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

Vikram leads the forecast team, which is responsible for producing all forecasts within M&S research. He is focused on the consumer commerce areas including retail, travel, and financial services. He is keenly involved in understanding the evolution of consumers' online behavior and technology adoption.
Vikram came to Forrester Research through its acquisition of Jupiter Research, where he started in July 2000. Prior to Jupiter, Vikram worked at IRI, a leading market research company, where he worked closely with some of the leading CPG companies.
Vikram often appears on TV, radio, and comments in the press on the US online retail and travel industry. He has been quoted in The L.A. Times, Business Week, The New York Times, CNN Money, and American Banker. He has also appeared on CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and Radio, NPR, Fox Business News, and ABC.
Vikram earned an M.B.A. from Virginia Tech and a B.Com from N.M College in Mumbai, India.
We want to get the business involved and make sure that the business owners agree that our IT service SLA is good. How should we measure this and hold everyone accountable? What should we measure...
Forrester's Service Management And Automation Assessment Framework consists of four SMA domains (oversight, technology, process, and people) and 26 SMA functions. This abbreviated version of the...
The Forrester ITSM Support Tools Functionality spreadsheet consists of three ITSM areas important for the selection of a ITSM support tool (solution overview, vendor overview and solution...

How Novell Transformed Its Global Technical Support Operations
In the services industry, the ultimate goal is to increase customer satisfaction while lowering support costs with improved productivity. Unfortunately, introducing new tools for productivity gains...
The global adoption of ITIL v3 is occurring, but gradually. It is most visible in the growth of selected processes as organizations travel their ITSM journey. Forrester anticipates that many...
What are best practices for crafting a service catalog?
I am charged with writing an IT change management policy. We are in an outsourcing environment with IBM and use ITIL standards. Can you locate and send me a sample policy?
This template is intended to provide a starting point for thinking about sections to include in an RFP for IT Service Management support tools and implementation services. This template should be...
We're suffering a breakdown in communication. The release team seems to act without regard for the rest of the organization, specifically the operations folks. Can you please provide us with some...
For Loyola Marymount University's (LMU's) Information Technology Services (ITS), underdeveloped process, limited communication and transparency, as well as outdated tools and a siloed organization,...
How Holcim Corporate IT Transitioned From IT Infrastructure Management To Business Service Management
Holcim, a global supplier of construction materials, needed to move from being an organization that provides support on infrastructure and technology to one that functions as an internal IT service...
How To Get Customer-Obsessed, Service-Focused, And Automated
The future of IT service management (ITSM) is customer-obsessed, service-focused, and automated. But the recent additions to the most widely adopted ITSM framework — ITIL 2011 edition —...

I would like to know what kind of support enterprises typically purchase for software that's used for system monitoring. I'm trying to decide if the more expensive 24x7 support is needed when...
The service desk is your IT organization's first line of response to business user incidents and requests. Because these interactions shape your business' perception of IT, it's critical to not just...
A companion piece to "Develop An IT Service Management And Automation Strategic Plan," this template walks you through how to create a successful ITSM strategic plan.

How Service Portfolio Management Transitioned Cisco IT To A Partner Player
Cisco's CIO and several of her IT leaders introduced an IT-wide change in how they manage their organization and communicate their performance both within and outside of the IT organization. The...
Metrics are the Achilles' heel of many infrastructure and operations (I&O) departments. Many firms don't know which metrics to use, or how to collect the data they need for the metrics, while others...

This ITSM Support Tools Product Comparison Assessment focuses on three areas important for the selection of an ITSM support tool: solution overview, vendor overview, and solution penetration. The...

Build/Buy Capabilities: The Service Management And Automation Playbook
This Forrester report provides infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders and teams with a methodology to source their tools for effective service management and automation (SMA). This is...

When faced with austere budget challenges, California State University, Fresno (Fresno State), with a student population of 21,000 and about 2,300 faculty and staff, realized the need to integrate...
The infrastructure and operations (I&O) organization is no different from any other business function. It employs a multitude of assets to create corporate value. However, I&O's ability to manage its...

Can you recommend packages that out of the box can easily handle workflows for change requests and tickets?
Companies with distributed operations often struggle with managing customer experience. This report summarizes some of the major lessons learned from Cornerstone OnDemand, a cloud-based talent...