IDC Research Types
Analyst
Analyst Profile
Provides complete background information on an IDC analyst. Each profile provides a biography, a notable quotation, a frequently asked question relevant to the particular analyst's focus, and a list of research authored by that analyst.
Team Profile
Lists the analyst members of a topical team. Outlines general areas of coverage and any specialties.
Briefs
Flash
Provides rapid IDC insight and analysis about a significant industry event or conference, merger or acquisition, product announcement, or other fast-breaking news affecting the IT market.
Forecast Update
Provides a short, quick look at an updated forecast and the changed assumptions behind the update. It updates a market forecast published in the same calendar year, identifies changed and key forecast assumptions, and highlights actions for participants to consider in light of the changes.
IDC Insight
Provides coverage and analysis of an industry event, new product or service, or a company announcement or development.
Update
Provides brief overview coverage of what is happening in a market.
Vendor Profiles
Provides a concise, hard-hitting profile of an emerging vendor. A profile will highlight new players and technologies and the potential paradigm shifts or disruptions a vendor represents.
Daily Graphics
Daily Graphic
Illustrates IDC's keen analysis of major market trends in downloadable PowerPoints. Available as a free download the day it appears, an IDC Daily Graphic provides valuable material for speeches and strategic planning.
Event Proceedings
Event Proceeding
Provides published slides, audio, and other materials from IDC and Insights Web conferences, briefings, forums, or other events.
Events
Conference
Delivers dependable, relevant, and high-impact data and insight to help organizations make sound business and technology decisions. eBusiness executives, IT professionals, IT suppliers, and services suppliers benefit from the strategic insight and networking opportunities IDC conferences offer. Generally, all presentation slides are available online, and for most conferences, streaming audio of key discussions is available as well.
Web Conference
Focuses on significant trends and paradigm shifts. Each Web conference will provide attendees with leading-edge market information that will enable them to make smart business decisions. For those unable to attend in person or those wishing to review the content presented, these synchronized multimedia presentations are available online.
IDC DecisionScapes
IDC FutureScape
Serves as a framework for IT/tech professionals' IT strategy and planning for the next one to three years. It lists IDC's top 10 worldwide technology trends for the coming one to three years in a given research area and includes related drivers, projected IT/business strategy impact, and guidance.
IDC MarketScape
Helps IT/tech professionals develop a short list of suitable suppliers when selecting a vendor. Provides an unbiased assessment of tech suppliers in terms of offerings, strategy, capabilities, and other important factors in a given technology area.
IDC MaturityScape
Describes five stages of "maturity" or capability for a particular technology area, helps IT/tech professionals understand where their organizations fit within those stages, and provides guidance on key components for planning successful improvements to a tech initiative.
IDC MaturityScape Benchmark
Helps IT/tech professionals to benchmark their maturity against peers, develop a business case for a tech initiative, and build consensus about where critical IT investments should be made. Presents quantitative research results that show the market distribution for a given tech initiative across the five stages of maturity presented in the related IDC MaturityScape. Shows the results and components of particularly successful initiatives.
IDC PeerScape
Gives IT/tech professionals insight into best practices (and practices to avoid) by providing specific use case examples implemented by peers. Identifies practices that have the most impact on the success of a tech or business initiative, and provides actionable guidance for each practice.
IDC PlanScape
Helps IT/tech professionals to justify and plan a business and/or technology investment or opportunity by exploring why, what, who, and how (these are also the main section headings). Presents key players, critical success factors, risks, and actions to consider for a designated technology and/or business management area.
IDC TechScape
Helps IT/tech professionals with developing IT strategic plans and evaluating emerging technologies in terms of their risk to the business. Shows the adoption curve and risk levels over time for a specific emerging technology. Sorts technologies into three "adoption model" categories (transformational, incremental, opportunistic) to help tech leaders determine the potential impact for their organization.
IDC Links
IDC Link
Provides timely context and insight around important market trends and events in a short opinion piece. IDC Links provide IDC's point of view on:
- Financial announcements
- Product announcements
- Mergers and acquisitions or divestitures
- Events
- Response to news
Insights-only Research
Best Practices
Correlates the use of specific practices and superior performance as indicated by an analysis of the benchmarking database. Highlights any significant differences between industries. Conclusions provide a set of process priorities for improving a business case and advice on how to overcome change management issues.
