Forrester Wave released – Strategic IT Planning on the Rise

Last week, Forrester Research released The Forrester Wave™: Business Process Analysis, EA Tools, And IT Planning, Q1 2009.  This was the second year that Forrester analyst Henry Peyret led the research, and this wave provides the broadest and most up to date coverage of EA and Strategic IT Planning tools currently available.

As we have seen over the last few years, vendors in these spaces have continued to pick areas of business value to focus their resources.  Forrester recognized this ongoing bifurcation of the traditional EA tools market place, and actually released three separate Wave graphs in this single report: Business Process Analysis, Enterprise Architecture and IT Planning (Forrester does not use the term “Strategic”)

Forrester analyzed 9 different offerings from vendors across these three segments. While Forrester had interesting comments in the BPA and EA segments, I believe that the emergence of IT Planning as a credible and competitive discipline will mean the most to the readers of A&G. 

According to Peyret, “The current generation of EA tools is introducing another new category of functionality: features for planning IT changes such as consolidation of data centers, rationalization of applications worldwide, or an IT merger after an acquisition.”

“IT strategists choose IT planning capabilities for faster and better planning changes. It is difficult for IT strategists in large enterprises to make the right decisions at the right times. Engaging and coordinating the many stakeholders needed in decisions to launch major change initiatives can be troublesome, particularly in industries or countries where a consensus approach is the norm. IT strategists of every stripe, including enterprise architects, prefer products that help them plan and synchronize the high-impact initiatives.”

Forrester Waves measure vendors by comparing the strength of their current offerings against the strength of their strategy.  Vendors in the most upper right segment of the chart are considered the “Leaders”.  Architecture & Governance congratulations both the vendors and Forrester for their success in this intensive review. 

The Forrester Wave is available for Free Download (for a limited time) from Troux Technologies: http://www.troux.com/resources/events/special/forrester_wave/