Age of the Customer
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SLED Leaders: Use IT Spend Management to Manage Budget Pressures
What does Forrester’s IT Spend Management framework mean for state, local and educational (SLED) tech leaders? I connected with Yessica Jones, a former State of Arkansas CIO who recently joined the Forrester team, on this topic and it produced some interesting observations: SLED tech leaders are not expecting funding cuts. In fact, in a recent […]
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Google Cloud Next 2026: The End Of The AI Pilot Era
Google Cloud Next ’26 opened with Thomas Kurian declaring the end of the AI pilot era and Sundar Pichai comparing the enterprise refrain of last year “can we build an agent” to today’s “how do we manage thousands of them.” Cloud Next 2026 answers the second question with a single product story: Gemini Enterprise Agent […]
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Insight Was Never The Point: Arise, Systems Of Action
For a long time now, we’ve had a clear, clean taxonomy for enterprise software. Systems of record store data. Systems of engagement put it in front of people. The framework works and gives vendors a ladder to climb and buyers a map to navigate. IBM added a third rung, systems of insight: platforms that monitor, analyze, and surface meaning from everything the first two layers […]
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In An AI World, High-Performance IT Is Mandatory For Business Success
Technology leaders are operating in an environment defined by constant and accelerating disruption. AI adoption, geopolitical volatility, mounting technical debt, and unrelenting cost pressure demand that IT steps up for their business partners. Simultaneously, the tolerance of IT and CIO failures is waning as quickly, forcing a vision and strategy that goes beyond incremental improvement […]
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Guest Speakers Reveal Where AI Belongs In CX — And How Leaders Protect Trust
As AI accelerates across CX, leaders are being pushed to define where it belongs — and what must remain human. Hear what leaders from Amazon Ads, Consensys, Disney, New York Life, U.S. Bank, and Voya Financial will share at CX Forum East to help you shape your CX strategy with greater clarity, creativity, and trust.
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Is “Surveillance Pricing” Good Business Or A Bad Idea?
Pricing Gets Personal At JetBlue A JetBlue customer posted on X: “A $230 increase on a ticket after one day is crazy. I’m just trying to make it to a funeral.” The airline replied, suggesting trying “clearing your cache and cookies or booking with an incognito window. We’re sorry for your loss.” The response went […]
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Top Trends For Health Insurers And Healthcare Providers: Too Many Spinning Plates, No Room For Failure
Healthcare providers and insurers are grappling with an increasing number of simultaneous challenges — each demanding urgent attention. Both face pressure to rebuild trust, navigate regulatory uncertainty, contain costs, modernize operations, and demonstrate real ROI from digital and AI investments. Any slipup — such as a data breach, a failed AI rollout, a regulatory misstep, […]
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Not A Vendor, Still A Breach: Vercel’s Third-Party Risk Failure
Some security incidents are complex. The Vercel incident is more troubling because it was predictable. The attackers did not exploit a procurement gap. They exploited a definition gap. Here’s what happened. A Vercel employee signed up for Context.ai’s AI Office Suite using a corporate Google account and clicked something effectively equivalent to “Allow All,” granting […]
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Game Over For Trust: A Roblox Cheat Gives Attackers The Advantage
A cascading supply chain attack did not start with a zero-day exploit, an unpatched vulnerability, or a brute-force attack. It started with a bored employee wanting to get ahead in an online game. A Context.ai employee downloaded a Roblox game cheat, an unofficial script for an online game that came bundled with Lumma Stealer malware […]
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Cognitive Sovereignty: Protect Human Judgment In An AI‑Saturated World
Cognitive sovereignty describes the human ability to think independently amid AI‑generated outputs. This post explores why data literacy and humans in the loop are critical to sustaining sound judgment.
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Microsoft Unveils AI-Powered Innovations Across Microsoft Teams And SharePoint: Highlights Of The M365 Community Conference 2026
Last week, I attended the Microsoft 365 Community Conference in Orlando. Approximately 3,000 attendees came together to hear from their M365 admin peers along with senior product leaders from Microsoft and key partners. The agenda focused on the Microsoft 365 suite, with over 200 sessions primarily on M365 Copilot, SharePoint, and Teams. Here are my […]
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Call For Entries: The 2026 Enterprise Architecture Awards
For more than two decades, enterprise architecture (EA) has swung in and out of favor — embraced during periods of consolidation and sidelined during waves of decentralization, cloud adoption, and agile delivery. Predictions of EA’s demise recur continuously. But the data increasingly contradicts that narrative. Across four consecutive years of Forrester survey research, enterprise architecture […]
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Five Actionable Takeaways For CX Leaders In A Volatile World
If your work life increasingly feels like your go-to video game set to EXTREME DIFFICULTY mode, that might be because volatility has become the default setting for modern organizations: more change, less certainty, and far less time to get it “right” before the ground shifts again. In this environment, process-heavy CX operating models start to […]
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In The AI Era, Banks Need Dynamic Platforms — Results From The Forrester Wave™: Digital Banking Engagement Platforms, Q2 2026
To compete for customers and grow profitably, banks need the ability to adjust as much and as fast as required at any given moment. Leading digital banking engagement platforms (DBEPs) make that possible. My new report, The Forrester Wave™: Digital Banking Engagement Platforms, Q2 2026, reveals insights about the current AI and technology landscape in […]
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Enterprise Content Moves From Tools To Systems: Adobe Summit Takeaways
Enterprise content leaders are under pressure on three fronts. They need faster time to activation as buyer behavior outpaces traditional campaign cycles. They need greater scale as content volumes rise across channels, formats, geographies, refresh cycles, and personalization needs. And most importantly, they need stronger returns. Improving relevance for priority audiences and increasing share of […]
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Canva Recasts Itself As An AI Platform For Enterprise Work
For years, Canva’s advantage was accessibility. It made design easier, faster, and available to more people. At its recent Canva Create 2026, the big story was a deliberate repositioning: Canva aims to evolve from a design platform with AI tools into an AI platform with design tools. That changes how buyers should evaluate Canva. For […]
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WBD Shareholders Say Yes
The real question has always been what comes next — i.e., whether the merger ultimately clears the higher regulatory and political hurdles that still stand between today’s vote and a deal close.
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CPQ Vendors Face A New Test: Handling Real-World Complexity
The Configure, Price, Quote Solutions Landscape, Q2 2026, reveals a new battleground where vendors differentiate by managing real-world complexity. Vendors compete on industry focus, interoperable architectures, and AI embedded directly into execution. Sales and revenue operations leaders must prioritize solution fit, governance, and scalability to support omnichannel growth and automate execution with confidence.
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Roadmaps: Preparing To Self-Destruct In Three, Two, One …
I’m Joe Schiavone. I am a principal analyst here at Forrester. My experience has afforded me the opportunity to learn from some amazing leaders while developing my own style along the way. I have been leading tech for global organizations from PE-backed and startups to large global companies. My comparative advantage, and what has led […]
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How CX Leaders Build Resilience In A Volatile World
Back in the dim and distant past, when I ran an enterprise architecture team, we spent months building immaculate diagrams that were technically correct, logically coherent, beautifully presented — and largely irrelevant. Why? Because they sat on a shared drive and no one used them. CX teams are repeating the same mistake; only the artifacts […]
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