Forrester was founded in July 1983 by George Forrester Colony, now chairman of the board and chief executive officer, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The company's first report, "The Professional Automation Report," was published in November 1983. In November 1996, Forrester announced its initial public offering of 2,300,000 shares. In February 2000, the company announced its secondary public offering of 626,459 shares.
Forrester has made a number of acquisitions over the past 20 years, including Fletcher Research, a British Internet research firm, in November 1999; FORIT GmbH, a German market research and consulting firm, in October 2000; Giga Information Group, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based information technology research and consulting company, in February 2003;[3] New York City-based Jupiter Research, in July 2008;[4]
Strategic Oxygen on December 1, 2009; Springboard Research on May 12, 2011; FeedbackNow and GlimpzIt in 2018; and SiriusDecisions, a business-to-business research and advisory firm, in 2019.