A year and a half ago I broke up with Blackberry and started dating iPhone. It was a clean but cruel breakup: AT&T cancelled my T-Mobile contract on my behalf, the equivalent of getting dumped by your girlfriend’s new boyfriend.

This year I’ve been cheating on my laptop with my iPad. But it’s an on-again, off-again relationship. While I tell my iPad it’s the only one, I keep going back to my laptop. When I travel, my iPad is with me meeting clients. Meanwhile my laptop is in the hotel room surfing the online menu for a turkey club.

The iPad beats my laptop on size, weight, connectivity, and battery life. It also improves the human element when I’m having a face-to-face conversation but need to take notes. These are all critically important to me when I'm out of the office visiting clients or at an event.

But my laptop wins when I need to perform other important activities. For example, the larger screen really helps to write and edit research reports (John Rakowski, you’ll have your edits soon!). Or when I need to approve expenses behind the VPN or access files on my hard drive that I haven’t stored in Google Drive (yes, Forrester sanctioned).

Now that I've had a few months of compare both devices, I come back to outcomes . . .

What am I trying to achieve? And what’s the best way to accomplish it? As much as I wanted my iPad to displace my laptop, it was unrealistic thinking given my varying outcomes and contexts. The iPad lets me reach some outcomes better than my laptop, especially on the road, but not others, like writing and editing. So for now, I need both. 

Forrester’s upcoming Infrastructure & Operations (I&O) Forums are focused on just this: Helping you deliver on your business outcomes. We will showcase our latest research and analyst thinking combined with insights from your industry peers to support your business outcomes. Here is what you can expect at Forrester’s I&O Forum in Washington DC (May 6-7) and London (June 10-11):

  • Envision the impact of radical change: Keynotes from Forrester’s CEO, George Colony, will examine the business demands of the perpetually connected. Superstar analysts, James Staten and Eve Maler will reveal opportunities of the data economy. Jennifer Belissent will share what digitally connected citizens mean to business and government. And John Kindervag and Andre Kindness will help you rethink security and networks from your customer’s perspective.
  • Identify what business outcomes I&O should prioritize: David Johnson and Christian Kane will reveal how empowered, happy employees and their technology create happy customers. Eveline Oehrlich and Stephen Mann will move from a provider of technology parts to a broker of high-value business services. John Rakowski (London Forum) will prescribe customer experience as a cure to ailing service desks. And Michele Pelino will develop the economic case for BYOD.
  • Understand how I&O can deliver your business outcomes: Technology leaders from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (U.S. Forum) and Royal Mail (London Forum) will share their best practices to succeed in a world of change. Forrester analyst Rachel Dines will help you embed resiliency to improve customer experience. Lauren Nelson and Henry Dewing (London Forum) will help you deliver on private cloud and unified communications. And Glenn O’Donnell will host a panel of I&O leaders to discuss the emerging technologies they’re using to achieve business outcomes.

In addition, you can schedule analyst 1:1 meetings and network with your I&O peers as well as the CIOs, Enterprise Architects, Sourcing and Vendor Managers, and Security and Risk leaders who are also onsite.

As your host for the third year, I couldn’t be more excited so see you in May and June. In the meantime, don’t hesitate to leave a comment for questions or share ideas on content you’d like to see.

See you then,

~ Doug

And if you’re wondering, I wrote this on my laptop – but tethered to my iPhone since the Wi-Fi is down.