September 2021 – February 2022 Research Recap — Cloud And Operations

Lauren Nelson, VP, Research Director

Mar 11 2022

Hello again! In 2021, I started highlighting our top research each month. As a research director, I get to not only see the final outcome but also all 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, my goal was to blog each month, highlighting a few of my favorites and including links to the full body of work published that month. Obviously, I fell off the bandwagon toward the end of the year. So, I’m picking up where I left off.

Normally, I choose two reports to highlight. This time, I’m going to do it a little differently since there’s so much research to highlight. There are four projects that are my favorites from the end of 2021 and into early 2022:

Seven Steps To Jump-Start Your DevOps Journey and Seven Steps To Scale Your DevOps Transformation — Agile is better when paired with DevOps. Chris Condo and Charlie Betz have fielded countless inquiries over the past few years about how to kick off a successful “agile + DevOps” initiative and how to ensure the initiative scales. These reports outline our findings in two simple seven-step guides. They also interviewed a long list of thought leaders in this space to power this research, and the next step is a guide to DevOps and a report outlining the future of DevOps. Stay tuned for those upcoming reports.

Tackle Your Operations Challenges With Forrester’s Scenario Quick Start Cards and Tackle Your Cloud Challenges With Forrester’s Scenario Quick Start Cards — First, a shameless self-callout: I invented a new report type! As part of our Forrester Decisions launch, we wanted to create quick start advice to help solve the most common challenges for a given topic. The reports above identify a common scenario, the key steps for overcoming that challenge, and a quote from a peer who faced the same scenario. This format has since become a standard Forrester report type. The links above do this for our top operations and cloud challenges. These are only available for our Forrester Decision clients. If you do have access, you’ll see there’s a list of scenarios in bullets, and below, there are figures that outline how to tackle each. For ease of consumption, a downloadable PowerPoint is also available.

Scoring Our 2021 Cloud Predictions and Predictions 2022: Cloud Computing — Every year, Forrester writes a series of predictions reports. One of our most popular predictions reports is on cloud. In 2022, we look at geopolitical impacts, cloud native built deep into cloud strategies and extended out to the edge, and the onset of industry clouds. After the year is through, we always return to our prior year’s predictions and score ourselves on what held up, what was too aggressive, and what was wrong. Our scores for 2021 were released in February.

The Hybrid Cloud Network, Part 1: Designs and The Hybrid Cloud Network, Part 2: Services And Providers — Everyone likes a good “blame the network” joke, but in the world of cloud, this is a frightening reality. As cloud strategies start to reach a level of scale where immaturity can cripple cloud plans, it’s especially troubling. The first report goes through four scenarios and a list of best practices from those pushing the hybrid cloud networking conversation today. The second report digs into your options regarding the technology you can use along with the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches. Hats off to Andre Kindness for writing some truly differentiated research around hybrid cloud networking at a time when it is greatly needed.

Our New Cloud Research

Executive Guide 2022: Cloud — a quick read for executives on the basics, latest trends, and key executive decisions for cloud, complete with a video overview

How To Keep Your Cloud Options Open — a nice architectural overview on ensuring your cloud workloads are more portable to move between clouds

Charter A Corporate Cloud Platform Team — a look at how to organize infrastructure specialists around cloud to facilitate your product teams

The Forrester Wave™: AI Infrastructure, Q4 2021 — The first Forrester Wave of its kind, it evaluates cloud and on-premises AI infrastructure players.

Specialized Infrastructure Is Creating New Industry Insights — This report explores the trend of specialized infrastructure, including high-performance computing (HPC) and its role in the major industries. It looks at yesterday, today, and the future evolution of specialized compute — along with the key technologies to follow. This report includes a video.

Cloud-Native Technologies Reignite Portability Strategies — This report explores the trend of portability — from fearmongering to real single-supplier risk arguments. It looks at yesterday, today, and the future of portability for cloud and the key technologies enabling this flexibility. This report includes a video.

Workload Affinity Becomes The Strategy For Edge Computing — This report explores the trend of workload affinity and the new conversations around cloud native at the edge. It looks at yesterday, today, and the future of workload affinity (i.e., the ability to move an app based on its requirements and the key technologies that enables). This report includes a video.

Top 10 Facts Every Cloud Leader Needs To Know About Kubernetes And Containers — a quick primer for companies getting started with containers and Kubernetes that want to move from 101 to 301 knowledge quickly

The Forrester Wave™: Public Cloud Container Platforms, Q1 2022 — our first full evaluation on public cloud container platforms (i.e., managed container services on your favorite public cloud vendors)

Best Practices: Kubernetes — This is our list of best practices for Kubernetes — from tool category selection to tackling complexity across technology, stakeholders, and larger architectural decisions.

The Forrester Guide To Hybrid Cloud — a guide to understanding hybrid cloud, from its definition to the must-knows about hybrid cloud strategies

The Forrester Buying Guide For Hybrid Cloud Management — This takes another look at the hybrid cloud management evaluations to give practical advice on how to customize your shortlist given your company’s circumstances.

The Forrester Guide To Native Cloud Management — our first report that digs into the management capabilities of the native public cloud providers relative to third-party solutions

Optimize The Design Of Your Businesswide Multicloud Network — Cloud networking remains the greatest cloud challenge. This report goes step-by-step through hybrid and multicloud networking architectures and technologies to outline current approaches and industry shortcomings.

Cloud Powers The Adaptive Enterprise — a refresh of our cloud vision report regarding the higher business value if leveraging cloud technologies and the keys to success

Our New Operations Research

Forrester’s Essential Modern Technology Operations Research — an overview highlighting our key operations reports

Streamline Process Management With Lean And Agile Thinking — a guide to allowing flexibility in your processes such that they can streamline for efficiency while also encouraging creativity

Intrapreneurship Is The Future Of Innovation — This report explores the trend of sustainable innovation through intrapreneurship. It looks at yesterday, today, and the future of innovation and the key technologies enabling it. This report includes a video.

The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Service Management, Q4 2021 — our latest evaluation of the enterprise service management/IT service management market

Knowledge Management Needs A Capacity-Building Approach — Julie Mohr’s first report at Forrester applies the concept of capacity building from the nonprofit world to the fundamental changes necessary to master knowledge management.

IT Operations Must Rise To Meet The Modern Business — Carlos Casanova’s first report at Forrester discusses the importance of AI and analytics in optimizing operations for the modern business.

The Future Of Employee Computing — Forrester completed 40-plus interviews with leaders in the industry to understand the current state and future state of employee computing. This report outlines the key characteristics that will describe our employee computing future.

Build Better Teams By Playing Video Games At Work — a fun piece that explores the use of gaming as a team-building exercise

Best Practices: Embrace Experience-Level Agreements (XLAs) — a great report about coupling service-level agreements with XLAs that hold your partners accountable beyond the normal T’s and C’s of a typical services contract

The Forrester Wave™: Unified Endpoint Management, Q4 2021 — our latest unified endpoint management evaluation of the top players in the market

The State Of VDI, 2021 — This report digs into the current state of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). Spoiler alert: Cloud-based VDI jumped in adoption during the pandemic.

Gauge Your Employee Technology Experience Management Maturity For Anywhere-Work — Wondering how your new anywhere-work strategy compares with other organizations? Take this assessment to find out!

Role Profile: The Head Of Remote Technology — Leading enterprises are creating a dedicated role for remote/anywhere-work technology. This outlines the role and what to look for in terms of success.