Tracy Woo
Principal Analyst

Author Insights
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Forrester’s Impressions: VMware Explore 2023
In recent years, VMware has faced major headwinds: It migrated its clients from on-premises to public cloud, changed to a cloud-native application development paradigm, shifted to subscription licensing, had frequent cycles of M&A activities, and experienced unfavorable macroeconomic environments. Despite these, VMware registered modest revenue growth. Even though it grew, it knows it is vulnerable. […]
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Hyperscalers, It’s Time To FOCUS
In late June, at FinOps X, the annual event hosted by FinOps Foundation, a big topic was the open source project FinOps Open Cost & Usage Specification (FOCUS), which aims to standardize the billing construct and presentation of cloud cost data. This is a BIG DEAL. In doing so, FOCUS will remove the complexity and […]
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The Rise Of DIY In FinOps
One of the trends that emerged from FinOps X in San Diego is that DIY tooling is on the rise. Find out why Forrester typically tries to dissuade FinOps teams from taking this route.
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IBM Reups On FinOps With Its Apptio Acquisition
Late Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that IBM is in potential late-stage talks to acquire cloud cost management and optimization (CCMO) and IT financial management (ITFM)/technology business management (TBM) company Apptio for roughly $5 billion. If the deal closes, the value would be at more than twice Apptio’s previous purchase price of $1.94 billion […]
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Guide Your Compute Architecture Investment Decisions With The Forrester Tech Tide
Compute architectures are fast evolving to serve changing business scenarios and needs. We frequently hear the difficulties that you face as options emerge. The difficulties are rooted in deciding whether to use commodity or fit-for-purpose compute architectures, whether for generative AI, data-intensive applications, or edge deployments. This also ties closely to the central role that […]
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Make The Case For FinOps
While the prevailing macroeconomic conditions reinforce the need to control cloud spend, CFOs still require a solid business case for any net-new spend. Building a business case for FinOps is relatively straightforward with a fairly quick ROI. First, most companies just purchase a relatively inexpensive cloud cost management and optimization (CCMO) solution that adds efficiency, […]
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The New Major Cloud Adopters: Financial Services
Learn why financial services organizations are relying more on public cloud today for digital banking services.
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Hybrid Cloud Is Hard To Manage
Get actionable tips and guidance on how to manage the messy hybrid cloud environment.
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Cloud Powers Retail Through The Economic Slowdown
The retail industry was an early adopter of cloud and has continued to expand its use. Learn three key trends from our new report The State Of Cloud In Retail.
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FinOps Is Getting A Seat At The Executive Table
Earlier this year, I promised a slew of research on FinOps. Today, I published the first in this series, What Technology Executives Need To Know: FinOps. This report is especially timely, as FinOps is getting a front-row seat with executives globally across verticals and across organizations of all sizes. Amid a growing economic slowdown, efficiency […]
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HPE Ramps Up Hybrid Cloud Management With OpsRamp Acquisition
On Monday, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced its intention to acquire OpsRamp, which offers a multitenant AIOps-powered IT operations management (ITOM) solution for hybrid cloud environments. Its AIOps solution will be integrated into HPE’s GreenLake edge-to-cloud Platform. OpsRamp’s 300 employees will join HPE’s office of the CTO. Terms of the OpsRamp acquisition were not announced, […]
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The Biggest Conversations In Cloud Management? FinOps And Operationalizing Cloud
Get a preview of our upcoming coverage in two key areas: operationalizing cloud and cloud cost management.
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A Short History Of Financial Services In The Cloud
I’ve been working with a long list of financial services companies from various subsectors on their cloud strategies. Each wants to know how to best take advantage of cloud while meeting stringent (and shifting) regulatory requirements. It’s been a long road for financial services and cloud. Here’s a little bit of history. Financial services have […]
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The DoD Announces The Winners For Its $9B JWCC Contract
This week, the US Department of Defense put an end to the year-long suspense by announcing the winners for its Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability contract. Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure were the big winners of the $9 billion contract.
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Uneven Innovation At AWS re:Invent 2022
Some 14 Forrester analysts attended this year’s AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas. The conference was a mix of innovation in some areas — particularly compute and networking, along with a co-engineering approach to industry cloud — but plateaus in others, such as hybrid and edge. Efficiency and consolidation were underlying themes, from amping up AI/ML […]
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Learnings From Our Hybrid Cloud Management Forrester Wave™
This blog piggybacks off of my last post regarding the management evaluations I’ve been working on in 2022. As previously noted, they take a lot of effort but deliver high value — a lot of which can’t be captured in a single report. I already shared my tidbits of advice for the cost management evaluation. […]
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Learnings From Our Cloud Cost Management Forrester Wave™
It’s been a grand spring, summer, and fall of Forrester Wave™ evaluations for me. These evaluations are time-intensive. I’ve spent many nights, weekends, and early and late hours on two separate cloud management evaluations. The participating vendors each spent long hours submitting answers to detailed questionnaires, lining up customer references and executive briefings, and preparing […]
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The NVIDIA/Microsoft AI Supercomputer Cloud Is A No-Brainer
Learn about NVIDIA's multiyear collaboration with Microsoft to build a cloud-based artificial intelligence supercomputer.
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VMware Bets Its Future On Multicloud — But The Odds Are Long
Will enterprises pay big money for both public cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and VMware cloud infrastructure services just to get past hyperscaler lock-in? That’s VMware’s wager in a multicloud and hybrid world, and the company’s flagship user event touted a series of services and offerings to convince customers to take VMware with them […]
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Google Public Sector Is A Move To Amplify Industry-Specific Credentials
On June 28, Google unveiled plans for a new Public Sector subsidiary aimed at helping US public institutions, such as state, local, and educational institutions, drive digital transformations into the cloud. The company also has US federal ambitions by partnering with the Defense Innovation Unit, the US Navy, and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). […]
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