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

Carrie serves eBusiness & Channel Strategy Professionals and leads a team that helps these professionals in the retail, financial services, travel, and healthcare industries optimize sales and service strategies across channels. Carrie's current research focuses on online and multichannel retailing.
Prior to this position, Carrie spent eight years at Forrester researching the dynamics and growth of online retailing. In this role, she analyzed consumers' adoption of eCommerce, their multichannel behavior, and how retailers optimize sales to those consumers with key technologies and strategies. In this role, Carrie authored many key Forrester reports, including Forrester's annual eCommerce forecast. In addition, since 2002, Carrie has authored or led the research effort for "The State of Retailing Online," a Shop.org survey conducted by Forrester Research.
Carrie's background prior to Forrester includes work at the Harvard Business School, where she wrote case studies on Barnes & Noble, Frontgate, PlanetAll, QVC, Streamline, and TV Guide.
Carrie has appeared on NBC Nightly News, CNBC, and CNNfn to speak about online retail trends and react to various retail news events. She has also been quoted in various newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, and The Boston Globe.
Carrie is a magna cum laude graduate of Bowdoin College.
Design Around User Roles, Not Application Silos
In the siloed application mindset of 20th-century solution models, a key design question is, "How should we build the user interface (UI) for this application?" By contrast, the appropriate design...
If your organization is like nearly every other one I've talked to in the past 20+ years, you have a spaghetti chart of integration connections between all the siloed applications that run your...
Can you please send some key requirements, skills, areas of focus, and areas of demonstrated expertise for an SOA architect?

Strategic Plan: The EA Method Playbook
This report describes the strategic plan of Forrester's EA method playbook — our set of high-value practices that enterprise architects should use to help their organizations plan, architect,...
There’s a big mistake often made with business architecture — a very big mistake, yet a very subtle mistake. As you might expect, there are a number of mistakes one might make with...
Design patterns, proven technology stacks, and well-documented application infrastructure are fundamental tools for promoting common practices in the design of business solutions. Enterprises create...
The old foundations of technology strategy — hot tech trends and business plans — have become inadequate, resulting in technology silos and hard-wired solutions. In a new era of...
Implementation And Operation Methods: The EA Method Playbook
IT's traditional approach to delivering business change is broken. Siloed solution delivery projects struggle to keep up with the pace of business. Agile development, lean software, and business...
Current Use Of SOA Advances 27% Among Enterprises, 45% Among SMBs
Service-oriented architecture continues to find a welcome home in both enterprises and SMBs. Even during the Great Recession, all sizes of organizations moved ahead in their adoption of SOA. Global...
Vision: The EA Method Playbook
In the midst of continuing economic, political, competitive, and technological disruption over the next decade, your enterprise architecture (EA) practice will flounder unless it gains clear vision...

As I discuss with clients the developing notions of Forrester's Business Capability Architecture (see blog post #1 and blog post #2), I have found it important to distinguish between different...
Start Small And Keep An Eye On The Breadth Of Your Future Mobile Scenarios
User authentication is a key foundation of security for mobile apps — as it is for application security in general. Determining which authentication approach to use for your mobile solution...

Design patterns, proven technology stacks, and well-documented application infrastructure are fundamental tools for promoting common practices in the design of business solutions. Enterprises create...
Step back and think: How would you answer the question, “What does your IT group deliver to your business?” Your answer will indicate how you think about the relationship between business...
Can you remember a year when your business both (1) grew in a healthy way and (2) changed more slowly than the year before? Besides a company’s early startup years, such would be the exception,...
Move From Application And Outsourcing Silos Toward Building Your Business
Borrowing words from science fiction writer William Gibson: The future of solution architecture is here — it's just not yet evenly distributed or highly integrated. Even with a long list of...
Move Deliberately, But Carefully, Toward Forrester's Vision For The Future Of Integration
Application development and delivery (AD&D) professionals need a foundation for recasting their integration strategies to meet 21st-century demands for business agility. Forrester's vision for...

Strategic Plan: The Cloud Computing Playbook
With the level of industry hype about cloud computing, CIOs may get the impression that adopting cloud-based offerings is a sure path to business benefit. But cloud computing is not the answer to all...
