James Staten

James helps CIOs position themselves and their departments as the innovation leaders to help drive their company’s digital business initiatives and transformation.

James returned to Forrester in 2018 after serving as the Enterprise Customer Advisory Board leader and global head of market development at Equinix, the global leader in cloud-neutral connectivity and hosting. Prior to that, he served as the GM and chief strategist for Microsoft Azure, helping guide Microsoft’s Cloud & Enterprise division to drive innovations that empower enterprise digital business initiatives, including blockchain as well as API and platform enablement. In his previous role at Forrester, he led the cloud computing playbook and pioneered Forrester’s research on infrastructure-as-a-service.

Working out of Silicon Valley, James holds a master’s from the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Southern California and a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Texas. He is also a graduate of the Executive Program, Singularity University — driving exponential innovations.