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Industry ResearchJune 25, 2008BI Workspaces: BI Without BordersFor years, traditional business intelligence (BI) technologies have provided tools for reporting, analysis, and visualization of information. While these technologies continue to remain the core staples of enterprise-grade BI solutions, Forrester recognizes an emergence of newer technologies and approaches to analyzing data. One such approach is the "BI workspace," where power users, especially power analysts, can explore data without their IT departments imposing any limitations or constraints, such as fixed data models, security, and production environment schedules. Information and knowledge management (I&KM) professionals should consider adding workspace capabilities to the list of BI functions that are necessary for leading-edge BI environments. For Additional Information Click Here June 24, 2008Market Share: Business Intelligence Platform Software, Worldwide, 20072007 was the year of heavy consolidation, which changed the business intelligence landscape forever. This report looks at how those changes have manifested themselves by examining BI platform market shares by vendor and region, along with embedded and stand-alone views. For Additional Information Click Here January 15, 2008Forrester Research named QUMAS as a leader in the "Forrester Wave: Enterprise Governance, Risk and Compliance Platforms, Q4 2007"The report is available in its entirety on the QUMAS website by clicking here. December 4, 20078 KEYS TO SUCCESSFUL PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENTEffective performance management initiatives enable workers to execute scientifically-generated success strategies in a consistent manner across entire organizations. Companies that have excelled at performance management are more likely to enjoy an enhanced understanding of their customers and their marketing initiatives, leading to better products and services and increased profitability. As part of the extensive research program, the eight articles at this link identified key points that companies must understand to overcome the obstacles and exploit the opportunities offered by an ideal performance management environment. For Additional Information Click Here November 15, 2007It's Time To Reinvent Your BI StrategyBusiness intelligence (BI) sits at the top of the IT priority list for many enterprises. Enterprises that haven’t paid enough attention now see a need to act, and those that have kept up with BI want to consolidate their siloed implementations. The promises of BI attract any organization, but how do you get started? Enterprises face multidimensional choices, and they cannot start with vendor selection. Tasks like data governance, matching requirements with logical architectures, and picking an experienced architect and implementer should be at the top of the list. For Additional Information Click Here July 27, 2007The Forrester Wave: ANZ SOA Consulting And Integration Services, Q3 2007Forrester evaluated leading SOA consulting and integration services providers across 50 criteria and found that IBM and Accenture have established early leadership thanks to their strong technical capabilities and clear focus on business outcomes. BearingPoint and Infosys are Strong Performers. Although constrained by their smaller size or lack of business focus, their offerings are competitive and both have good client references. A number of emerging providers that are currently developing SOA capabilities will provide more competition to the existing market leaders and strong performers over the next few years. Included in this report is an interactive provider comparison tool that includes detailed evaluations and customizable rankings. For Additional Information Click Here July 26, 2007Social Computing Strategy For Life Sciences FirmsLike it or not, Social Computing is coming to the life sciences industry. If you don't believe us, check out the YouTube video of a purported Eli Lilly sales rep dishing ZYPREXA's side effects or read the passionate consumer comments on GlaxoSmithKline's AlliConnect blog. Harnessing social media promises big benefits like improving consumer trust in brands, but it also brings formidable risks like adverse event reporting complexity driven by consumer comments in forums and blogs. To navigate the unknown waters of social media safely, life sciences firms must take four steps: 1) educate executives and legal; 2) identify internal innovators and existing learning; 3) build a task force; and 4) anticipate organizational change and internal resource demands to arrive at a sensible strategy. For Additional Information Click Here July 25, 2007European Mobile Operators' Cross-Channel Experience, 2007Consumers rate good customer service as one of the top three purchase decision criteria when choosing an operator. Forrester applied its Cross-Channel Review methodology to four leading mobile operators in Europe — O2, Orange, T-Mobile, and Vodafone — to evaluate their services across channels. We found that the customer experiences they offer across channels have many flaws, but they also demonstrate some best practices. To get better — and improve their profitability — firms should investigate the desired paths to purchase of their target audience and turn this information into a seamless cross-channel experience. For Additional Information Click Here July 24, 2007Electronics Retailers' Cross-Channel Experience, 2007As part of an analysis of 16 firms, Forrester evaluated the customer experiences delivered by four large consumer electronics retailers — Best Buy, Circuit City, RadioShack, and Wal-Mart. Overall, the retailers ended up with the highest average score compared with other industries, but the firms still delivered poor experiences in IVR systems, email, and channel transitions. But while each of the electronics retailers suffered from a different set of problems, our analysis also uncovered a number of good practices, such as Circuit City's product recommendation tool and RadioShack's phone agents who proactively directed users to Web self-service. For Additional Information Click Here July 23, 2007Building Better Online Brand ExperiencesFirms spend millions of euros on building their brand through advertising, site design, and online branding. Our heuristic evaluation of 16 large brands in the UK, however, reveals that only one brand creates a consistent experience across different media with a useful and usable Web site. Customer experience professionals must get basic site usability principles right before trying to differentiate through the online experience. For Additional Information Click Here July 12, 2007Continued Innovation In Business Intelligence: Data Discovery AcceleratorsBusiness intelligence (BI) has been around for a long time in one shape or form — as long as 30 years — but contrary to popular opinion, it's still not commoditizing. Even the data integration layer of the BI "stack," where most practitioners agree that some commoditization may be occurring, is experiencing a wave of innovation from a set of emerging vendors that provide automated data discovery or data discovery accelerators. Watch this important trend, as data discovery and integration are usually the most complex and resource-intensive parts of a typical BI initiative — and where many BI initiatives fail.
