research on Business Process Professionals' challenges, such as the development of business process architectures, portfolio management capabilities, centers of excellence, and deployment of change management programs. Before joining Forrester in 2005, Alex developed the IT consolidation program and managed the data center of a large European automotive company. Previously, he spent 10 years at IBM and EDS as an executive senior consultant and led several international customer projects in areas such as mergers and acquisitions, IT shared services, sourcing, organizational change, process, and technology management. Alex also worked for five years as a research scientist in the area of high-performance computing at the IBM Scientific Center Heidelberg, publishing in refereed journals and co-editing three proceeding books.
Alex received a master's degree in engineering from the Civil Engineering Institute in Bucharest, Romania, and a Ph.D. in engineering from the Technical University Aachen, Germany. He received a postdoctoral fellowship from Princeton University.
This contract review checklist is designed to be used by clients who are entering into new contracts or refining existing contracts. It covers 10 major categories of contract terms and provides...

Testing-As-A-Service Doesn't Necessarily Mean The Cloud — At Least Not Yet
Sourcing professionals are moving away from their historic emphasis on staff augmentation in testing engagements toward increasing focus on more predictable outcomes and consumption-based pricing....
KPMG’s recent acquisition of Equaterra signals some new dynamics in the market for outsourcing advisory services. The acquisition creates an intriguing combination of capabilities encompassing...
The New Foundations For Innovation In A Maturing Industry
As more IT organizations operate under the dueling mandates of delivering cost savings and innovation, suppliers of applications outsourcing services are getting ready for the next phase of their...
I recently appeared on CIO Talk Radio to discuss the growing challenge brought by increased diversity of computing devices in the workplace and the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend. There is no...
IBM And Accenture Lead A Highly Competitive Field In A Mature Industry
In Forrester's 38-criteria evaluation of 12 leading providers of applications outsourcing (AO) solutions vendors, Forrester found that in this mature market IBM and Accenture lead the pack due to...

Providers Driving Workplace Services In EMEA
Workplace services are rapidly evolving far beyond their origins in desktop and desk-side management toward a post-desktop future in which end users' consumer-derived expectations dominate the...

Emerging Options Spawn Interest — But The Landscape Is Still Forming
SAP consumes millions of dollars in implementation spend and millions more in ongoing support and operations for many organization's IT budgets. Now, newer cloud and software-as-a-service (SaaS)...
A couple of years ago, my then-colleague Patrick Connaughton wrote a market overview about service-level management tools, which included a discussion of specific toolsets intended to help customers...
Capability Assessment: The Services Sourcing Playbook
Internal IT requirements and the market for external services are in a state of constant evolution. Linking the needs of a unique and complex IT environment with external market offerings has been a...
The current trend toward shorter, asset-light deals allows offshore providers to compete with the global majors on a more equal footing for all but the largest infrastructure outsourcing (ITO) deals....
Avoid Frustration By Changing Your Expectations For Cloud Providers
Forrester clients are often anxious to access the rapid provisioning and flexibility promised by providers of cloud technologies, but they too often languish in lengthy legal- and...

In Forrester's 50-criteria evaluation of 15 leading providers of applications outsourcing (AO) solution vendors, Forrester found that in this maturing market, Accenture and IBM lead the pack, with a...
Conventional wisdom says that customers should never skimp on outsourcing governance, but what does this simple admonition mean in practice? Far too many companies expect a higher level of service...
Evaluating Leading Providers Amidst A Category Redefinition
Workplace services are rapidly evolving far beyond their origins in desktop and desk-side management toward a post-desktop future in which end users' consumer-derived expectations dominate the...
After years of relative stability, four significant acquisitions so far this year have partially transformed the market for managed hosting services. While all of the acquisitions have been...
What is the typical length of a contract for outsourced distributed support services, including help desk, order desk, technical support, asset management, and project management functions?
Our company is exploring a portfolio segmentation approach to multisourcing to our global delivery providers. This approach would likely entail awarding large bundles of work over a multiyear period...
IBM Leads A Closely Packed Group Of Suppliers
In Forrester's 36-criteria evaluation of global IT infrastructure management vendors, we found that IBM leads a closely packed group of leaders including HCL, Capgemini, Wipro, Infosys, TCS,...

Business Impact: The Services Sourcing Playbook
Linking IT services engagements, including outsourcing relationships, directly to any type of business value other than cost savings remains a challenge. However, it is a challenge sourcing and...

The body of contract best practices changes little in terms of specific terms available for governing outsourcing transactions, but their relative importance can shift in response to both ongoing and...