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

Rob serves CIO Professionals with research in the areas of information workplace and collaboration strategy. Rob delivers strategic guidance, helping enterprises define enterprise solutions that drive efficiency and competitive differentiation. His current research focuses on core elements of collaboration strategy, including collaboration platforms, workspaces, and enterprise social strategy.
Rob comes to Forrester with many years of experience in enterprise software consulting, product marketing, product management, and strategy. Most recently, he was director of product management at Microsoft, where he played a strategic role with Duet, a joint initiative brought to market with SAP. Prior to Microsoft, Rob was a senior director of product marketing at Oracle Corporation, where he focused on Oracle's content, collaboration, portal, and business intelligence offerings. He also spent fifteen years in consulting working for Lotus/IBM and other global software services firms with a focus on corporate collaboration.
Rob holds a B.A. in economics from the University of California, Davis.
At Forrester we have published our first Enterprise Social Platform Wave. I first entitled this blog "Enterprise Social Landscape Matures" but then realized that while the market has moved...
By Rob Koplowitz Today, Cisco announced their intention to acquire Jabber, a major player in enterprise instant messaging. On the heals of Cisco's acquisition of PostPath for email, it's...
More than 22 years ago, I met my amazing wife and was welcomed into her wonderful family. At the time, I was a project manager working for Lotus Consulting. I managed the rollout of large Lotus Notes...
"Super, then you'll have plenty to talk about!"...
By Rob Koplowitz In his inaugural address, Barack Obama told us it's "..time to put aside childish things." A country that once showed greatness through youthful exuberance is being asked to...
My father was never one to use profanity, with one exception. In those instances when I was taking just too long to make a decision or show progress, he'd say, "Rob, it's time to ... or get...
by Rob Koplowitz A while back I was invited to a very interesting presentation of some research going on in Sun Microsystems' labs. They were showing off a project called MPK 20. The name of the...
On Tuesday of this week, Microsoft launched Office 2013, the latest version of its flagship productivity suite. Forrester has released a report entitled Office 2013: A Breakthrough in Productivity; I...
What is the future vision for idea management? What are other companies doing? Who are the major leaders for idea management solutions? What are the industry best practices on how activities like...
by Rob Koplowitz. The question of measuring ROI of social computing is hot because it's so much a part of enterprise software acquisition. As information and knowledge management professionals...
Forrester fields hundreds of client inquiries each year on the topic of social business and collaboration. And the trend doesn't appear to be slowing. Often the first question is, "How far behind...
For a number of years now, Forrester has used the following definition for Web 2.0: A set of technologies and applications that enable efficient interaction among people, content and data in support...
by Rob Koplowitz. One of the great joys I have in working for Forrester is the opportunity to collaborate with my colleague Oliver Young on the future of Web 2.0. Oliver and I bring very different...
by Rob Koplowitz. Ever think about how much time, energy and money we expend on managing line of business data? Just drive past the Oracle headquarters in Redwood Shores and you'll see a...
By Rob Koplowitz Great line from Rocky, one of my favorite movies, as Apollo Creed's manager recognizes that the underdog needs to be taken more seriously. In this particular scenario Cisco is...
by Rob Koplowitz. This September 25-26 at the Forrester Technology Leadership Forum in Carlsbad California, Matt Brown and I will be presenting a session on Social Computing coming to the enterprise....
A few weeks ago IBM invited me to a day-long conference in San Francisco to preview a new product direction around case management. At first I was a bit hesitant because case management is a bit...
In collaboration, there are cloud vendors, on-premises vendors and hybrid vendors. Here's the thing; hybrid vendors are not really cloud vendors. What do I mean by that? Let's look at two...
by Rob Koplowitz Last week at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference we found more evidence of the changing nature of enterprise collaboration. Both customers and vendors provided evidence that social...
In the wonderful movie Sliding Doors, Helen runs for a train and just makes it on as the doors are closing. Moments later we see her running again for the same train only to have the doors close a...
This morning Microsoft launched SharePoint 2010, the follow-up to the very successful Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007. As the morning progresses, I receive more and more notifications...
By Rob Koplowitz Today Google and Salesforce.com announced another step in their ongoing flirtatious relationship. Salesforce.com will now bundle Google business applications into its on-line CRM...
For a long time Microsoft ruled the knowledge worker part of the IT seas with impunity. They have fended off attacks from the expected folks like IBM and Oracle rather handily. Then the...
Sorry, this will be a quick one so I don't have time to build in an Animal House reference. I've been following all of the "expert" commentary on Twitter about Tibco's Tibbr announcement....
By Rob Koplowitz Today, Cisco announced its intent to acquire PostPath, a provider of email solutions. Interesting news. As parts of the collaboration stack become increasingly commoditized, the lure...