Robert Stroud

2017 is the year of DevOps! The team here at Forrester is seeing this momentum grow every day with increased inquiries, solution proliferation and a growing number of calls from executives on scaling from DevOps pilots to the enterprise. Enterprises are accelerating to deliver on the promise of Digital Transformation – they have no choice. […]

Earlier in the year, we declared 2017 to be the year of DevOps and I am pleased to say, “We were right!” With our data confirming that 50% of organizations are implementing DevOps, DevOps has reached “Escape Velocity.” The questions and discussions with clients have shifted from “What is DevOps?” to “How do I implement […]

I am seeing more and more inquiries focused on driving business transformation where the transformation depends on software and business technology.  ING is a model for digital transformation, and Ralph Hamers, CEO, has publicly reinforced the bank’s transformation. Hamers stated “We have to recognize that technology is what Banks do”[i]. Every business today must focus […]

DevOps is no longer the new kid on the block; all industries are adopting it. Despite this adherence to principles of speed, velocity, and agility, release frequency appears to be lagging. Continuous deployment can help: Organizations leveraging an integrated continuous deployment tool set are able to make the dream of continuous releases to production a […]

Every day I hear more about the pressure I&O organizations are under to accelerate the delivery of applications and services and the pressure it is placing on the existing resources.  As organizations transition, DevOps, formally the purview of unicorns, is now transitioning to mainstream.  DevOps, which started as a grassroots approach by development organizations who […]

Infrastructure is increasingly software-based with rapid container growth, composable infrastructure[i], and of course the consumption of cloud.  Additionally, as the velocity of change increases – and will continue to increase – the premise that we can continue to manage these systems with our traditional methods is no longer true. The management of your estate mandates […]

In an era where velocity and agility are driving technology management organizations over simple cost reduction, every business must constantly evolve to drive business differentiation. Leveraging practices such as Lean and Agile, smaller changes, automated pipelines and product centric teams, DevOps is transitioning from unicorns and small projects to company-wide initiatives. Companies such as Walmart, ING and JetBlue to […]

Delivering exceptional customer experiences and product for your business take speed and flexibility. More than ever before, speed and flexibility are required from every part of your organization, business and IT alike. DevOps provides your business leaders, enterprise architects, developers and I&O leaders a philosophy to achieve, not only the velocity that customers desire but […]

The born-digital “unicorn” companies such as Etsy, Google and Netflix, are pioneers of modern DevOps, but BT leaders at companies of all ages, sizes, and types are now eagerly pursuing the same principles.[i] The pressure for speed and quality is DevOps becoming pivotal for all organizations. For example, KeyBank is leveraging DevOps to quickly deliver […]

In the days of old, not very long ago, release cycles were measured in years —organizations were using “on-time” and “on-budget" as the mantra for project efficacy. Business today is compelled to deliver business technology in cycles of hours, or days. Faster cycles render not only tradition “waterfall” processes and silo based IT obsolete, it […]

We are eager to announce a beacon of light to help penetrate the post-holiday fog: Forrester’s DevOps Benchmark Survey for 2017 is officially live! Led by myself and Researcher Elinor Klavens, this benchmark survey serves as the backbone for a large portion of our DevOps research, facilitating the identification and tracking of trends and supporting […]

Every business today is under pressure from a startup that is disrupting their traditional market. We have seen this in the taxi industry with Uber[i], ATOM Bank is revolutionizing banking[ii] and Airbnb the hotel industry.[iii] The overused statement that today every business is a software business, is resonating in every industry and we are all […]

DevOps velocity mandates change velocity Enterprises today are focusing on delivering applications faster to drive customer experiences and drive business transformation to meet rising expectations. For some, faster delivery is simply faster time to disappointment where the delivery process is shoddy and speed is the only metric. Speed without quality in an oxymoron – and […]

Did someone forget to tell the mainframe it was irrelevant? For many years, the much lauded death of the mainframe has been espoused by many pundits. Many believed the end of the mainframe would be further accelerated with the rapid growth of cloud adoption.  I am sorry to report to those naysayers, the mainframe didn’t […]

Customers today are hyper-connected and their connectivity is rewriting the rules of business. Access to mobility, social networks, wearable devices, connected cars and hotels managed by robots are rapidly changing the behaviors of how customers engage and purchase. Think how you watch a film, shop or order a taxi. The disruptive power in the hands […]

Today’s customers, products, business operations, and competitors are fundamentally digital. Succeeding in this new era mandates everyone constantly reinvent their businesses as fundamentally digital. You have two choices, ·      become a digital predator; or ·      become digital prey. To compete in this new digital market norm, software applications and products must contain new sources of […]

Over the past 25 years, many organizations have modelled their support – and in some cases their delivery organization – after the ITIL frameworks and processes. For many, ITIL has been helpful in establishing the rigor and governance that they needed to bring their infrastructure under control in an era where quality and consistency of […]

As we embark in the era of “cloud first” being business as usual for operations, one of the acronyms flying aground the industry is SDDC or the Software Defined Data Center.  The term, very familiar to me since starting with Forrester less than six months ago, has become an increasing topic of conversation with Forrester […]

For many years, infrastructure and operations (I&O) professionals have been dedicated to delivering services at lower costs and ever greater efficiency, but the business technology (BT) agenda requires innovation that delivers top-line growth.   The evolution and success of digital business models is leading I&O organizations to disrupt their traditional infrastructure models to pursue cloud […]