As four of the largest and arguably most currently influential technology companies — Google, Amazon.com, Apple, and Facebook — continue to exhibit ambitious tendencies to capture consumer information and transaction data, eBusiness executives are left to ponder the impact of these players on their day-to-day businesses. These companies collectively have a market capitalization of more than $700 billion and are increasingly viewed as the gateways to Internet traffic. Their impact on eBusiness ranges from interesting and innocuous forays into commerce to disruptive forces that must be approached with circumspection.

Retailers are ditching the term multichannel. Instead, in the era of agile commerce, they talk about delivering a “buy anywhere, fulfill anywhere” experience to their customers. In pursuit of this vision, eBusiness leaders’ and their peers’ in-store operations are embarking on an aligned journey to digitize the in-store experience by empowering customers and sales associates alike with best-in-class mobile and interactive technologies. The business case for this investment is twofold: First to prevent the loss of in-store sales, and second to create an endless aisle where stores can capture sales for items beyond those on the shelf. This report will help eBusiness professionals identify best-of-breed in-store digital experiences and the technology behind them, as well as understand their role in building out these experiences.

As social TV continues to grow, so does the number of questions that clients ask Forrester about it. One crucial piece of this multiscreen puzzle: How can marketers ensure that their second screen messaging is synchronized to what consumers are watching on the television screen? The most promising solution: audio fingerprinting. This document explains what it is, why it matters for social TV, who the players are, and what marketers should do about it.

A mature customer intelligence (CI) function needs optimized data processes, cutting-edge technologies, and the right analytics talent. Analysts add value to CI with their data-mining and data-diagnosis skills. To effectively embed analytics into an organizations’ decision-making fabric, analysts also need a business-oriented mindset to make their findings more relevant to the business. This report highlights the need to nurture business-savvy analysts and marketing scientists with a penchant both to build statistical models and to use the output to craft customer growth strategies.

Senior marketers continue to focus on customer acquisition as their No. 1 marketing priority. Acquiring new customers is the starting point of any marketing strategy, and it’s a significant investment, given that it’s more expensive to acquire new customers than to retain existing ones. Marketers have to simultaneously minimize cost of acquisition and improve targeting to make the newly acquired relationship profitable. This report highlights how customer analytics supports acquisition activities using segmentation, response modeling, and propensity modeling techniques.

In an attempt to control IT costs, the US federal government is establishing mandates that are forcing deep and massive technology change. With data center consolidation and cloud migrations entering full tilt, federal agencies and their components are counting on enterprise architecture (EA) to help guide the transformation. In this research, we report the findings from our interview with an experienced IT manager at the IRS who helped his organization through a similar cost-reduction effort. We relate lessons learned and examine the implications for a consolidated, cloud-enabled future for the federal government.

Early in 2011, Forrester made a series of predictions about the future of infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud for that year. With 2012 now upon us, it’s time to evaluate last year’s predictions and introduce new prognostications. In 2012, Forrester predicts that cloud computing will move out of the shadows and become a mainstream technology that IT must proactively manage. This means big changes in the test and development process, business intelligence, and corporate governance. Infrastructure and operations (I&O) might have gotten away with blocking public cloud service consumption on the grounds of immaturity or security in the past, but those arguments won’t hold in 2012. I&O leaders should start the year with policies and procedures in place and must get involved in the consumption of these services. And no, your private cloud alone won’t be good enough.

European shoppers are becoming increasingly web-savvy and are turning to a wider range of touchpoints as they research and buy products online and offline. In response, eBusiness executives across Europe must learn to build sophisticated agile commerce strategies that embrace the increasingly multichannel nature of their shoppers. But eBusiness execs must be careful to separate the game-changing and value-adding initiatives from the hype. Speed, flexibility, and a multichannel approach, underpinned by a robust understanding of cross-touchpoint customer behavior are the keys. Amid a sea of other distractions, eBusiness execs must learn to experiment and innovate to identify genuinely valuable new technologies and services while simultaneously enhancing their core capabilities.