Each year, Forrester’s Technology Strategy Impact Award recognizes organizations that exemplify high-performance IT (HPIT): those that continuously improve business outcomes through technology, guided by alignment, trust, and adaptivity. The 2025 North America award highlights three standout organizations that have redefined what strategic IT leadership looks like in complex, high-stakes environments.

This year’s winner, the United States Department of the Navy, demonstrated exceptional speed and scale in deploying secure, mission-critical technologies across a globally distributed workforce. Finalists CBRE and Verizon impressed with their transformative use of AI, data, and automation to drive measurable impact across commercial real estate and telecommunications. Together, these organizations showcase how HPIT can deliver resilience, innovation, and strategic advantage.

Winner: United States Department Of The Navy

The Department of Navy’s IT organization demonstrated how even the most complex public-sector enterprise can deliver secure, scalable innovation at speed. Supporting over 850,000 personnel globally, the Department of Navy’s strategy exemplifies all three of the high-performance IT principles of alignment, adaptivity, and trust, setting a new benchmark for public-sector transformation.

  • Strategic alignment that drives measurable mission outcomes. The Department of Navy shifted from compliance-driven IT to mission-focused outcomes, anchoring every initiative to Top-Level Requirements (TLRs). Structured governance through the Information Superiority Advisory Board ensures that technology investments directly support operational priorities. Application rationalization freed up hundreds of millions in budget and engineering capacity, which was reinvested into modernization efforts like DON GPT and containerization.
  • Adaptivity engineered for speed and scale. The Innovation Adoption Kit (IAK) and “Accelerating Change Design Concepts” (ACDCs) reduced acquisition cycles from 12–18 months to weeks. Containerization became department policy, accelerating deployment and portability across cloud and tactical environments. DON GPT, a secure generative AI assistant, scaled rapidly across departments, delivering 20–30% productivity gains. Structured piloting and divestment frameworks enabled fast experimentation and resource reallocation.
  • Trust built through resilience and secure innovation. Flank Speed became the first secure cloud environment in the Department of Defense to achieve full Zero Trust compliance, three years ahead of schedule. Privacy controls embedded in AI deployments protect sensitive data and build user confidence. Resilience was validated through rapid recovery of containerized apps during regional outages. Ethical AI governance reassured vendors and internal stakeholders, accelerating collaboration and adoption.
  • Innovation composed with open standards. The Department of Navy’s open development standards model allows new code capabilities from multiple vendors and programs to plug into a cohesive shared platform without lengthy reengineering. This novel “plug and fight” approach enables small teams and large-scale partners to work in concert to introduce new mission applications in weeks rather than years. Structured Challenges and Adaptive Roadmapping programs enhance the pipeline of value-focused problem statements from warfighters directly to builders, a process that has already been leveraged to enhance the mission capabilities of unmanned surface vessels.

Finalist: CBRE

CBRE’s Ellis AI platform showcases how AI can drive real transformation across a global enterprise. Built on the world’s largest commercial real estate dataset, spanning hundreds of billions of data points, Ellis AI is delivering measurable impact across operations, client services, and innovation, all while maintaining a strong foundation of ethical governance and strategic alignment.

  • Business-centered AI capabilities at scale. Ellis AI is built on CBRE’s proprietary dataset to deliver meaningful solutions and results at scale. A persona-based design approach ensures integrated delivery of AI capabilities to business users, streamlining workflows, providing differentiated market-facing solutions, and enriching employee productivity. Transforming internal workflows to AI-enabled client experiences creates measurable business impact.
  • Adaptivity through continuous experimentation and scale. Eighty-five percent of product engineering teams use AI tools for at least half their tasks, driving efficiency and time savings. Smart Facilities Management Solutions reduced repeat maintenance alarms by 98% and technician dispatches by 40%. Global hackathons and pilot programs foster continuous experimentation, while strategic partnerships with PropTech and climate tech startups accelerate innovation.
  • Trust through responsible use of AI. CBRE’s Responsible AI Framework governs ethical use, data security, and operational integrity. Ensuring that client data is safeguarded is CBRE’s top priority. Validations are performed at every stage of AI enablement to be certain that all necessary security and compliance controls are fully met.

Finalist: Verizon

Verizon’s transformation of its network performance data pipeline lays the foundation for autonomous networks. Its strategy focuses on speed, scale, and trust, turning massive telemetry into actionable intelligence and enabling real-time, AI-driven network optimization.

  • Strategic alignment through unified data and performance metrics. Verizon consolidated telemetry across vendors into a unified data platform, enabling AI-driven decision-making. KPI standardization reduced over 7,000 metrics to 380 actionable, 3GPP-compliant KPIs. Strategic planning and portfolio management ensure that IT investments are tightly aligned with network performance goals.
  • Adaptivity through real-time architecture and AI innovation. Verizon eliminated 3-hour data delays and reduced parser runtimes by 50%. Its OLAP architecture and medallion data layers support scalable, real-time analytics. GenAI tools like the Network Personal Research Assistant and geospatial analytics enhance frontline engineering workflows. Thirty percent of the 2024 IT budget was allocated to AI R&D and transformation.
  • Trust through transparency and vendor accountability. Data Quality and Observability dashboards provide transparent scores for completeness, timeliness, and availability. Formal vendor accountability processes ensure data integrity and reliability. Secure architecture and parser-less pipelines reduce risk and improve system resilience, enabling proactive network management.

Join us at Technology & Innovation Summit North America (November 2–5, 2025, in Austin, Texas, and digitally) to explore how alignment, adaptivity, and trust can elevate your technology strategy.