Good day everyone,

I bring tidings of great joy to the Forrester community, and especially to our clients! We have a new analyst on the Infrastructure & Operations Research team! It took a long time to get the right person, but we finally did. Once you meet him (and you likely already have), you will agree!

Robert Stroud CGEIT CRISCThe newest Principal Analyst on the I&O team is Robert Stroud! Rob comes to us after a long stint at the software company CA, where he was most recently the VP of Strategy and Innovation. Central to his recent work is a significant amount of evangelism about DevOps, the hot movement promoting rapid application and technology service delivery. He has been very active in the governance and service management communities for years, holding many leadership positions. He just wrapped up his tenure as the International President of ISACA and was a primary author of the last few versions of the COBIT framework. He has won several awards in this community in recognition of his many achievements – all well deserved!

He is an electrifying presenter, an articulate, prolific writer who can superbly address a wide variety of topics with rich context to business demands, and he is cool and professional under pressure. As an example of the latter, his presentation delivered in the hiring process was riddled with circumstances that would have left most people quivering in fear. It’s truly an epic story! Rob delivered brilliantly, as if none of these hurdles ever occurred. It was an amazing performance!

Rob will be a core member of the cloud computing research team that encompasses a large swath of Forrester's research organization. His primary focus will be on driving the market toward a more refined approach to software defined infrastructure development and delivery. We’re taking DevOps thinking and applying it to infrastructure (and naturally, cloud). Rob will be our main analyst behind this push. Look out

Rob will be based out of our New York office and begins life with his new Forrester family on October 13. We look forward to his intellect, his passion, his professionalism, and his sharp Aussie sense of humor. Please welcome our new brother, Rob Stroud!