May 29, 2007The Forrester Wave™: Customer Service Management Software, Q2 2007Forrester evaluated leading customer service management software vendors across approximately 180 criteria and found that Entellium, Microsoft, Oracle Siebel CRM, Oracle Siebel CRM On Demand, salesforce.com, and SAP are Leaders for customer record-centric products; eGain, KANA Software, RightNow Technologies, and Talisma are Leaders for customer interaction-centric products; and Graham Technology, Onyx, and Pegasystems are Leaders for business process-centric products. Within the customer record-centric category, Infor, Maximizer Software, NetSuite, Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle Peoplesoft Enterprise CRM, SageCRM, Sage SalesLogix, and SugarCRM are Strong Performers. Among interaction-centric products, ATG, FrontRange Solutions, KNOVA, and Numara Software are Strong Performers. Amdocs and Chordiant are Strong Performers within the process-centric category. Differing requirements within an individual company necessitate a careful evaluation of the specific capabilities and individual strengths of each product and probably require the use of more than one tool to solve the full range of customer service management needs. For Additional Information Click Here May 17, 2007Segmenting Healthcare Consumers By Cost SensitivityMarketers who understand the cost sensitivity of prospective customers have a leg up in targeting their messaging to tempt bargain hunters with incentives or tout lower prices to the most cost-sensitive. With healthcare consumerism on the rise, marketers need fresh insights into the cost sensitivity of buyers specific to health products and services. To help healthcare marketers, we used the results from Forrester's North American Consumer Technology Adoption Study Q2 2006 Survey to identify six segments of healthcare buyers defined by consumers' sensitivity to healthcare costs and then examined the demographics, technology adoption, health attitudes, and research tendencies of these groups. For Additional Information Click Here May 16, 2007iWay Software Is A Strong Performer In Enterprise ETL With Broad ConnectivityiWay Software, a subsidiary of Information Builders, is best known for its world-class information connectivity and also leads all vendors in its platform support and real-time connectivity options. iWay Software's ETL product, DataMigrator, offers a less functional tooling environment and offers little in information management compared with other ETL vendors. iWay Software is most widely known and adopted by organizations that have standardized on Information Builder's WebFOCUS business intelligence (BI) solution. For Additional Information Click Here
May 15, 2007Sybase Enters The Enterprise ETL Market As A ContenderSybase's Sybase ETL product can be a useful project- or departmental-based ETL tool for easy to moderate integration challenges as an alternative to custom code. But the product does not yet offer the necessary scalability, connectivity, user friendliness, and information management capabilities required for an enterprise ETL standard. While less expensive than many of the ETL leaders, the product carries a high average sales price, considering its current gaps in capabilities — especially when compared with the free ETL solutions offered by Oracle and Microsoft, two of Sybase's database platform competitors. While experienced and successful in the data replication market, Sybase recognizes that it is new to ETL and the broader data integration market. Sybase's challenge lies in determining how it wants to differentiate from the variety of options already in this crowded space. For Additional Information Click Here May 14, 2007SAS Institute: A Strong Performer In Enterprise ETL With A BI And Analytics FocusSAS Institute's Data Integration Studio (SDIS) remains a Strong Performer with good server capabilities, strong connectivity, user-friendly tools, and a world-class support and training organization. SAS ETL adoption remains primarily within its SAS business intelligence (BI) and analytics installed base and has not yet been widely utilized as an enterprise standard crossing both SAS BI projects and non-SAS operational initiatives. For Additional Information Click Here May 13, 2007Pervasive Software: A Strong Performer In Enterprise ETL Targeted At ISVs And IntegratorsPervasive Software's Business Integrator Pro and Data Integrator products do not compete head to head on scalability, user friendliness, and feature richness compared with most of the other enterprise ETL vendors we evaluated, but that is in line with Pervasive's strategy — it doesn't target the same end users. Pervasive's primary competitor is custom-coded integration solutions, and its primary customers are not enterprise and integration architects, but instead independent software vendors (ISV) and systems integrators (SI). These partners seek a data integration solution with a small footprint that is easily and seamlessly embeddable in more complex information management solutions. For Additional Information Click Here May 12, 2007Oracle Is A Leader In Enterprise ETL With A Free, Bundled Solution For Its DBMSWith the long awaited "Paris" release of Oracle Warehouse Builder 10gR2 (OWB) finally available, Oracle has delivered a scaleable, user-friendly, and feature-rich ETL solution at a much more attractive price than its competitors: Free! Base OWB functionality is bundled at no charge with the purchase of an Oracle Standard Edition One, Standard Edition, or Enterprise Edition database. That's great news for enterprises already using — or planning to use — Oracle databases in their environment, but you can't purchase OWB without an Oracle DB, which is a limiting factor for some enterprises. OWB also offers improved connectivity to non-Oracle source platforms and applications, but target load and connectivity is still optimized for Oracle database and data warehousing environments. For Additional Information Click Here May 11, 2007Microsoft Is A Strong Performer In Enterprise ETL When Targeting Microsoft ShopsWith the release of SQL Server 2005 Integration Services (SSIS), Microsoft has significantly improved on its previous Data Transformation Services (DTS) ETL offering as a valuable data integration tool for homogeneous Microsoft platform customers. While SSIS does offer decent scalability with user-friendly development and administration tools, it significantly lacks heterogeneous platform support and the extract and load connectivity options provided by its competitors. Microsoft also lacks the embedded integration of data quality management and data profiling technology. For Additional Information Click Here May 10, 2007Informatica: A Leader In Enterprise ETL, With A Pure-Play SolutionInformatica holds the second-place spot, following IBM, in the Leaders category with a highly scalable and user-friendly enterprise ETL integration suite of its own, with its PowerCenter product at the core and popular add-ons such as Data Quality and its Unstructured Data option. Informatica's primary differentiation from IBM and the other leaders is its pure-play focus on data integration. By focusing specifically on the data integration (DI) market, Informatica leverages its platform and application neutrality to attract a wide variety of partners and customers who may choose to bypass vendors focusing on larger architectural footprints. For Additional Information Click Here May 9, 2007IBM Leads In Enterprise ETL With A Comprehensive Information Management SuiteIBM leads the way in the