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

Gene provides research and advisory services that address the needs of Enterprise Architecture Professionals. Gene has been researching best practices in making enterprise architecture programs effective since 1999 and focuses on helping clients implement a pragmatic approach to EA that has clear value to business and IT leaders.
Gene has more than 25 years of IT experience, including enterprise architecture planning, infrastructure architecture, IT management, performance management, capacity planning, product strategy, and application development. Gene came to Forrester through its acquisition of Giga Information Group. Prior to joining Giga, he was director of infrastructure architecture and capacity planning at John Hancock Financial Services in Boston. Previously, he held senior IT positions at First Data Corporation and Fidelity Investments and development and marketing management positions at leading software firms.
He has published dozens of papers on various topics and has spoken at a variety of conferences in the US and abroad.
Gene earned a B.A. in psychology and music from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut.
Three years ago, I wrote a report on a then-forthcoming SMB market phenomenon, characterized as the “SMB phoenix.” Gleaned from interviews with new (at the time) small business...
A Critical Mass Of Channel Partners Are Embracing Cloud
Forrester recently surveyed channel partner company executives on their business model plans with respect to cloud computing. What we learned: After much gnashing of teeth (over marginalized...

What are best practices in developing a partnership tool kit?

What is it that you think makes one tech company stand out from another? “My product is better than your product”? Not anymore. “My salespeople are better than your...
This workbook provides data on how the current generation of VSBs displays significantly different software investment plans than earlier generations. VSBs are beginning to think and act more like...
Lurking in the tech channel shadows are the various manifestations of the newly emerging e-channel: online application stores, online communities, group buying sites, and e-purchasing...
Vision: The Channel Partner Loyalty Playbook
The channel partner ecosystem is undergoing a massive upheaval, largely as a result of rapidly evolving cloud computing engagement and delivery models, and will go through several tectonic shifts...
Co-authored by Zachary Reiss-Davis There were two important pieces of Nokia news of interest to mobile platform developer partners leaked today. First, Nokia’s MeeGo platform, designed to...
This year (next month) Forrester’s Technology Sales Enablement Forum will sport a new channels track. With a theme of “Bridging the Strategy-to-Execution Gap,” we will drill...
Small And Medium-Size Businesses Are Defying Gravity
Small and medium-size businesses (SMBs), like their enterprise brethren, are shifting their technology focus from IT to business technology (BT). As their focus on business solutions — as...
SMBs Exhibit A Broad Adoption Profile, But Growth Is Being Stunted By The Credit Crunch
For most software categories, tech marketers once considered the small to medium-size business (SMB) market to be "software non grata." Their assumption was that most SMBs supported their operations...

Hosters And Tech Vendors Are Drafting Amazon's Slipstream
The infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud business, with its high margins, is a strong attractant to a slew of provider channels. But customers view different provider types differently in terms...
Channel Partners Expect A Share Of The Cloud
To identify channel partners' plans, readiness, barriers, and needs as cloud technologies emerge, Forrester Research joined with Outsource Channel Executives (OCE) to survey distributors, value-added...
SMBs Are Adopting Networking Technology In A Vein Not Dissimilar To Enterprises
True to our "SMB phoenix" characterization, small to medium-size businesses (SMBs) are proving to be aggressive adopters of network and communications technologies and services. No longer can SMBs be...
SMBs' Plans For Servers, Storage, Virtualization, Form Factors, And Cloud Computing
Suppliers of infrastructure hardware to small and medium-size business (SMB) buyers are poised for better times, given plans by SMBs to upgrade their software and associated hardware infrastructures...
Business Case: The Channel Partner Loyalty Playbook
Partners will remain loyal to a vendor to the extent that the vendor relationship helps them achieve their business goals. The strength of this partner-vendor relationship is determined by multiple...
It’s a well-established fact that social media is every bit as – if not more – influential for business decision-makers (B2B) as it is for consumers (B2C); Forrester clients can...
Cloud computing has arrived on the market in a big way, with virtually every tech vendor, regardless of size, geography, or solution, vying for a cloud position. But in the race to the cloud, many...
. . . but bad reactive marketing can make the problem much worse. [co-authored by Zachary Reiss-Davis] As has been widely reported, in sources broad and narrow, Amazon.com’s cloud service EC2...
Channel Enablement Is A Top Priority For 2011
2011 will be a bellwether year for tech vendors. Tech investment by customers and marketing investment by tech vendors are rising ahead of the economic recovery into 2011. Most tech marketers see...
New SMB Realities Require New Go-To-Market Approaches
As big as the small and medium-size business (SMB) market is, both in terms of sheer numbers and IT spend, only a handful of tech vendors have penetrated it with what can be deemed success. Based on...
Executive Overview: The Channel Partner Loyalty Playbook
Tech vendors have long understood the power of channels and wielded their channel networks as competitive weapons. But the channel ecosystem is undergoing dramatic changes, and channel partners'...
