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

Mary Beth contributes to Forrester's research offerings for CMO & Marketing Leadership Professionals. She lends a global point of view on the challenges facing marketers — increasingly fragmented media, the pervasiveness of new technologies, changing consumer behavior, and the growing accountability of marketing. Her current research touches marketing innovation, orchestrating the brand experience, the role of marketing in the company, matching digital to business strategy and ubiquitous marketing. Mary Beth is based in Paris.
Before joining Forrester, Mary Beth spent more than 20 years as an international marketer, advising and coaching blue chip brands and organizations. She has worked on both the client and agency side. Mary Beth was CRM director at Dassault Systèmes, designing and championing its customer-centric business strategy. She also chalked up 10 years in the Ogilvy network, in Paris and New York. There she developed interactive and relationship marketing strategies with Air France, IBM, Nestlé, and Unilever. She began her career in direct marketing working with clients American Express and AT&T.
Mary Beth holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Drake University.
I’ve just returned from ShoreTel’s Partner Conference in San Diego, and while the weather was uncharacteristically gray, the executives were exceedingly bright. ShoreTel continues to...
The tech industry has been percolating and I have noticed a few transactions based on intellectual property (IP) portfolios recently — most notably: Nortel sold about 6,000 patents to a...
How significant is the revenue threat to communication service providers from mobile voice over IP (VoIP) providers, like the recently launched Viber?

You may have noticed that I was, along with the other 1,100+ professionals at Forrester, out of the office this past week. We were all together in Boston talking about our success in 2010 (I...
The acquisition of Skype puts Microsoft into a commanding position in the consumer UC as a service market. To date, Microsoft has had little to say when Skype, Yahoo, AIM and others talked about...
Two weeks ago, I used this blog to talk about videoconferencing solutions being deployed on portable platforms, namely tablets like the Apple iPad or Samsung Galaxy. Every video vendor is rushing to...
Avaya announced its intention and agreement to purchase Radvision today. These two technological powerhouses have the combined brainpower to put together some of the most advanced unified...
Who are the leading VNOC providers? Are there any factors distinguishing these leaders? Can you explain the VNOC industry? Can you touch on VNOC maturity, adoption, benefits, and drawbacks? What...
Polycom announced today (March 23, 2011) that it is acquiring Accordent Technologies. The acquisition extends Polycom’s portfolio of video technologies and products and enables Accordent...
Vision: The Communications And Collaboration Infrastructure Playbook
Increasing consumerization of IT and advances in both cloud technologies and deployment models tremendously affect the enterprise not simply on how we communicate but where, when, and on what kind of...
I’ve spent the past two days with about 2,000 new friends. Polycom’s annual sales conference provided a drumbeat of messages about what is to come from the vendor. As Kate Hutchison,...
Change Management: The Mobile Security And Operations Playbook
This report outlines the change management recommendations of Forrester's solution for security and risk (S&R) and infrastructure and operations (I&O) executives working on mobile security and...
Telcos Should Provide Wholesale Infrastructure For Cloud Services
Telcos can grow their revenue base beyond access and transport to offer a range of wholesale services that many cloud service providers (CSPs) may lack the ability or skills to build themselves....

When Cisco first announced its intent to acquire TANDBERG in October of last year, I talked about how that acquisition was about much more than just video. I still believe that this single event...
Whenever vendors talk about videoconferencing today, they use the term telepresence. Come on guys – do yourself and your potential customers a favor – let’s be more careful...
LifeSize, a division of Logitech, has made an interesting set of announcements this morning. The three main points are: LifeSize Connections, a service that enables cloud-based videoconferencing....
Are customers viewing decisions to purchase high-end videoconferencing systems and decisions on broadly deployed communications platforms as decisions that are largely taken in isolation? If...
I am starting a report looking at the social capabilities that will be of use to business and how those integrate (or don’t) with existing unified communications and collaborations solutions...
IBM, as always, put on a really big show at Lotusphere this year. More than 5,000 attendees from all walks of IT and business came together to find out how IBM could help them execute their business...
Businesses need better productivity tools to equip information workers to be successful. To date, firms have invested in a menagerie of tools — email, instant messaging (IM), voice over...
Lots of sleek new touchscreen and tablet devices have launched this year. Where many information workers and consumers see nifty new devices with high-resolution screens and multiple wireless...