Business Strategy
Helps buyers to assess their business strategies and/or associated business processes, especially as they relate to the use of technology.
Methods and Practices
Provides a step-by-step description of a method or methods that can be applied. As appropriate, the report may compare the benefits and drawbacks of several methods.
Perspective
Presents an article written by an Insights analyst on a topic of special interest to a target audience. This information has generally already appeared in an industry publication and is repackaged for display on the Insights Web site.
Vendor Assessment
Helps buyers select the right IT supplier. The report helps buyers understand the various providers of a technology by providing analysis on market landscape, vendor profiles, vendor market share, and vendor assessments.
Pivot Tables
Pivot Table
Presents an interactive spreadsheet tool for analyzing trends and activities in a specific market segment. These tables are available only through an annual subscription service.
Predictions
Top 10 Predictions
Provides bold, well-conceived market predictions grounded in solid methodologies, primary research, and analyst experience. Lays out a clear road map to understanding major market opportunities and trends.
Presentations
IDC Presentation
Provides the latest, select CIS forecast data, primary research survey findings, and critical IDC analyst opinion in a succinct, easy-to-digest PowerPoint format.
IDC Survey
Presents a hypothesis about what is happening in the market backed by the results of a demand-side or supply-side survey. The focus is on interpreting and analyzing the survey results and providing a strong point of view along with actionable advice.
IDC Survey Spotlight
Answers a timely question and provides a strong opinion backed by IDC survey data. This is a quick nugget of information that is presented in two concise PowerPoint slides.
Insights Presentation
Provides an easy-to-use format to post on the Web presentations that were previously delivered at public forums (such as conferences and events) or for internal client meetings and client presentations. It may not come as part of a consulting/custom engagement.
Market Analysis Perspective
Delivers a concise current state view of a market and insight into the impact of future trends. Business executives, product managers, and MI/AR professionals can use this information when looking to understand buyers' perspectives and market impacts.
Press Releases
Press Release
Announces significant corporate news, such as key hirings or promotions, performance milestones, event highlights, or speaking engagements.
Product Information
Fact Sheet
Describes a research product. Usually details the major areas of coverage and deliverables, and outlines key questions and competitive market conditions that the research will address. Includes links to all published research for a research product.
Studies
Competitive Analysis
Provides a detailed accounting and review of a vendor's programs, processes, products, service, satisfaction, and/or strategy in a target market. This knowledge helps clients reduce their risk of losing market share or enhance their position over the competition.
Customer Needs and Strategies
Focuses on the important decisions that business and IT professionals make every day.
Industry Developments and Models
Provides a detailed assessment of a specific target market's expansion pattern. This analysis helps clients develop and deploy the right mix of value-add products, programs, or services to support their sales and/or partnering efforts.
Market Analysis
Provides an in-depth examination of the dynamics and future of a single market or a group of related markets. The Market Analysis is where we will typically present our forecasts and assumptions, using a key forecast assumptions table.
Market Forecast
Provides the future of a single market or a group of related markets. It presents a new or updated market forecast, including key drivers and assumptions used in the forecast.
Market Share
Provides data on market size, regional allocations, and platform splits as well as a summary of vendor shares for the most recently completed period (year, quarter).
Special Study
Provides a onetime study produced by a research group that is not published as a deliverable under a subscription service.
Survey
Provides a study and interpretation of the results of a demand- or supply-side survey.
Taxonomy
Highlights and emphasizes how IDC tracks the market while also making it easier for customers to find and identify IDC Taxonomy documents.
Technology Assessment
Provides an analysis of the intricacies of an emerging or established technology or the technologies contained within a specific product.
Vendor Needs and Strategies
Provides an in-depth analysis of a company, a small group of companies, a division of a company focused on a particular market, or a best practice that the company exemplifies.
This IDC Perspective highlights the key takeaways from the Magento Imagine 2018 event, which was held April 23–25 at the Wynn hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. The conference acts as the largest annual gathering of the Magento community of customers, ...
IDC forecasts that the market of artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators for internet of things (IoT) edge and primary clients is about to reach 6.1 billion in shipment by 2020. This document describes the competitive landscape of edge ...
