Speaker Biography

John McCarthy

Vice President, Principal Analyst

Sessions Featuring This Speaker

Forrester's CIO Summit APAC 2012 -- Australia

09/13/2012

  • 02:15 PM - 02:45 PM

    Navigating The Mobile Shift

    By 2016, smartphones and tablets will put power in the pockets of a billion global consumers. Mobile is not simply another device for IT to support with a shrunken website or a screen-scraped SAP application. Rather, mobile is the manifestation of a much broader shift to new systems of engagement. These systems of engagement help firms empower their customers, partners, and employees with context-aware apps and smart products. To remain vital in this business technology (BT) reformation, CIOs must step up and work with other executives to establish and "Office of the Chief Mobility Officer" to implement an enterprisewide mobile strategy. This team will coordinate the business and technology investments under a "design for mobile first" mantra that delivers three immediate benefits:

    • Move faster along the mobile learning curve.
    • Aggregate mobile project budgets to fund needed engagement technology.
    • Grow from an IT group focused on systems of record to a BT group focused on systems of engagement.

Research Focus

With 27 years of experience at Forrester, John is a key contributor to our work on predicting the business impact of technology. As such, he covers such topics as the future of IT services and mobile apps and their impact on IT and vendors, the impact of cloud computing, the emergence of "platform" BPO offerings, and implications of SaaS on traditional services. John also has more than 12 years of insight into the development of a global delivery model for IT services and product development.

To define their mobile app, vendor management, offshore, and IT management and governance strategies, John has worked with leading-edge firms and governments in many countries and regions, including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, and the UK.

In his offshore and alternative geography research, John has been to India over 25 times and has visited the major alternatives Argentina, Brazil, China, Czech Republic, Malaysia, Mexico, Philippines, Russia, and Vietnam.

In a cover story, Time named John's report on offshore a "landmark study." In January 2004, The Economist stated, "The debate on offshore has been brewing since a study by Forrester and John McCarthy in 2002 claimed that 3.3 million white-collar American jobs (500,000 of them in IT) would shift offshore to countries such as India by 2015." In addition to writing the first report in the industry defining client/server computing, he has done groundbreaking research on the Internet, privacy, and the Net's impact on government.

He has delivered keynote addresses on the Internet and distributed computing at such premier industry events as Strategic Sourcing Interest Group, Nasscom, Comdex, the Milken Institute Global Conference, BusinessWeek CIO Conference, Interop, Politics Online Conference, and Unix Expo. He has also appeared on NBC Nightly News, MSNBC, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, NDTV, CNBC, CNN, CNNfn, and Bloomberg TV.

Previous Work Experience

Before joining Forrester, John was an industry marketing consultant with Wang Laboratories. John also served as a consultant to John Hancock's Office Automation staff, designing and implementing personal computers and distributed midrange systems.

Education

John holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in European history and economics from Connecticut College.