next evolution of the enterprise ETL market with its introduction of IBM Information Server (IIS), which embeds comprehensive data integration and data management capabilities into a suite enabling seamless collaboration between data stewards, architects, and developers. While continuing to support complex heterogeneous environments, IBM's strategy will increasingly bridge IIS capabilities with IBM's metadata, master data, content, and other complementary information management solutions. For Additional Information Click Here May 8, 2007Business Objects: A Leader In Enterprise ETL, With A Strong Focus On Information ManagementBusiness Objects' Data Integrator is a relatively affordable enterprise-class ETL solution that incorporates comprehensive information management capabilities — further enhanced by its acquisition of data quality management vendor Firstlogic. Data Integrator adoption is still heavily weighted toward data warehousing (DW) and business intelligence (BI) initiatives to complement Business Objects BI solutions but has not been able to prove through referential customer case studies that Data Integrator can be successful in supporting operational data integration solutions. For Additional Information Click Here May 7, 2007How Consumers Use Social Computing For HealthHealth marketers are used to waiting out technology trends, but Social Computing is making them nervous. While disease is more prevalent among older consumers, one in four Gen Xers and Gen Yers with medical conditions use Social Computing for health today. New forms of Social Computing are emerging for healthcare, from expert health blogs that turn medical information into conversation to social networks that inspire with personal stories and progress trackers. Result: more transparency in healthcare, a trend that health plans and pharmaceutical companies must prepare for. Marketers should move now to monitoring, planning for, and, when possible, participating in Social Computing activities. For Additional Information Click Here Industry IT Spending Profile 2007: InsuranceWith the 2007 business environment for North American insurance carriers looking relatively good for the second year in a row, insurance carriers have become slightly more generous in their IT spending. We anticipate that IT spending in 2007 in the insurance industry will increase by 7%, compared with 5% growth in 2006. The highest priority will be efficiency, and the second highest, innovation. The initiatives to support these priorities are utility-oriented projects such as infrastructure consolidation and disaster recovery. However, competitive pressures and technology-enabled opportunities will drive the need for innovation in Internet and mobile applications as well as the replacement of legacy applications. Underpinning these changes will continue to be a drive toward service-oriented architecture (SOA) for internal integration of systems, usage of services firms for transformation, and greater focus on process standardization. For Additional Information Click Here March 30, 2007US Online Banking: Five-Year ForecastOnline banking adoption continues its upward trajectory, as evidenced by a 27% growth rate in 2005. Expect this trajectory to continue during the next five years: By 2011, Forrester expects online banking adoption to grow by 55%, to roughly 72 million households. In 2011, 76% of online households will bank online. The largest adoption growth will come from the Gen Y segment, and in 2011, 85% of Gen Yers will bank online. For Additional Information Click Here March 29, 2007Information-As-A-Service: What's Behind This Hot New Trend?Information-as-a-service has exploded on the scene over the past two years, moving from an obscure topic to one of the top usage scenarios in service-oriented architecture (SOA). Forrester expects that in 2007, a majority of large enterprises will add SOA to the list of ways they integrate information. Tools and middleware to support service-oriented approaches to information usage and integration are multiplying rapidly, as are customer case studies that show a variety of different information service usage scenarios. Early experiences with this approach show that it can deliver tangible value today in simplifying integration, but the fragmented market and lack of a single common vendor vision of what these products should do creates much confusion on the part of potential buyers. Here, we address enterprise and information architects' top questions about information-as-a-service. For Additional Information Click Here March 28, 2007Evaluating Integration Technology OptionsThe wide range of packaged integration alternatives, and resulting significant overlap of features and functions among the various product categories, make it difficult for enterprise architects to select the best alternative to meet their integration needs. Scenario-based guidance on the relative suitability of different solution types among the individual integration products can help enterprise architects engaged in the vendor selection process to more effectively evaluate the various integration alternatives. For Additional Information Click Here March 27, 2007Hyperion Acquisition Boosts Oracle's Position In Business Performance And BIWith the announcement of the Hyperion acquisition, Oracle did, again, what it does best — made a bold play to absorb a key competitor's technology and customer base. While this acquisition appears to be primarily focused on Hyperion's strong financial applications business, it also significantly improves Oracle's position in business intelligence (BI) — two segments that are complementary and hot. The acquisition will increase Oracle's pressure on the remaining pure-play BI and business performance solution (BPS) vendors, but even more importantly on IBM, Microsoft, and SAP. First, however, Oracle must sort out numerous product overlaps and redundancies to squeeze value from the $3.3 billion investment. For Additional Information Click Here March 26, 2007The 10 Mandatory Steps For The First 90 Days Of A Data Warehousing ProjectLeaders of data warehousing initiatives have a limited amount of time to establish the processes and make the decisions that will chart the course of the initiative's long-term success. Organizations with the most success resolve several key issues and decisions early: setting proper expectations with the business, planning for future data growth, understanding the demands that users will place on the warehouse, and establishing repeatable processes that maintain standards even in the worst time crunch of urgent enhancements. For Additional Information Click Here Planned SOA Usage Grows Faster Than Actual SOA UsageIn our 2007 outlook for service-oriented architecture (SOA) adoption, SOA continues to deepen its penetration into the plans and implementations of enterprises and small and medium-size businesses (SMBs). Twenty-one percent of North American and European (NA-EU) enterprises say that they will adopt SOA in 2007, bringing SOA penetration to 62%. Similarly, 22% of Asia Pacific (AP) enterprises and 14% of NA-EU SMBs plan to adopt SOA in 2007, bringing total penetration in these markets to 59% and 40%, respectively. But looking at data from a year ago, Forrester has reason to think that current usage might not grow quite so fast: While 14% of NA-EU enterprises said that they would adopt SOA in 2006, it seems that only 2% actually did. Still, firms broadly recognize SOA's