by Laura Koetzle

Last week, Forrester’s CIO Group held its North American Fall Member Meeting in Chicago. In addition to enjoying some Chicago-style deep dish pizza and dinner at the Art Institute of Chicago, approximately 70 members gathered from across the globe to discuss top-of-mind issues. Sessions included presentations from Forrester analysts, case studies presented by members, and a workshop on IT strategic planning.

You should check out Forrester analyst Lisa Bradner's post today over at our Marketing Leadership Blog. Her concept of adaptive brand marketing helps companies re-think their approach to brand management in a world where brand messages are no longer a one-way push, but in fact are shaped by consumers as they interact with and react to brands.

CPS pros should take away the point that marketers and consumer product teams (which might have marketers of their own, or not) need to coordinate their efforts in lockstep to make sure the brand and the organization are prepared for instant feedback from consumers. Because, right now, most organizations are ill-equipped to handle this new world of "always-on" marketing.

Forrester Principal Analyst, Randy Heffner is currently conducting research on how enterprise architects should incorporate cloud computing into their organizations’ IT strategies and architectures. He is looking for enterprise architects to interview — architects that have experience with evaluating Cloud offerings, if not actually using them. In the research, Randy is considering three broad categories of cloud computing offerings: Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS).

In the first three quarters of 2009, I’ve had an increasing number of discussions with Forrester clients about the state of mobile development and what technologies they should be evaluating. These conversations usually start with the statement “mobility is a mess…” What I mean by that statement is that we’re in the midst of a sea change in the technology options that IT shops have at their disposal when it comes to building custom mobile applications. The frenetic pace of evolution makes mobile development one of the Top 15 Technology Trends and it warrants careful attention on the part of enterprise architects and application development professionals.  By the end of 2010, you’ll have at least five distinct mobile applications architectures to choose from, including: