Merv, Principal at IT Market Strategy, has spent 3 decades in the information technology industry. As Senior Vice President at Forrester Research, he was responsible for all of Forrester’s technology research for several years, before returning to his roots as an analyst covering the software industry and launching Forrester’s well-regarded practice in Analyst Relations. Prior to his Forrester role, Merv was Vice President and Research Manager with responsibility for the West Coast staff at Giga Information Group. Merv focused on facilitating collaborative research among analysts, and served as executive editor of the monthly Research Digest and weekly GigaFlash. He chaired the GigaWorld conference (and later Forrester IT Forum) for several years, and led the jam band, a popular part of those events, as a guitarist and singer.

Prior to becoming a technology analyst, Merv was Senior Director, Strategic Marketing at Sybase, where he also worked as director of marketing for data warehousing and director of analyst relations. Prior to Sybase, Merv served as a marketing manager at Information Builders, where he founded and edited a technical journal and a marketing quarterly, subsequently becoming involved in corporate and product marketing and launching a formal AR role.

Before entering the IT industry, Merv spent a decade building systems in the securities, banking and transportation industries in New York, including several years as a manager of end user computing at Shearson Lehman Brothers and a stint as a statistical analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. His early analysis of the micro-to-mainframe market and its impact on decision support, The Workstation Data Link, was published by McGraw-Hill in 1988.

Merv was a member of the Advisory Board of the International Data Warehouse Association in its formative years, and served as editor of the NY PC User Group Newsletter in the mid-‘80s. He holds a B.S. in business administration (finance) from CUNY’s Baruch College.