strategic value for business transformation and business flexibility, and current users of SOA appear satisfied and expect to do more SOA, so SOA's strong market momentum will continue to build. For Additional Information Click Here February 27, 2007Death To The BI Data Silo? Not So FastThe infamous data silos used for business intelligence (BI) that isolate different business domains and obstruct innovation often deserve their pariah reputation — but not always. The right framework for deciding which silos go to the gallows requires a focus on business processes, looking at the types of decisions that business users will make with a silo's data, instead of a focus on the systems with which they might be integrated. At a minimum, some silos will have to be restructured or consolidated into fewer silos, and they may well need to be transformed into process-focused cross-domain systems. For Additional Information Click Here February 26, 2007Trends 2007: Retail ITIn 2007, retail IT budgets continue their stabilization trend, with fewer retailers expecting budget cuts for the coming year. But a preference for best-of-breed applications (BoB) takes its toll on IT organizations' abilities to be strategic partners to the business, with more time and energy spent on the tactics of implementations and integration. It affects IT strategy as well — leaving retailers with less time to pursue initiatives like service-oriented architecture (SOA) that can potentially make future implementations easier. Despite the emphasis on best-of-breed, retail business users have only marginally more influence over IT priorities than their counterparts in other industries, creating a mishmash of business and IT projects that will rise to the top of the list in 2007: multichannel convergence, customer service in stores, supply chain data foundations, merchandising renewal, and optimization technologies. For Additional Information Click Here December 16, 2006The State Of Manufacturer And Retailer Collaboration 2006Increasingly, manufacturers and retailers must compete in a dynamic collaborative environment in which today's collaborator is tomorrow's competitor. To benchmark the state of industry collaboration, Forrester partnered with Consumer Goods Technology and RIS News for the second annual report on the state of manufacturer and retailer collaboration. The resulting data and analyses — based on a survey of 80 manufacturers and 89 retailers — cover key topics and trends, including demand planning and forecasting, collaborative product development, trade promotion management, marketing collaboration, supply chain execution, and foundational technologies like RFID and global data synchronization. For Additional Information Click Here December 5, 2006US IT Spending Summary: Q3 2006US GDP data for Q3 2006 continued the trend of moderate growth in tech investment, accompanied by clear evidence of the slowdown in the US economy that we have been expecting for the past year and a half. The Q3 2006 data from both US government and vendor sources showed a slight acceleration of growth in IT purchases, with business investment in IT equipment up 7% (from 6% in Q2), though vendors' US revenues were down to 1% growth. Real US GDP was up just 1.6% from Q2 (at annual rates), and nominal GDP rose 3.4% — half the average growth rates in the prior three quarters. Despite these indicators falling into line with our forecast for a sharp slowdown in IT purchases in 2007, we are raising our IT outlook for next year. Why? Because the Q3 economic slowdown was confined to the housing sector. Consumer spending did not slow down, and the falling gas prices at the pump since September will provide both a direct and psychological prop to this all-important sector. With US economy likely to grow by 2% to 2.5% in real terms and 4.5% to 5.5% in current dollars, we now expect IT investment will grow by 5% in 2007, with IT spending (with depreciation on capital investment) growing at 5% in 2007 after 6% growth in 2006. For Additional Information Click Here October 9, 2006Multidomain Data Warehousing Governance Must Balance Business Authority With ExpertiseData warehousing initiatives increasingly span multiple business domains to meet organizations' strategic goals, but project teams encounter difficulties in providing accurate and complete functional specifications. Extending requirements across domains inevitably increases the challenge by provoking cross-domain disagreements — making it critical to involve individuals with the authority to resolve those disagreements. Forrester recommends a business data governance model with three roles — the sponsor, the diplomat, and the guru — to maintain the proper balance of authority and expertise so that organizations can specify requirements with minimal iteration that align with their goals. For Additional Information Click Here Turning Transactions Into DecisionsData integration techniques such as extract, transform, and load (ETL); enterprise information integration (EII); change data capture (CDC); and even custom-coding play a significant and perhaps the most critical role in delivering operational business intelligence (BI) capability. The key issue for data architects and BI app developers to keep in mind is the need to map these data integration options against the primary characteristic requirements of operational BI apps, such as tolerance for latency, unique data sources, decision-making time frame, data volume and quality, and cost of ownership. Also note: Employing only one of these techniques may do more harm than good; you must look at the total picture. For Additional Information Click Here August 28, 2006Web Analytics Spending Trends 2007We surveyed Forrester's Web Analytics Peer Research Panel to determine how Web analytics budgets in 2007 will be different from those of 2006, and how priorities have changed since 2005. We expect spending to continue to grow next year, although more modestly than in the past, with A/B testing seeing a bigger lift than other categories and licensed software starting to slow. The most interesting change came in plans to increase analytics headcount. This category leapt up from the bottom of the priority list to fourth place in just one year. These shifts reflect a desire among Web analytics users to maximize value from existing tools and move up the maturity continuum. For Additional Information Click Here July 13, 2006Microsoft Announces BPM Enhancements For BizTalk Server 2006Microsoft has been a popular choice in the integration space for some time, but BizTalk Server has lagged in its direct support for electronic data interchange (EDI) and its human-centric business process management (BPM) features as compared with most of the other providers. However, Microsoft has unveiled a road map that demonstrates a renewed commitment to BPM, starting with additional supply chain features in BizTalk Server 2006 R2. The delivery of the promised functionality will go a long way in helping the vendor to provide its customers with real-world process improvement capabilities. For Additional Information Click Here June 2, 2006Developers, Get Ready: 2007 Microsoft Office Is A Serious Application PlatformAt the end of 2006, Microsoft plans to release the successor to Office 2003 — the first Office release overtly designed as an application platform, as well as a suite of personal and team applications. Assuming massive adoption of the new release, the 2007 Microsoft Office