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

Chris is a member of Forrester's Business Technology Futures team, which serves CIOs and their business partners by predicting the long-term business impact of information technology. His research focus is on tech-driven business transformation and smart computing and analytics, analyzing the economics and business models of IT suppliers, and emerging trends in technology adoption. Currently, his research is centered on the role of IT in enabling sustainability initiatives and improving corporate environmental responsibility.
Chris has been with Forrester for 13 years as an analyst and research team leader. He led Forrester's US research organization from 2002 to 2006, and he previously led the firm's research efforts in the financial services, automotive, healthcare, and telecom industries. He regularly speaks at industry conferences and Forrester events and is widely quoted in the business and IT industry press.
Prior to joining Forrester, Chris was a principal at GeoPartners Research, doing strategy consulting for leading technology companies. During the 1980s, he was with the investment bank Cowen & Company, where he headed its research coverage of the networking industry. He also worked at The Yankee Group as a telecom industry analyst. He began his career as a member of technical staff at IBM's network software labs.
Chris holds degrees from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and the University of Pennsylvania.
I’ll be chairing Big Data World Europe on September 19 in London; in advance of that event, here are a few thoughts. Since late 2011, we’ve seen the big data noise level eclipse cloud and...
An effective standards program provides an important foundation for any enterprise architecture (EA) program. Both new and well-established programs will want to get and keep their standards house in...

I’ve been following a couple of 2011 developments that together may determine the next big technology winners and losers. To get your click, I’ve been obscure in my title. Spiders refers...

As I dig into my initial research, it dawned on me – some technology trends are having an impact on information management/data warehouse (DW) architectures, and EAs should consider these when...

I just saw something that makes a point I covered in a technology trends briefing for a client yesterday. After getting my Sun-dried Ethiopia Harrar (a $3.45 “clover-brewed,”...
I heard a great analogy from a client recently; buying new technology is like buying a new car - there are a lot of different strategies. Some people want a new car every couple of years and pay a...
At extreme scale, traditional data management and business intelligence (BI) become impractical, and your business does not get what it demands — more insight to drive greater business...
Just attended a Big Data symposium courtesy of IBM and thought I’d share a few insights, as probably many of you have heard the term but are not sure what it means to you. No. 1: Big Data is...
Many organizations expect EAs to be the source of technology innovations. They are broadly knowledgeable, experienced, connect-the-dots kind of people you might naturally expect to come up with...
As IT is rapidly changing, how should our IT department evolve? What should we focus on?
It's that time again, and we are busy updating our annual report, "The Top 15 Trends EA Should Watch." For this year, we have expanded the number of analysts contributing to the research,...
Greetings — thanks for taking the time to read my inaugural blog! Let me introduce myself by way of continuing a discussion that I started at Practicing EA and CIO.com on innovation...
Forrester hosted a "tweet jam" on technology trends on July 29. Cloud was clearly atop all other subjects, but business intelligence (BI), mobile, and social were also discussed — the general...
Business Case: The Emerging Technology Playbook
The business appetite for new technology to fuel innovation, generate growth, engage with customers, and create differentiation is insatiable. According to our survey data, however, your business is...

Strategic Plan: The Emerging Technology Playbook
For many organizations, the use of emerging technology is confusing, slow, and problematic. Which emerging technologies should be part of IT's standard approach? Which should IT push for business to...
When we get used to something, we often think it will never change, but it does eventually; who bought a house in 2006 and assumed the value would surely keep going up? We are working at an...
To succeed in the digital age, enterprise architects must seize opportunities by adopting new approaches for emerging technolgy introduction. This report highlights the technology introduction and...
As promised in my blog last week, here is part 2. In part 1, I introduced the two trends reports we did this year and showed the list of trends for business technology. These are trends and...
These data charts are based on the June 2011 Global Big Data Online Survey.
In an attempt to control IT costs, the US federal government is establishing mandates that are forcing deep and massive technology change. With data center consolidation and cloud migrations entering...

Last fall, a member of our enterprise architecture community asked a simple question — how do you represent IT strategy on a single page? What resulted was the most read and commented...
#next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }The term “one-trick pony” allegedly originated back...
We are currently in a technology growth cycle, which is likely to continue for another five to seven years.* The opportunities presented by the likes of cloud, mobile, social, and big data are...
Deliverables: The EA Practice Playbook
This report defines an approach for creating enterprise architecture (EA) deliverables as part of a high-performance EA practice. It is designed to help you create work products that matter to...
