Business Services Industry

Forrester's IT Forum Provides Road Map For Achieving IT Excellence In Business Technology

Business Wire, May 18, 2007

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Forrester Research, Inc. (Nasdaq: FORR) announced today that its just-concluded IT Forum 2007: Delivering Business Results Through IT Excellence demonstrated to professionals across the IT organization -- including CIOs, application developers, enterprise architects, and infrastructure professionals -- the role they must play in integrating IT and business and transitioning their organization from IT to business technology (BT).

Forrester defines BT as pervasive technology use that boosts business results and predicts that, over the next five years, business will become so deeply embodied in technology, and the technology so deeply embedded in the business, that IT will need to be managed quite differently.

Kicking off the annual event in front of more than 1,200 people on-site in Nashville, Tenn., George F. Colony, Forrester's chairman of the board and chief executive officer, focused on the transformation to BT and the seven things CEOs need to know beforehand, including the need for a technologist on the board of directors and finding a CIO who is a good teacher, capable of educating the organization on the business value of technology.

"IT Forum attendees received practical and strategic guidance from Forrester's top thought leaders and some of the industry's top IT executives on how to achieve IT and business excellence," said Charles Rutstein, chief operating officer, Forrester Research. "IT Forum proved to be a learning ground for IT professionals to gain a better understanding of the role they play in the shift from IT to BT."

In addition to more than 100 sessions across eight professional role-specific tracks, the event also played host to meetings of the Forrester Leaderships Boards (FLB), Forrester's exclusive peer networking group that brings together select industry executives and Forrester analysts to share best practices. It was the largest gathering of FLB members in the four years of the boards' existence, spread out across seven distinct programs: The CIO Group, Applications & Program Management Council, Enterprise Architecture Council, Infrastructure & Operations Council, Security & Risk Management Council, Analyst Relations Council, and Technology Marketing Council.

IT Forum keynote addresses from the following participants provided real-world examples of companies achieving IT excellence:

* Ralph J. Szygenda, Group Vice President and CIO, General Motors

* Robert A. Willett, CEO, Best Buy International, and CIO, Best Buy

* Judith Spitz, Senior Vice President and CIO, Verizon Business

* Jeanne Ross, Ph.D., Principal Research Scientist, MIT Sloan Center for Information Systems Research

* Bob Beauchamp, President and CEO, BMC Software

* Chris Capossela, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Business Division, Microsoft

* Ken Bisconti, Vice President, Workplace Portal and Collaboration Software, IBM Software Group

* David Girouard, Vice President and General Manager, Enterprise, Google

* Vince Casarez, Vice President of Development, Oracle

The event had 43 sponsors; among them were Platinum sponsors, BMC Software and Microsoft. Gold sponsors for IT Forum were EDS, IBM, MindTree Consulting, Oracle, and Wipro.

About Forrester Research

Forrester Research, Inc. (Nasdaq : FORR) is an independent technology and market research company that provides pragmatic and forward-thinking advice to global leaders in business and technology. For more than 23 years, Forrester has been making leaders successful every day through its proprietary research, consulting, events, and peer-to-peer executive programs. For more information, visit www.forrester.com.