system (Office 2007) will be a strong alternative to custom desktop applications built using Windows Forms and a good platform for collaborative Windows desktop applications. Office 2007 will also provide an alternative for building some kinds of rich Internet applications and will compete with Ajax techniques and Adobe Flex. For Additional Information Click Here June 1, 2006Customer Advocacy 2006: How Consumers Rate Their Banks, Brokerages, And InsurersCustomer advocacy remains the best predictor of future purchase intent among financial services consumers. USAA and credit unions continue to lead all major firms in customer advocacy. GEICO and Safeco raised their scores this year to join other property and casualty insurers near the top of the rankings. Full-service brokerages like Morgan Stanley and Wachovia Securities, on the other hand, tumbled to the bottom half of our ranking. Large banks like JPMorgan Chase and Citibank bring up the rear. For Additional Information Click Here May 31, 2006SAP Continues Pushing Into The North American Insurance MarketForrester spoke with SAP's insurance execs, who emphasized the firm's high level of commitment to the industry. Despite its efforts, SAP has yet to become a top-tier vendor of insurance apps in North America. The problems: an ineffective partnership with Accenture, haphazard management of marketing channels, and an insufficient local presence. But SAP is now taking a more comprehensive approach to North America. The firm hired experienced insurance execs with deep process knowledge and access to senior IT and business leaders. These capabilities will help SAP break into the North American market with its insurance policy administration apps. Other firms in the industry will have a hard time matching SAP's level of investment in the industry. For Additional Information Click Here May 30, 2006The Forrester Wave™: Collaboration Platforms, Q2 2006Forrester evaluated five leading collaboration platform vendors across 98 criteria and found that IBM and Microsoft are still the Leaders in this market. Both vendors are well suited for customers that need a full collaboration platform (but don't mind lack of unification among the modules), value vendor viability and collaboration market share, and plan to develop Information Workplace strategies. IBM is an especially good fit for Java and Linux environments; Microsoft is better suited for Microsoft shops. Oracle and Sun are Strong Performers but lack market share and are missing key features. Oracle is an especially good fit for Oracle shops that have a Java orientation and want a unified collaboration platform, and Sun is an especially good choice for Java shops that have open source leanings. Novell is also a Contender; however, its product is missing many collaboration features and Novell's strategy and road map are weaker than those of its competitors. For Additional Information Click Here April 27, 2006Survey Data Says: The Time For SOA Is NowService-oriented architecture (SOA) adoption continues to be strong, especially for the largest enterprises. Satisfaction with SOA runs very high: Nearly 70% of SOA users say they will increase their use of SOA, and 46% of large enterprise users of SOA use it for strategic business transformation. The more disciplined firms are, and the more they do with IT — hence, the more complex their environments — the more likely they are to be early adopters of SOA. Web services adoption overlaps with SOA adoption, but a notable population of firms reports using one or the other but not both. Most importantly, enterprises are adopting SOA in roughly equal numbers regardless of their business climate or whether they have extra budget available to fund a move to SOA. The message is clear: It is time to dispense with excuses and begin your move to SOA. For Additional Information Click Here April 26, 2006Bet On Governance To Manage Outsourcing RiskEat right. Don't run with scissors. Exercise regularly. By definition, conventional wisdom about life seems intuitive, but the challenge is applying the advice in the real world. Likewise, risk management concepts may seem etched into the hallowed walls of the corporation — but often they aren't implemented and adapted to changing business conditions. Because IT outsourcing and business process outsourcing (BPO) touch financial, technical, and business aspects of risk, customers can be challenged by unfamiliar legal concepts, seemingly Byzantine business processes, and unclear compliance requirements. Forrester interviewed leading sourcing deal advisors to identify principles and tactics to take throughout the sourcing life cycle that can help build a foundation for risk management in an outsourced environment. This first document of the series focuses on how governance can be used to manage business risk in an outsourcing deal. For Additional Information Click Here April 25, 2006Pharma CIOs Are Missing At The Executive TableCIOs who report directly to their CEOs play a central role in business process improvements and IT innovation. They sit at the executive table and participate in strategic decision-making. Yet Forrester found that pharma CIOs typically play a more tactical role; they keep the IT lights on but are not considered innovators or enablers. To gain the clout needed to earn a seat in the executive inner circle, pharma CIOs must maintain proficiency as a trusted technologist but also leverage projects enterprisewide, lead the integration of business processes, skate ahead of new business requirements, and create a more strategic business role for themselves. For Additional Information click here April 24, 2006US Federal Enterprise Architects Are Committed To SOA, But Procurement Gets ComplicatedForrester recently surveyed 20 federal enterprise architects to discover how they view the role of service-oriented architecture (SOA) in their agencies. They tell us that both the program areas and agency IT groups appreciate the value of SOA. More significantly, they report that their agencies have committed to SOA and incorporated it into their enterprise-level strategies to a far greater degree than Forrester's Business Technographics® surveys have found in most other enterprises. So is SOA a perfect fit for modernizing and transforming federal agencies? It's not a slam dunk. While agencies can work to fine-tune the interactions between program and IT staff to improve SOA planning, there is a fundamental obstacle: SOA changes the granularity of applications and provides an opportunity to reuse existing components, but procurement processes are geared toward entire solutions, not combinations of internal and external application components. Architects must make sure that their procurement processes are mature enough to exploit service repositories just as they have incorporated technology architecture standards into requests for proposals (RFPs). For Additional Information click here April 21, 2006Oracle Versus SAP In Enterprise Applications: Let The Battle Of Architectures Begin!As enterprise customers demand business agility in their new applications software, vendors are responding by embracing service-oriented architecture (SOA) and business process management (BPM). The result will be enterprise apps unlike any previous generation. The two largest vendors of enterprise apps are pursuing different paths to their next generation of apps, giving prospective customers a real choice. The differences are stark. Oracle will continue