Forrester Research

Analyst's Photo	Name and Title	Contact information
	Randy Heffner Vice President, Principal Analyst

Research Coverage

Application Architecture, Application Development, Application Development Processes & Tools, Application Security, Digital Business Architecture, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Architecture Domains, SOA & Web Services, SOA Design, SOA Management & Web Services Management, SOA Platforms, SOA Security, SOA Strategy, Security & Risk, Service-Oriented Architecture, Software Modeling

Research Focus

Randy serves Enterprise Architecture professionals. He is a leading expert on architectures and design approaches for building enterprise applications that are secure and resilient in the face of continuous business and technology change. This makes service-oriented architecture (SOA) one of Randy's primary focus areas. Since enterprise applications need much more than SOA, Randy led the development of Forrester's Digital Business Architecture, which provides a broad architectural context around SOA. For seven years, Randy has been a driving force for Forrester's research on application architecture trends, concepts, patterns, and best practices.
Particular focus areas within Randy's research include general application architecture and design issues, overall SOA strategy, SOA platform and infrastructure strategy, core SOA design concepts, Web services architecture, and standards, SOA security, SOA and Web services management, as well as coordination and leadership of other analysts' SOA work. Randy also continues to develop strategies and structures to guide enterprises' longer-term evolution toward Digital Business Architecture.

Previous Work Experience

Randy has extensive experience with enterprise architecture management and application architecture and design. Randy was a chief architect at Sprint, where he led enterprise architecture and standardization efforts, along with the analysis and introduction of application servers, component architectures, object-oriented development, application security architectures, CORBA, distributed transaction management, and other new technologies. His IT experience also includes technology leadership, management, and application development with a Big Five consultancy and in the retail and litigation support industries.

Education

Randy received a bachelor's of business administration from Baylor University's business school, where he was named the outstanding student in computer information systems.