For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Driving Multitenancy In Your Virtual Environments

How To Get Business Units To Share Your Consolidated Infrastructure

by James Staten, November 18, 2009

As you continue to consolidate your server infrastructure and make it more cloudlike, a key hurdle you and most enterprises must overcome is the sharing of physical infrastructure between business units (BUs). While some organizations have a centralized . . .

For CIOs

Forrester's Best Practices Framework For BT Leadership Maturity

Use Our Self-Assessment To Accelerate Your BT Transformation

by Bobby Cameron, Tim DeGennaro, November 6, 2009

As CIOs help their firms succeed with business technology (BT) — pervasive technology use with increased direct control by the business — they struggle to answer two deceptively simple questions: 1) How are we doing? and 2) what should we do better? These . . .

For CIOs

CIOs: Business Alignment And BT Enablement Require Business Capability Maps

At Your Level, You Can't Rely On Any Other Single IT Business Model

by Bobby Cameron, October 30, 2009

CIOs are aggressively tackling their planning and management challenges, deploying tools and building models to address a wide variety of functions like asset management, IT services management, application rationalization, business process efficiencies, . . .

For Marketing Leadership Professionals

Marketing Leaders Take On Technology

So What Happens Now?

by Lisa Bradner, October 28, 2009

Marketing leaders understand that technology is critical to their success — 61% of marketers in our survey agree that "marketing technology is a key component in my marketing organization's success." To get the most from their technology investments, . . .

For CIOs

IT In The Public Sector In Australia

Benchmarking Your Practice Against Your Global Peers

by Tim Sheedy, October 28, 2009

With the tightening of IT budgets in the Australian federal government due to the review of IT operations by Sir Peter Gershon, the considerable consolidation of public sector agencies at the state level, and the considerable drop in tax revenues brought . . .

For Enterprise Architecture Professionals

Case Study: WestJet Creates Clarity With Its Architecture Services Catalog

by Jeff Scott, October 26, 2009

EA organizations struggle to define what they do in terms the organization both understands and appreciates. The root cause for this struggle is often that the EA team itself is not clear about what it delivers, what stakeholders it is delivering to, . . .

For CIOs

IT To BT Transformation: Threats And Opportunities For CIO Reporting Lines

by George Lawrie, October 26, 2009

CIOs face many threats and opportunities as they grapple with the IT to BT transformation — including the risk of being sidelined by their line-of-business peers. Forrester surveyed 47 enterprise IT decision-makers to understand CIOs' level of confidence . . .

For Application Development & Program Management Professionals

Making The Case For The Next-Generation PMO

Broader Visibility And Flexible Frameworks To Tackle More Work Without Killing The Budget

by Margo Visitacion, October 16, 2009

There isn't a business case for the "old school" project management office (PMO): We've tried it, and quite often it didn't work. Today's PMOs are under pressure to be business process change agents that demonstrate value without generating revenue. PMOs . . .

For Interactive Marketing Professionals

How To Work With IT To Get (Most) Of What You Want

A Guide For Interactive Marketers As They Collaborate With Internal IT Groups

by Neil Strother, October 15, 2009

Many interactive marketers find their interactions with IT to be positive, but others struggle with conflicting team priorities, slow response times, or differing communication styles. To successfully engage with IT, interactive marketers must: 1) define . . .

For Enterprise Architecture Professionals

What's Next For The IT-To-BT Transformation: The Contractualization Trend

by Henry Peyret, October 14, 2009

The combination of the current economic climate and business globalization is accelerating the evolution of business models toward a networked model, where businesses focus on their core competencies to add value and engage with other external and internal . . .

For eBusiness & Channel Strategy Professionals

Improving The eBusiness And IT Relationship

Making The Relationship Work For You With Our TEAM Framework

by Brian K. Walker, October 6, 2009

eBusiness and IT are inextricably linked. You cannot have an effective and productive business online without an effective technology environment and the support of great technical resources. Yet we hear every day from eBusiness leaders about how the . . .

For CIOs

Driving Value With Process Improvement

CIOs Recommend Nine Best Practices For Business Processes Management

by Alexander Peters, Ph.D., October 6, 2009

Senior business executives recognize the value of technology in supporting business operations and expect CIOs to help drive process improvement efforts — all while tuning and elevating IT's relationship with the business. CIOs from various industries . . .