to build through acquisition; SAP will rely more on internal development and partnerships. Oracle's next-generation apps will run only on its own database; SAP's applications will run only on its own middleware. SAP promises to ship its next-generation business application suite in 2007, Oracle in 2008. The two competitors will battle over master data management (MDM), analytics, and repository architectures. SAP has stronger market momentum, better articulated value for next-generation apps, and a better partnership strategy than Oracle. But Oracle's strong middleware platform and greater support of standards make it a better choice than SAP for customers who will rely on custom development as well as packaged apps. For Additional Information click here April 19, 2006Microsoft Gives Telcos Faster Time-To-MarketAfter several years of false starts, Microsoft has gained solid footing with telcos with its Communications Sector offerings. A set of common next-generation network functions that work in unison to deliver Microsoft-compatible applications to a variety of endpoints are at the core of this success. Telcos leverage an integrated stack of Microsoft products to accelerate application time-to-market. Microsoft also offers three off-the-shelf applications that give telcos access to new market segments, including TV viewers, mobile device users, and email subscribers. For Additional Information click here April 17, 2006eGovernment Buy-In Is A Marketing MustAgencies are shifting more information and services to the Web channel. What do citizens think? According to Forrester's Consumer Technographics® data, only a minority of citizens say that eGovernment should be a top priority for government spending. Those who say that eGovernment should be a low priority are also voicing serious concerns about its potential negative impacts. To increase the odds of success, eGovernment program managers need to start thinking like marketing managers and ask themselves: Are citizens getting the value they were promised? For Additional Information click here March 30, 2006Hospital IT Spending Trends For 2006IT executives at large North American hospitals expect their 2006 budgets to be 3.1% higher than their 2005 spending — growth that nearly matches the projections from execs in other industries. But this growing healthcare spending is much more likely to be going to new applications, new storage systems, new integration projects, and improved disaster recovery efforts. Vendors looking at healthcare will find ample opportunities to open new relationships. But carpetbaggers beware: Buyers will demand an intimate understanding of their industry, operations, and business goals. For Additional Information click here March 1, 2006Social ComputingEasy connections brought about by cheap devices, modular content, and shared computing resources are having a profound impact on our global economy and social structure. Individuals increasingly take cues from one another rather than from institutional sources like corporations, media outlets, religions, and political bodies. To thrive in an era of Social Computing, companies must abandon top-down management and communication tactics, weave communities into their products and services, use employees and partners as marketers, and become part of a living fabric of brand loyalists. For Additional Information Click Here February 24, 2006SAS Strong In Advanced Analytics, Data Access For BI Reporting And Analysis PlatformsSAS's SAS9 BI v9.1.3 provides a solid business intelligence (BI) product for analytic reporting, but has clear limitations in enterprise reporting. The product provides comprehensive data access to most RDBMSes and MDDBs, along with mainframes and legacy apps, as well as advanced analytics in data mining and predictive analytics. Other strengths include solid metadata development and security capabilities with improved usability and Microsoft Office integration capabilities. However, SAS is the only tier-one BI vendor that does not have a viable enterprise reporting solution to complement its analytic reporting capabilities, which makes SAS less attractive to companies looking to standardize on a single reporting solution. Based on our analysis, SAS is a strong performer in analytic reporting and a contender in enterprise reporting with a greater emphasis on analytic reporting. For additional information click here February 23, 2006SAP Strong In Application Integration For BI Reporting And Analysis PlatformsSAP NetWeaver 2004 is an integration and application platform. The product provides comprehensive business intelligence (BI) application development tools and capabilities targeted at operational BI apps embedded within composite application processes, with an embedded data warehouse (SAP BW), analytic reporting tool (BEx), and enterprise reporting (Crystal Reports via OEM). A strong international presence and solid metadata management mechanism are balanced against basic support for usability, report development, and dashboard capabilities. Unlike most BI products, SAP NetWeaver 2004 offers a broad range of BI and non-BI application server capabilities that often creates confusion with buyers about what to license and how to implement NetWeaver as a BI solution. Overall, SAP is a strong performer in both enterprise and analytic reporting with a greater emphasis on enterprise reporting. For additional information click here Oracle Strong In Java Development, Security For BI Reporting And Analysis PlatformsOracle Business Intelligence 10.1.2 provides a Java application-centric business intelligence (BI) reporting and analysis amalgam of products bundled within the Oracle 10g database and Oracle 10g application server for support of analytic and enterprise reporting. The product provides comprehensive security and administration along with application scalability and basic Microsoft Office integration, but lacks robust report layout and development functionality and ease of use. This product is but one of a few — others include Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and SAP NetWeaver 2004 — that provides BI functionality bundled within a database or application server platform. Based on our analysis, Oracle is a strong performer in both analytic and enterprise reporting with a greater emphasis on analytic reporting. For additional information click here February 22, 2006Microsoft Low Cost To Scale For BI Reporting And Analysis PlatformsMicrosoft's business intelligence (BI) technology, including SQL Server 2005 with Integration Services for data integration, Reporting Services for production reporting, and Analysis Services for analytic functionality, provides a solid, albeit incomplete, solution for analytic and enterprise reporting. The offering provides good usability and application development capabilities, with average analytic functionality — highlighted by the OLAP functionality in Analysis Services. Microsoft is one of a growing number of vendors — including Actuate, Business Objects, Cognos, Hyperion, and MicroStrategy — that offer both analytic and enterprise reporting capabilities on an integrated platform; however, the newness and immaturity of Reporting Services with the brand new report authoring capabilities make this a work in progress. As a result, Microsoft is a strong performer in both enterprise and analytic reporting with a greater emphasis on analytic reporting. For additional information click here Information Builders