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.
Microsoft And IBM Lotus Lead; Novell Challenges
In Forrester's 66-criteria evaluation of collaboration platform vendors, we found that Microsoft and IBM Lotus led the pack based on the breadth of functionality in their offerings. Novell edged into...
2010 will be a defining year for enterprise Web 2.0. With IBM Lotus and Microsoft attempting to extend dominant positions in collaboration and messaging to social software, a very broad and rich...
IBM, Jive, NewsGator, And Telligent Lead A Rapidly Maturing Field
In Forrester's first ever, 62-criteria evaluation of enterprise social platform vendors, we found that IBM, Jive, NewsGator, and Telligent led the pack due to breadth and depth of functionality and...
Cloud-based software solutions have become an increasingly viable alternative to on-premise solutions for many organizations. In fact, 24% of respondents in Forrester's Enterprise And SMB Software...
Office 365 Has Much But Not All Of What Firms Need From A Collaboration Platform
On June 28, 2011, Microsoft launched Office 365 in 40 countries after a massive public beta involving 200,000 organizations from every region. This product encompasses Office Professional Plus and...
The Vendor Landscape Creates More Opportunity And Complexity
When Forrester introduced the concept of the Information Workplace (IW) in 2006 it was largely a vision of the future. Since then, much has changed. The world economy has suffered a prolonged...
Analytics And Openness Distinguish IBM's Approach
IBM's recently announced Project Vulcan is the latest effort from a major vendor to articulate what the future holds for the world of information work. Although it is still taking form — and...
Implementing SharePoint can be a broad and complex initiative. Given the depth and breadth of the product it's not surprising that SharePoint professional services firms come in all shapes and sizes....

Oracle is not a company that leaps to mind when you think of knowledge workers — certainly, not in the way that IBM/Lotus or Microsoft might. Yet, with the emergence of the Information...