For CIOs

Inquiry Spotlight: Demand Management, Q3 2009

by Tim DeGennaro, September 30, 2009

Despite reduced IT budgets, demand for IT services continues and in some cases accelerates as the business strives to use IT to cut its own costs. Organizations that simply roll with the punches with a FIFO approach quickly find that IT's efforts produce . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

The Business Case for BI: Now More Critical Than Ever

by Boris Evelson, August 25, 2009

Even as IT reduces or holds budgets steady in many enterprise software sectors, business intelligence (BI) initiatives remain front and center in most enterprise business and IT agendas. As the demand for pervasive and comprehensive BI applications increases, . . .

For CIOs

CIOs: Plan Effectiveness Review To Squeeze More Value From ERP Investments

by George Lawrie, August 11, 2009

Most CIOs have inherited mature enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations. As the years pass, the original implementation team disbands, retires, or dies, and the old use cases and best practices start to brown and curl at the edges like the . . .

For Enterprise Architecture Professionals

Characterizing EA Teams And Their Challenges

by Alex Cullen, Katie Smillie, August 6, 2009

Forrester has seen that the mission and operating model of enterprise architecture teams can be characterized along two dimensions: orientation (technology-oriented or business-oriented) and focus (project-focused or strategy-focused). These two dimensions . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Aligning The People And Process Of PC Power Management

Position The Right People And Process to Create Ownership And Minimize Risk

by Doug Washburn, July 28, 2009

Although the financial and environmental savings from PC power management are compelling, IT professionals must overcome concerns about disrupted user productivity or the lack of project ownership. Aligning the right people and process can help accomplish . . .

For CIOs

Market The BT Service Portfolio To Fuel Innovation And Utility

by Alexander Peters, Ph.D., July 24, 2009

As businesses become infused with technology, CIOs are expected to provide portfolios of business technology (BT) services, which sustain the competitive advantage of their firms. To improve IT's responsiveness to this increasingly complex and dynamic . . .

For Security & Risk Professionals

Articulating The Business Value Of Information Security

by Khalid Kark, July 24, 2009

Many CISOs struggle to articulate the value of their security programs and justify the security budget to business and executive management. This problem was acutely evident in the current economic downturn: Many security managers saw their budgets slashed, . . .

For Application Development & Program Management Professionals

Your 2009 Business Analysts: Know Them To Grow Them

by Mary Gerush, July 23, 2009

A recent survey of approximately nine hundred current business analysts (BAs) indicates that business analysts are alive and kicking in organizations of all sizes and in all industries. They report into many different groups, and many are finding homes . . .

For Enterprise Architecture Professionals

Case Study: DHL Express Uses Business Architecture To Design A New Service Offering

by Gene Leganza, July 21, 2009

Enterprise architecture (EA) programs are becoming more business focused and helping IT deliver greater value to business. Business-focused EA teams are developing the "next practices" for interacting with the business, collecting and analyzing data, . . .

For CIOs

Priorities Shift As Business' Grip On Technology Tightens

CIOs Can Drive Better Tech Decisions — Even When Business Is Making Them

by Bobby Cameron, Sharyn Leaver, July 17, 2009

In Q4 2008, Forrester surveyed 1,104 IT decision-makers to find out how they set their budgets and allocated funds to different software types and initiatives. As part of this study, Forrester asked where the ultimate software decision control resides . . .

For CIOs

Redesigning Your Applications Organization

by Marc Cecere, July 8, 2009

Redesigning the applications organization is the next major target for IT restructuring and is particularly attractive when cost reduction is needed. Infrastructure organizations have already gone through several stages of consolidation and standardization. . . .

For Enterprise Architecture Professionals

Business Capabilities Provide The Rosetta Stone For Business-IT Alignment

Capability Maps Are A Foundation For Business Architecture

by Jeff Scott, July 6, 2009

Business and IT alignment remains a top priority for CIOs and other business leaders. While many CIOs have made significant progress in gaining a seat at the strategy table, a gap remains in organizing and illuminating business executives' thinking in . . .

For Enterprise Architecture Professionals

Next-Generation IT Requires Next-Generation EA

EA Makes The New Core Processes Of IT Work

by Alex Cullen, Gene Leganza, Jeff Scott, Jost Hoppermann, June 30, 2009

What business wants from IT is changing, and that means IT has to change how it manages itself and the IT-business relationship. Building on current project delivery and operational management competencies, CIOs are adding new core management processes: . . .