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

James serves Infrastructure & Operations and CIO Professionals, providing insights and best-practice use of cloud computing (IaaS, public and private clouds, cloud storage services and related cloud technologies and services). As the content lead for Forrester's Cloud Computing Playbook, he further advises IT leadership on cloud economics, cloud outsourcing (strategic rightsourcing), IT cloud readiness and business and developer engagement on cloud.
James is the author of best-practice analysis on maturing your virtualization and cloud practices, building a cloud computing consumption strategy, and optimizing web infrastructures for blazing-fast performance.
James has more than 25 years' experience in the industry, having served as a reseller, vendor strategist, chief marketing officer, journalist, and analyst for companies including Autodesk, Azul Systems, Gartner, Rockwell International, and Sun Microsystems.
He is a frequent speaker at industry, corporate, educational, and Wall Street events and has guest lectured at leading business schools. James has been named a top cloud computing analyst each of the last four years by leading industry associations including Web Hosting Industry Review (2009) Apollo Research (2010-11) and fWired (2012). He is also the 2011 recipient of the Forrester Bill Bluestein Award, given to the analyst whose body of work continually inspires our clients and guides their decisions to be great.
Working out of Silicon Valley, James holds a master's degree from the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Southern California and a bachelor's degree from the University of North Texas.
I've noticed a bit of a disturbing pattern of late in my cloud discussions with clients. They have been talking about hybrid cloud in the future tense. If you are planning for hybrid down the...
Every company generates data that would be of significant value to its customers, partners and potential partners; information that could be combined with insights from this ecosystem, public...
The OpenStack Foundation and Microsoft have released major updates to their cloud platforms and frankly there’s nothing really new or exciting here – which is a good thing. Sure,...
Sometimes you can only coax a reluctant partner and I&O customer community for so long before you feel you have to take matters into your own hands. That is exactly what VMware has decided to do to...
This week at the VMware Partner Exchange, CEO Pat Gelsinger and his executive staff decided to demonize Amazon Web Services and their public cloud brethren in a very short sighted defensive...
You've told your ITOps team to make it happen, you've approved the purchase of cloud-in-a-box solutions, but your developers aren't using it. Why? Forrester analyst Lauren Nelson and...
We all know the conventional wisdom about cloud computing: it's cheap, fast and easy. But is it really that much cheaper? Or is it simply optics that make it appear cheaper? Optics can...
Oracle makes itself an easy target for the ire of the cloud community when it makes dumb, cloudwashed announcements like last week's supposed IaaS offering. But then again, Oracle is just doing...
It looks that EMC has finally admitted it needs a better approach for courting developers and is doing something significant to fix this. No longer will key assets like Greenplum, Pivotal, or Spring...
As the end of 2012 approaches there is one clear takeaway about the cloud computing market — enterprise use has arrived. Cloud use is no longer solely hiding in the shadows, IT...
The year 2012 brought a significant amount of growth in enterprise use of cloud services but did it fulfill our expectations? With just five weeks left in the year, it’s time to reflect on our...
Out of all the inquiries I get from Forrester enterprise clients, the above question is by far the most common these days. However, the question shows that we have a lot to learn about true public...
If you have dismissed Microsoft as a cloud platform player up to now, you might want to rethink that notion. With the latest release of Windows Azure here at Build, Microsoft’s premier...
Curious about where we are in the development of the cloud computing market? Here is my opening keynote from the 2012 SV Forum in Santa Clara, CA....
Well if you're going to make a dramatic about face from total dismissal of cloud computing, this is a relatively credible way to do it. Following up on its announcement of a serious cloud future...
From the company that brought shelf space retail thinking and pork belly economics to the world of Internet hosting comes yet another mechanism from another market putting them even further...
Wouldn't it be nice if your employees actually asked you this question before they went off and signed up for a cloud service or deployed a new app to a cloud platform? If they did ask, would you...
The long-rumored changing of the guard at VMware finally took place last week and with it came down a stubborn strategic stance that was a big client dis-satisfier. Out went the...
Our latest survey on IT budgets and priorities shows that 35 percent of enterprises have a big focus on cloud computing (calling it a high or critical priority), but do we really know how best to...
When servers in the cloud fall over, no one's rushing to stand them back up. Is the general mentality and service structure of a cloud service inherently different than that of a private hosted...
In typical Microsoft fashion, they don't catch a new trend right with the first iteration but they keep at it and eventually strike the right tone and in more cases than not, get good enough. And...
In my oodles of conversations with enterprise clients about cloud, there isn't a day that goes by without some myth about cloud use coming up. It's time we, together, did something...
We all have habits we would like to (and should) break such as leaving the lights on in rooms we are no longer in and good habits we want to encourage such as recycling...
Shakespeare wrote in his famous play Hamlet,"Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end...
If you wanted to see the full spectrum of cloud choices that are coming to market today you only have to look at these two efforts as they are starting to evolve. They represent the extremes. And...