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

Shar serves Marketing Leadership professionals. She is a leading expert on how businesses can leverage interactive marketing channels and technologies to drive sales and deepen customer relationships. During her 12 years with Forrester, Shar has been instrumental in the development of many of the company's interactive marketing program evaluation methodologies, training courses, and marketing planning tools and has also been part of Forrester's sales and consulting organizations.
Shar's research focuses on overall interactive marketing strategies; crafting efficient, effective interactive programs; organizing for interactive marketing; and integrating interactive channels into the rest of the marketing mix. Specific subjects addressed in Shar's research include email marketing, online advertising, search engine marketing, ad serving and targeting, interactive budgeting and forecasts, and interactive marketing organizational models.
Shar returned to Forrester in 2004 after several years away working in marketing consulting. Shar served as research director for marketing research boutique, TideWatch, where she led internal strategy efforts and client strategy projects. Shar was also a consultant with Carlson Marketing Group's Business Strategy Consulting team, developing CRM and email programs for clients including British Airways, Buena Vista Home Entertainment, and Home Depot. Shar began her career at Forrester in 1997 during the early days of the Internet and has written research on customer loyalty, ad networks, and marketing measurement and planning.
A popular speaker, Shar has been seen on stage at ad:tech, MITX, DMA, and the Email Service Provider Coalition events, among others. She is on the board of SEMPO — the search engine marketing professionals organization — and is also widely quoted in the press including such media outlets as BusinessWeek, Fortune, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal and is a frequent guest on CNBC and National Public Radio.
Shar is a graduate of Harvard University.
Deliver Blazing-Fast Web, Mobile-Native, And Hybrid Applications
Over the past decade, infrastructure and operations (I&O) teams have focused large amounts of resources on making their customer-facing websites blazingly fast because website experience had a direct...
Is it me, or does the network industry remind you of Revenge of the Nerds? Networking was cast aside in the cloud revolution, but now companies are learning -- the painful way – what a mistakes...
Distinct Competencies Separate The Core Vendors
In Forrester's 85-criteria evaluation of vendors that offered data networking solutions, Forrester identified eight significant solution providers in this category — Alcatel-Lucent, Arista...


Part 1 In A Collection On Why I&O Managers Need To Focus Wireless Deployments On The User
"There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else." This famous quote from Sam Walton is one of...
Like the polar ice caps, the traditional edge of the network — supporting desktops, printers, APs, VoIP phones — is eroding and giving way to a virtual edge. With the thawing of IT...
The other day I was just reminiscing with a friend who works at HP about all the good times I had there with my ProCurve family. When I left for a once in lifetime opportunity, I had so much...
Identify The Business Benefits Of IPv6 And Break Deployments Into Three Areas
What's different between electric cars, flux capacitors, and IPv6? Absolutely nothing! They're all hyped technologies that have yet to come to full fruition. For IPv6, that's about to change. The...
I was watching “60 Minutes” last night and started chuckling a little bit over the show’s report about piracy. Stealing isn’t funny, but Leslie Stahl trying to explain how...
Look To Virtual Switches, Virtual I/O, Meshed Networks, And Automation To Maximize Your New Data Center Investment
Infrastructure and operations (I&O) teams are facing a difficult challenge in the data center: tossing out the rules of networking architecture. After years of just "throwing bandwidth" at the...
Are there many large, global companies that are deploying voice over Wi-Fi, and if so, are they deploying 802.11n in the 5 GHz frequency to support current and future voice deployments and leaving...
Part 2 In A Two-Part Collection On Why I&O Managers Need To Focus Wireless Deployments On The User
In part 1 of this series, Forrester explained why I&O managers should look to deploy a wireless user experience network (uXn). A uXn can be characterized as a multistage problem-solving process that...
Are there many large, global companies that are deploying voice over Wi-Fi, and if so, are they deploying 802.11n in the 5 GHz frequency to support current and future voice deployments and leaving...
We're interested in the implications and impacts of deploying IPv6. In particular, we would like to know what happens when an IPv6 packet is received at our firewall if we're not configured to route...
The Data Center Networking Solutions Mimic I&O's Virtualization Maturity
Over the past year, infrastructure and operations (I&O) professionals have focused their enterprise networking efforts on readying network infrastructure to support virtualization, consolidation,...
What are some best practices around containing Internet usage and ensuring cloud services?
I was listening to a briefing the other day and got swept up in a Western melodrama, set against the backdrop of Calamity Jane’s saloon in Deadwood Gulch, South Dakota, revolving around three...
Brocade isn’t the loudest networking vendor on the block, but more than two weeks ago it released a subscription switching service that should have sent a shockwave through the industry. With...
Please provide some information on the next generation Wi-Fi that will use the 60 GHz frequency, with a data rate of 7 Gbps. When is this projected to be available, and is it for specialized use or...
Orchestrating The Right Services For Each User Requires I&O To Invest In A Scalable, Secure, Shared, Simplified, And Standardized Network Infrastructure
Server virtualization started a chain reaction that is transforming infrastructure and operations (I&O). Your network infrastructure isn't immune, but the reaction has been delayed. Current...
It’s been a few years since I was a disciple and evangelized for HP ProCurve’s Adaptive EDGE Architecture(AEA). Plain and simple, before the 3Com acquisition, it was HP ProCurve’s...
After Hurricane Sandy forced the closure of the NYSE, the market opened up a week ago Wednesday morning with Riverbed’s stock price plunging 20%, while some financial analysts...
With the increased presence of business principles within the IT arena, I get a lot of inquiries from Infrastructure & Operations Professionals who are trying to figure out how to justify their...
Benchmarks: The IT Infrastructure Playbook
This report provides IT infrastructure and operations (I&O) professionals with strategic benchmarks to compare their IT infrastructure budgets, priorities, motivations, and technology adoption to...
Dual-Sourcing Your Network Just Results In Low-Cost, Low-Value Infrastructure
Over the past few years in the networking industry, various vendors have claimed they offer clients a choice where there was none before. Really?! Over the past eight years, the networking industry...
