Gene Leganza

Most organizations today recognize the need to become customer-obsessed digital businesses. They need to map out customer touchpoints to fully understand their customers’ experiences and interactions with their firms’ processes and those of their partners. They also must transform their internal operating models and technology foundations, creating new systems of engagement and systems of insight […]

This Year’s Winning EA Initiatives, Brought To You By Forrester And Infoworld, Drive The Customer-Obsessed Digital Business Any enterprise architects worth their salt can tell you how strategic enterprise architecture is, but the fact is that most EA programs struggle. The problem? Getting the enterprise to act strategically in the face of the need for […]

Jennifer Belissent and I just published a report on the role of the Chief Data Officer that we’re hearing so much about these days – Top Performers Appoint Chief Data Officers. To introduce the report, we sat down with our press team at Forrester to talk about the findings and about the implications for our clients. Forrester PR: […]

It’s not news that business user self-service for access to information and analytics is hot. What might not be as obvious is the overhaul of information-related roles that is happening now as a result. What’s driving this? The hunger for data (big, fast, and otherwise) to feed insights, very popular data visualization tools, and new […]

The data economy — or the system that provides for the exchange of digitized information for the purpose of creating insights and value — grew in 2014, but in 2015 we’ll see it leap forward significantly. It will grow from a phenomenon that mainstream enterprises view at arm’s length as interesting to one that they […]

No self-respecting EA professional would enter into planning discussions with business or tech management execs without a solid grasp of the technologies available to the enterprise, right? But what about the data available to the enterprise? Given the shift towards data-driven decision-making and the clear advantages from advanced analytics capabilities, architecture professionals should be coming […]

It's becoming pretty clear that the ability to analyze data is becoming one of the most important technology-based capabilities an enterprise can have. There's a lot of hype around about big data, and it's actually well-founded hype — if that's not a contradiction (perhaps I should call it well-founded fanfare). In any event, our world […]

It seems to be popular these days amongst industry pundits to recommend that organizations add a new Cxx role: the Chief Data Officer (CDO). The arguments in favor of this move are exactly what you'd think: the rapidly accelerating importance of information in the enterprise, and, as important, the heightened perception of the importance of […]

In a month or so I’ll be launching a survey to research issues around information strategy, information architecture and information management in general. I thought it might be useful to do a bit of crowdsourcing to get the best ideas for what questions to ask and make sure I’m covering your top-of-mind issues. We ask […]

The use of road maps to illustrate technology plans is fairly widespread. Whether it's a vendor explaining its product plans or a technology architect showing the evolution of a particular area of the infrastructure, road maps are great for communicating what happens when. And when plans as illustrated by the road map get sign-off, they […]

Today’s organizations must manage the explosive growth of all types of information while addressing greater-than-ever business demand for insights into customer needs and the business environment. Meanwhile, the significant regulatory and compliance risk associated with information security has increased the urgency for tightly controlled information management capabilities. These requirements are hard to meet, with scant […]

As the pace of change continues to accelerate in an increasingly complex business environment, organizations need to thoroughly understand how their business operates and plan the technology-fueled business transformation they'll need in the future. Establishing this understanding and enabling the transition to the future state have always been the concerns of enterprise architecture programs, and […]

If you’re trying to build an effective EA program, you’re in trouble from the get-go. I’d like to paint a rosier picture for anyone involved in this strategic, potentially very high-impact practice, but consider the fact that one of our more frequent client inquiries is about how to communicate EA’s value to non-EAers. How can […]

We at Forrester have written a lot about the “empowered era” in the past year. We’re talking about the empowerment of customers and employees, the consumerization of technology, and grass-roots-based, tech-enabled innovation. There are lots of great case studies around illustrating these forces and how they can benefit the enterprise, but those success stories are […]

Only a few weeks to go before Forrester’s US EA Forum 2011 in San Francisco in February! I’ll be presenting a number of sessions, including the opening kickoff, where I’ll paint a picture of where I see EA going in the next decade. As Alex Cullen mentioned, I’ll examine three distinct scenarios where EA rises in importance, […]

I've taken some heat in comments at the ZDNET version of my post about the top 15 tech trends research piece. Apparently, to non-Forrester clients who don't have access to the research on the website (except for a rather steep by-the-drink price), the blog post comes off as a teaser with no payoff. Mea culpa. […]

Readers of this blog are all likely to agree that EA is important, but it's also true that EA teams struggle for influence, laboring mightily in the shadows, out of the limelight. Forrester and InfoWorld have teamed up to end all that. Well, OK, we may not be able to do a lot about the […]

Despite the lack of a sustained full-on recovery in the global economy, one gets the feeling that we're at the beginning of a period of tech expansion and growth, doesn't one? For many, 2011 budgeting planning is happening now, so it remains to be seen what your expansion and growth will be in the near term, […]

A number of Forrester analysts have been collaborating on a series of Tweet Jams on topics related to data management. The last session was on BI, and the next one up is on MDM. These are very lively sessions involving many points of view on some quite provocative topics. I'm pasting in text from analyst […]