Strong In Data Access, Scalability For BI Reporting And Analysis PlatformsInformation Builders WebFOCUS 7 provides a strong application development platform for developing and deploying operational business intelligence (BI) apps. The product provides comprehensive data access, excellent application scalability, and security and administration, but lacks usability and robust report layout and design capabilities. WebFOCUS is best suited for production reporting applications and operational BI, but is not well suited for advanced analytics or OLAP applications. Overall, Information Builders is a strong performer in both enterprise and analytic reporting with a greater emphasis on enterprise reporting. For additional information click here MicroStrategy Strong In OLAP Functionality For BI Reporting And Analysis PlatformsThe MicroStrategy 8 platform provides a solid business intelligence (BI) product for analytic and enterprise reporting. The offering provides strong OLAP capabilities with extended access to SAP BW cubes, along with strong administration and security capabilities and solid Microsoft Office integration capabilities. MicroStrategy includes an enterprise reporting component (Report Services) within the core product; however; limitations in data access lower the overall appeal of the production reporting mechanism. Overall, MicroStrategy is a strong performer in both enterprise and analytic reporting with a greater emphasis on analytic reporting. For additional information click here February 21, 2006Hyperion Strong In OLAP, Integrated Security For BI Reporting And Analysis PlatformsHyperion System 9 BI+ is an integrated platform built on a framework that supports many Hyperion Solutions applications and tools, including performance management, financial budgeting/planning/consolidations, and business intelligence (BI). The product provides strong analytic functionality via its Essbase 9 OLAP engine along with unification of the interface, with general metadata functionality, application scalability, report layout, and Microsoft Office integration. Hyperion is one of a growing number of vendors — including Actuate, Business Objects, Cognos, Microsoft, and MicroStrategy — that offer both analytic and enterprise reporting capabilities on an integrated platform. With this combination of capabilities, Hyperion is a strong performer in both enterprise and analytic reporting with a greater emphasis on analytic reporting. For additional information click here Cognos A Leader In BI Reporting And Analysis PlatformsCognos 8 Business Intelligence (BI) offers a single, strong BI reporting and analysis product for support of analytic and enterprise reporting. The product is strong in all three areas — analytic functionality, application development, and usability with comprehensive support for unification, internationalization, and open APIs, and strong support for OLAP, query, metadata, dashboards, and scorecards. Cognos is one of a growing number of vendors — including Actuate, Business Objects, Hyperion, Microsoft, and MicroStrategy — that offer both analytic and enterprise reporting capabilities. However, Cognos 8 BI is a completely new, Web-based product that incorporates much of the functionality from Cognos legacy BI products such as PowerPlay, Metrics Manager, Impromptu, ReportNet, and others. Based on our evaluation, Cognos is a leader in both analytic and enterprise reporting. For additional information click here February 20, 2006Business Objects Leads In BI Reporting And Analysis PlatformsBusinessObjects XI Release 2 provides a strong, integrated reporting and analysis platform that includes a best-of-breed solution for both analytic reporting in WebIntelligence XI and enterprise reporting in Crystal Reports XI. The product offers comprehensive query capabilities, metadata functionality, and report development features along with strong usability, internationalization, and result dissemination. Business Objects is one of a growing number of vendors — also including Actuate, Cognos, Hyperion, Microsoft, and MicroStrategy — that offer both analytic and enterprise reporting capabilities on an integrated platform; however, BusinessObjects XI Release 2 contains proven and tested reporting and analysis products. Based on this combination of features, BusinessObjects is a leader in both analytic and enterprise reporting. For additional information click here Actuate Strong In Layout, Scalability For BI Reporting And Analysis PlatformsActuate iServer v8 provides a platform for developing and deploying reporting applications in support of analytic and enterprise reporting. The product offers comprehensive application development capabilities with strength in report development and dissemination, layout and formatting, security and administration, internationalization, and Web services. Product weaknesses include limited analytic functionality with basic OLAP and little or no predictive analytics or business process capabilities. Actuate's e.Spreadsheet product for integrating business intelligence (BI) reporting with Microsoft Excel provides a clear differentiator. Overall, Actuate is a strong performer in both enterprise and analytic reporting with a greater emphasis on enterprise reporting. For additional information click here February 10, 2006Quality Monitoring Provides Companies With Valuable Business IntelligenceCompanies need more customer insight to make timely business decisions. Although contact centers are a major hub for customer interactions, companies do not analyze customer phone conversations, emails, and chats for the customer's experience or attitude. Because voice recordings consist of unstructured conversations that have been historically difficult to analyze and report, organizations lose valuable customer information. Contact centers typically use quality monitoring applications for compliance purposes and to monitor agent performance, but these applications can also mine valuable business intelligence from captured interactions. Leading quality monitoring vendors now offer analytical tools that interpret structured and unstructured data to build a visual overview of contact attributes from customer conversations. By understanding the context and root cause of each customer interaction, companies can do more to reach goals on increasing revenues and reducing customer churn. For additional information click here February 8, 2006BSM Is Coming Of Age: Time To Define What It IsAs more and more IT organizations improve their service delivery, they are turning their focus to presenting their business value more positively. These organizations are beginning to develop true business service management (BSM) systems by doing two things: understanding the metrics their business users employ to decide if IT is providing value, and linking these metrics and associated business services to IT infrastructure components. Vendors have been using — and abusing — the term BSM for a couple of years now, so clients are understandably confused about the inconsistent messages they receive from vendors. To cut through the confusion, Forrester now proposes a definition of BSM based on observations of many of our clients' BSM projects. For additional information click here February 6, 2006The Interaction Platform: Widespread In 2006The interaction platform began as an architecture pattern enabled by service-oriented architecture (SOA), a common way to factor an application front end from the back-end