Forrester is delighted to announce the opening call for our annual global Technology Awards in three categories this year: the Technology Strategy Impact Award, the Enterprise Architecture Award, and the all-new Data & AI Impact Award. These awards aim to recognize high-performing organizations that have enhanced business outcomes with their IT, AI, and data capabilities. (Links to submit your nomination based on your region are available at the end of this blog.)

The Forrester Technology Strategy Impact Award

The Forrester Technology Strategy Impact Award is the only award dedicated to recognizing excellence in IT strategy that continuously improves business results through the use of technology. We aim to highlight and reward organizations for enhancing business outcomes with their technology and IT capabilities, emphasizing alignment, trust, and adaptivity. This is the essence of high-performance IT.

We invite nominations from companies that exemplify one or more of the following high-performance IT styles:

  • Enabling capabilities: demonstrating excellence in stabilizing, operating, and protecting the business.
  • Amplifying capabilities: utilizing automation, data and analytics, AI, and other technologies to optimize outcomes and drive business efficiency at scale.
  • Cocreating capabilities: showcasing the rapid development, delivery, and operation of new products, features, or services.
  • Transforming capabilities: scaling and rapidly deploying emerging technologies that create or disrupt new business models.

Showcase how your IT strategy aligns with business goals, adapts to change, fosters trust, and improves business outcomes. Winning the 2025 Forrester Technology Strategy Impact Award offers prestige, significant exposure, and recognition for your organization’s achievements.

The Forrester Enterprise Architecture Award

The Forrester Enterprise Architecture Award is the only global awards program dedicated to recognizing excellence in enterprise architecture. We continue our partnership with The Open Group — author of the TOGAF® Standard, developed by The Open Group Architecture Forum — to co-judge the EA Award category this year.

The recipients of this award can demonstrate their EA practice’s material contribution to their firms in managing risk, driving cost-efficiency, improving customer experience (including the employee experience), and increasing revenue (or supporting mission outcomes for nonprofit, governmental, and military organizations). They may also demonstrate:

  • An EA roadmap that contributes to the high performance of the technology organization and the entire business.
  • EA practices that drive change, growth, and differentiation through timely yet strategic decisions.
  • An EA organization that embodies the six foundational priorities: valuable, influential, agile, accountable, innovative, and collaborative.
  • EA metrics that focus on customer outcomes and experiences.

This year, we continue our special award considerations with two categories: generative AI and platform engineering.

We encourage all companies that have achieved success in outcome-driven EA practices to participate in the Forrester Enterprise Architecture Award.

The Forrester Data & AI Impact Award

The Forrester Data & AI Impact Award is designed to celebrate the impact of data, AI, and analytics initiatives that directly contribute to business results, especially in the backdrop of AI’s rapid pace of development. Newly empowered data, AI, and analytics leaders are meeting this challenge with innovative technology and intentional leadership approaches that solve today’s needs and set their enterprises up for the future. We want to recognize and honor their unique contributions at this critical juncture of technological change.

The Data & AI Impact Award honors those remarkable enterprise data, AI, or analytics teams that catalyze effective decision-making to drive business outcomes. The winner will demonstrate the ability to:

  • Deliver solutions at scale. Deliver data, AI, and analytics as a product for multiple enterprise functions, with demonstrable business results.
  • Effectively enable stakeholders. Invest deliberately in driving literacy and competencies to amplify data, AI, and analytics across organizational objectives.
  • Continuously build and maintain trust. Establish and maintain trust in data, AI, and analytics with effective frameworks and technologies.

Nominations for the inaugural edition of this award will begin on Wednesday, April 23, 2025, and are only open for organizations based in North America.

Who Should Apply?

Nominations for the three award categories are open to organizations with 1,000 or more employees in sectors other than software or professional services that are executing a high-performance IT strategy and/or pursuing outcome-driven architecture as defined by Forrester. Technology leaders, including chief information officers, chief technology officers, chief digital officers, chief data officers, and enterprise architects, across three regions — North America; Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA); and Asia Pacific (APAC) — are encouraged to apply. (Note again that the Data & AI Impact Award is for North American organizations only.)

Last year’s winners for the Technology Strategy Impact Award were Best Buy and First Student in North America, Smart DCC and BNP Paribas Bank Polska in EMEA, and Macquarie’s Banking and Financial Services group (Macquarie BFS) in APAC. For the Enterprise Architecture Award, the winners were Scotiabank in North America, DRÄXLMAIER Group in EMEA, and Contact Energy in APAC.

You can find more information about the award categories, plus detailed submission packages and instructions, on the websites for our three Technology & Innovation Summits below. Please choose the appropriate link for your region:

North America

EMEA

APAC

Submissions close on May 27 for APAC and July 16 for North America and EMEA.

We will notify the winners and finalists by the end of July 2025 for APAC and by the end of September 2025 for North America and EMEA. At that time, we will ask for additional information. We will then announce finalists and award recipients ahead of Forrester’s Technology & Innovation Summits in North America, EMEA, and APAC.

Spread the word, and if you’re entering, good luck!