Each month, the infrastructure and operations (I&O) team writes incredible research (sorry for missing April initially!). As a research director, I get to not only see the final outcome but also all of the work and client insights that went into its creation. For those who know me, I am quick to call these out via inquiry calls — but I’d love to capture this on a more permanent platform. For 2021, I’m hoping to blog each month (again, utterly failed for April), highlighting a few of my favorites and including links to the full body of work published that month. Here are my favorites for the months of April and May, which both fall into the operations side of the house:

The Product-Centric IT Operating Model Is Upon Us” — Charles Betz has been working heavily with our CIO-focused analysts on an entire body of research on operating models. You may have seen his report in fall 2020 that kicked off this conversation (after Charles completed 20-plus interviews with innovation leaders), along with Gordon Barnett’s major report on the topic that launched this month. This particular report digs into the concept of product teams being applied to IT. It makes the case for product teams — while also discussing their limitations — and then outlines how to get started on spanning product thinking across your entire operation model. This isn’t your everyday research. This is leading edge, following the latest conversations in the market while exploring the applicability to enterprise audiences. It’s jam-packed with high-value insights. The team is incredibly proud of this body of research, so I hope you enjoy it and stay tuned for more upcoming research on operating models.

Make The Case For Operational Transformation” — This is a fun report. We write a lot of research around formal business cases, metrics that matter, etc., but rarely do we write reports that help with the social/political/soft-skills/format elements of landing your next major initiative. We’ve helped a lot of clients navigate these challenges via inquiries and event one-on-ones over the years. Rich Lane and his colleagues drew on their experiences and our clients’ experiences to create this best-practices report to help get your favorite/most-critical project approved by your manager and/or leadership. I call this a “to the people, from the people” report that should resonate with many of our readers. Originally, we were playing around with the title “Get Your Bosses’ Buy-In,” but, alas, we settled for this more formal title. Enjoy!

Our New Cloud Research

The Forrester Guide To Cloud Standards, 2021” — This is an overview of the cloud standard world and major standards development organizations that are contributing to them in major open source and vendor platform communities.

Now Tech: Salesforce Consulting Partners In Asia Pacific, Q1 2021” — This is a vendor landscape of Salesforce consultancy players and their focuses. These Now Tech reports serve as a precursor to our Forrester Wave™ evaluations, which narrow the list to a subset of the featured vendors in these reports using defined inclusion criteria.

The Forrester Wave™: Function-As-A-Service Platforms, Q1 2021” — This is an evaluation of function-as-a-service (FaaS) platforms, most of which are provided by the major hyperscaler cloud vendors.

Now Tech: Serverless, Q1 2021” — This is a vendor landscape of serverless players and their focuses. These Now Tech reports serve as a precursor to our Forrester Wave evaluations (both the core FaaS Wave noted above and the edge-focused one that will come later in the year).

I’ll even throw in an early June report:

Assess The Viability Of An Open Source Project” — This report, assessment spreadsheet, and Powerpoint go through specific cloud, open source projects. The quick recap: Understand the control, contributors, funding, marketing, and underlying legalese. This is a wonderful report from Tracy Woo and Charles Betz!

Our New Tech Operations Research

The Future Of Chatbots” — Our top chatbot-focused analysts set out on a research project to look at where chatbots will go.

Now Tech: Unified Endpoint Management, Q2 2021” — This is a vendor landscape of the unified endpoint management (UEM) players and their focuses. These Now Tech reports serve as a precursor to our Forrester Wave evaluations, which narrow the list to a subset of the featured vendors in these reports using defined inclusion criteria. The UEM Forrester Wave just kicked off this week and is set to publish in November.

Hot Desks Or Ice-Cold Employee Experiences” — Flexible work experiences are kicking off as office workers start to return to the office. This concept isn’t new. In the 1990s, it was about high real estate costs. Now, it’s about employee experience. It will be essential to have this be at the heart of your rollout and to avoid the common pitfalls.

Best Practices: Technology Experience Management” — People want to know the best ways to master technology experience management as it is critical for positive employee experiences. This report goes through the five biggest challenges and how your peers are tackling them. Andrew Hewitt and Jonathan Roberts also wrote a blog to intro this report.

The Product-Centric IT Operating Model Is Upon Us” — featured above

Make The Case For Operational Transformation” — featured above

Build The Business Case For AIOps” — This report helps create a business case for artificial intelligence for IT operations (AIOps) using Forrester’s Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) model. It does this through things like digital experience management, business operations monitoring, predictive analytics, intelligent automation, and event management.

And again … an early June report:

Now Tech: Enterprise Service Management, Q2 2021” — This is a vendor landscape of the enterprise service management (ESM) players and their focuses. These Now Tech reports serve as a precursor to our Forrester Wave evaluations, which narrow the list to a subset of the featured vendors in these reports using defined inclusion criteria. The ESM Forrester Wave will kick off in July.

Bios And Recent Research For Each Of Our Cloud And Tech Operations Analysts

Charles Betz

Jeffrey Hammond (AD&D)

Andrew Hewitt

Rich Lane

Bill Martorelli

Will McKeon-White

Lee Sustar

Tracy Woo

Our International Analysts’ Bios And Research

Charlie Dai, based in Beijing, China

Sam Higgins, based in Sydney, Australia

Guannan Lu, based in Beijing, China

Paul Miller, based in London, England

Danny Mu, based in Beijing, China