This IDC Market Perspective provides an update on the convergence of enterprise asset management (EAM) and field service management (FSM) software. This document provides a view of both the potential of combining EAM and FSM in EAM applications ...
This IDC Market Perspective observes the impacts of multicloud strategy on infrastructure software purchases and the changing roles of personas that make those decisions. Data from IDC's European Multicloud Infrastructure ...
This IDC Perspective provides an overview of recent legislative and executive branch alignment and guidance to agencies to modernize IT systems while improving cybersecurity postures. The IT Modernization Report to the president and the ...
This Market Note discusses Adel Al-Saleh's plans to revitalize T-Systems and drive growth and profitability. These plans were revealed to the investor community on May 25, 2018, and discussed with analysts on a separate occasion. The document ...
This IDC Perspective deals with the use of digital technology to drive patient engagement. Today's healthcare system does not meet the needs of consumers, it is inconvenient and lacks continuity and personalization. The need to augment traditional ...
This IDC report summarizes key discussion takeaways from the IDC & Veeam Executive Roundtable 2018, themed "Intelligent Data Management for the Hyper-Available Enterprise," which was held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on March 20, 2018. ...
This IDC Perspective discusses the recent HighJump Elevate user conference. Each year in mid-March, HighJump Software brings together a well-rounded group of supply chain professionals to discuss the current state of supply chain operations ...
This IDC Perspective examines Splunk's entry into the IoT analytics market with an industrial asset intelligence (IAI) solution that combines condition-based monitoring with machine learning capabilities for predictive analytics, intelligent ...
This IDC Market Perspective examines NetApp's series of steps, such as integrating its cloud-native data services with AWS, Azure, and Google, and adding cloud-connected features to its on-premises, hyperconverged, and all-flash technologies ...
This IDC Perspective document examines virtualization and containerization technologies from the security angle, discusses concepts that drive innate security, and identifies shortcomings and benefits of hardware and software abstraction.
"There ...
"The timing of the introduction in 2020 onward of 5G New Radio and global low Earth orbit satellites is fortuitous and will lead to marked economies of scale for satellite terminals. In contrast to 4G, which was primarily designed for faster ...
This IDC Market Note presents highlights of the IQRF Summit, a conference on enabling Internet of Things solutions that took place in Prague, Czech Republic, on April 24–25, 2018. It provides IDC's views on the IQRF standard and the strategy ...
This IDC Market Note examines Sprint's quarterly wireless business results discussed in its FY 4Q17 earnings announcement on May 2, 2018. In this document, IDC analyzes Sprint's wireless financial and operating metrics, and overall strategy ...
This IDC Market Perspective reviews OpenText's more recent acquisitions and product announcements, providing a view of the dedicated content services market and how a leading player is striving to both outpace technology advancements and ...
This IDC Market Note discusses the Facebook F8 2018 event.
"2018's F8 fell at what Facebook hopes was a uniquely awkward time in the company's history, still in the throes of the Cambridge Analytica affair and on the heels of a strong ...
This IDC Market Note provides a snapshot of key highlights and announcements from NetApp Analyst Day 2018.
This IDC Perspective examines experiential retail and its need for next-generation product intelligence. The digital transformation of retail to relevant and rewarding experience is driving new needs for bringing product information to bear ...
This IDC Perspective delineates critical skill sets associated with companies' digital transformation (DX) efforts. There is a strong correlation between digital transformation organizational maturity, the internal organizational structure ...
This IDC Market Perspective examines practices in software development for chatbots used for the customer service, HR, and compliance use cases.
"While developers enjoy an embarrassment of riches with respect to developer tools used ...
Indonesia, with the fourth largest population in the world with 260 million people, is progressing the digital transformation of its financial services industry. Driven by the top-level banks in the country, the transformation promises great ...
This IDC Market Note examines Verizon's quarterly wireless business results discussed in its 1Q18 earnings announcement on April 24, 2018. In this document, IDC analyzes Verizon's wireless financial and operating metrics, and overall strategy ...
The challenges around supply chain management in the recent times have been largely around product traceability and condition monitoring for ensuring the authenticity of the products being delivered. Organizations have been spending a substantial ...
This IDC TechBrief discusses the value of opting digital twin technology and moving beyond the traditional way of manual and discrete operational process for the oil & gas industry. A digital twin is an IT-powered platform in which oil ...