Speaker Biography

Vanessa Alvarez

Analyst

Sessions Featuring This Speaker

Forrester's Infrastructure & Operations Forum 2011

11/09/2011

  • 04:15 PM - 05:00 PM

    Enabling Customers Through Control Of Big Data

    Today's sales and marketing organizations at enterprises are facing competitive pressures and depend on the right big data analytics to create better, more targeted customer offerings. In this session, we'll discuss how I&O teams can enable the right architectures, tools, and techniques to ensure that lines of business can leverage data analytics to create revenue-generating products and services while still managing an efficient, economic storage environment. Attendees will understand:

    • Hadoop, MapR, and other efficiency techniques used in unstructured data analytics.
    • Why data warehousing is no longer the answer – a more flexible architecture is needed.
    • How to bring roles within the organization together to manage a holistic analytics process (from an I&O perspective).

Research Focus

Vanessa serves Infrastructure & Operations Professionals. She focuses on primary storage architectures and strategy, the evolution of these as they relate to converged infrastructure, and cloud computing scenarios, and also works with Infrastructure & Operations Professionals to navigate the complexity and enable a more strategic storage environment.

Previous Work Experience

Prior to joining Forrester, Vanessa was an analyst with Frost & Sullivan, covering enterprise infrastructure. In this capacity, she helped enterprise clients understand how emerging technologies and operational and business models affect their IT environment, business processes, and overall organizational structure. She also worked with strategic technology vendors on quantitative analysis, go-to-market strategies, and vendor positioning. Prior to this, Vanessa was an analyst with The Yankee Group, where she provided insight on technology trends to key enterprise IT and communications vendors and delivered strategic recommendations.

Vanessa is extremely well respected in both social and traditional media. She has appeared on Bloomberg TV and is regularly quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Investor's Business Daily, Bloomberg, Forbes, and CNNMoney.

Education

Vanessa holds a degree in political science from Rhode Island College.