services it uses, supported by frameworks and infrastructure. During 2005 a number of events moved packaged applications and services, application infrastructure, frameworks, and tools into closer alignment with this pattern. However, only a few major vendors are explicitly positioning products as interaction platforms, with the rest embedding those capabilities in broader application platform suites. Despite this low-key market status, organizations with requirements for rich clients, multichannel business processes, composite applications, collaboration, and other capabilities of interaction platforms should align architecture and purchasing plans with this trend to ensure the best fit of platform and tool strategy to meet these needs. For additional information click here January 27, 2006Information Fabric: Enterprise Data VirtualizationEnterprises are facing the growing challenges of using disparate sources of data managed by different applications, including problems with data integration, security, performance, availability, and quality. Business users want fast, real-time, and reliable information to make business decisions, while IT wants to lower costs, minimize complexity, and improve operational efficiency. New technology is emerging that Forrester has coined "information fabric," a term defined as a virtualized data layer that integrates heterogeneous data and content repositories in real time. This technology is provided via middleware components that deliver quality information — "the truth" — when and where it's needed. Products from several major vendors like BEA Systems, IBM, and Oracle — as well as others from small innovators like Tangosol — are evolving to provide information fabric, but today custom integration is required to weave them together. The potential benefits of this technology are so great that enterprises should develop a strategy to leverage information fabric technology as it becomes more widely available.
January 26, 2006Too Much Portal, Not Enough Portal StrategyFirst-generation corporate portals aspired to be enterprisewide solutions to a broad and diverse set of departmental problems. Initially, IT stared down a fire hose of features and back-end integrations offered by portal vendors. But it quickly found that "out of the box" meant six-to-12-month implementations, leading to questionable economic return and unmet expectations. It's difficult to make portals and even harder to justify them. To avoid the painful lessons of first-generation portals, enterprises should follow five steps in defining a portal strategy that focuses on what counts: the right leadership, business context, user needs, prioritization, and actively managing change.
January 24, 2006The State Of SOA In Financial ServicesA recent European survey has revealed that European financial services firms are well on track with their move toward service-oriented architecture (SOA): Four-fifths will use it by the end of 2008. However, a huge gap exists between the current state of SOA and the envisioned deployment of SOA within the application landscape. Financial services companies should adopt some key rules to ease the process of bridging this gap.
December 30, 2005IBM Reshapes The SOA Platform MarketThis past September, IBM reshaped the service-oriented architecture (SOA) platform market with a bang with its announcements of WebSphere ESB, WebSphere Process Server, and a new version of the WebSphere Message Broker. Then in October, IBM announced the acquisition of DataPower Technology, adding an XML infrastructure appliance to its SOA platform. Although IBM was already an SOA powerhouse, these moves expand its capabilities and market presence as well as offer customers important new options for implementing SOA. IBM's moves also validate these emerging markets and will accelerate the consolidation of SOA application infrastructure. For information click here December 27, 2005Topic Overview: Service-Oriented ArchitectureService-oriented architecture (SOA) is a style of design, deployment, and management of software infrastructure and applications to create a more flexible digital embodiment of your business. Characteristics of SOA include a standards-based environment, loosely coupled connections to ease change, shared services, and federated control. SOA evolved as a solution for complex and inflexible application infrastructure; by managing standards, protocols, information delivery, and application integration, IT organizations found that they could save money and increase flexibility through reducing architecture complexity and duplication. For more information click here December 26, 2005Forrester Partners With ITAA To Measure The Health Of The US IT IndustryThe News Is . . . OK Forrester and the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) have created a quarterly index to measure the health of the US technology sector in terms of demand forces like CIO spending outlooks, supply factors like the health of venture capital (VC) funding, and the strength of US-based technology vendors based on revenues, profits, and market valuations. Since we began tracking these data in 2003, the index rose steadily through Q4 2004 and then dipped in early 2005. In Q3, the health of the US tech sector rose 3.9 points to nearly match its three-year high. The largest gains for the quarter occurred in the demand component of the index, and nearly all forward-looking measures were up. While the third quarter's results are reason for optimism about the US tech sector, the saw-tooth pattern for the index over the past year suggests a mix of moderate declines and moderate increases over the coming year. December 22, 2005Trends 2006: Enterprise Risk And ComplianceToday's organizations are moving from the "considering" stage to the "definition" stage of an enterprise risk and compliance program. What are the key drivers of these programs? They include multiple risks and regulations, distributed operations and relationships, interdependency of risk, increased accountability, and awareness of both fragmentation and duplication of efforts. In 2006, firms will establish risk and compliance architectures, develop risk intelligence, and implement GRC platforms, as well as centralized communication and training on corporate policies and procedures. Next year will also see continued evolution of the enterprise role that is responsible for GRC. For additional information click here December 20, 2005Trends In IT Performance ManagementAn increasing focus on IT governance by boards of directors and executive management puts IT management and the performance of the IT organization under a magnifying glass. IT organizations are increasingly asked to demonstrate the value of IT, vouch for the integrity of the systems and data under their control, simultaneously improve the quality of existing services while reducing their cost, and become a source of enterprise innovation. It is virtually impossible today to meet one of these objectives, let alone all of them, without an effective IT performance measurement and management system in place. Yet many continue to try. In 2006, we will see an increasing number of IT organizations adopt strategic IT performance management frameworks; there really is no other choice. For additional information click here December 5, 2005SAP Acquisition Of Khimetrics Heralds The End Of The Retail Best-Of-Breed Solutions EraSAP announced the acquisition of Khimetrics, the Arizona-based best |