Executive Summary (This is a document excerpt)

Choosing the right vendor remains a critical success factor for every enterprise's business success. Consolidation in the vendor market, a plethora of deployment options, and the progression to a next generation of applications built with service-oriented architecture (SOA) and Web services drive customers to augment, upgrade, replace, or migrate from existing systems. Forrester's vendor selection research provides a knowledge base of the basics, best practices, trends information, forecasts, strategic advice, and vendor and product comparisons that firms need to navigate the complexities of selecting, implementing, upgrading to, extending, or migrating to new solutions.