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 looks at how the Belgian government harnessed the expertise of integrator DXC and PDF technology company iText to completely overhaul its records management system.
"The public sector is grappling with antiquated ...
This IDC Perspective looks at IT organizations' need to rethink the capabilities of enterprise SDS. Software-defined storage (SDS) is one of the fastest-growing segments of the enterprise storage systems market, attracting greenfield customers ...
This IDC study examines the current state of the digital infrastructure market and provides additional insights about the speed of adoption, technology potential for success, and level of market buzz so that IT and line-of-business decision ...
This IDC study provides a visual representation of the process of technology adoption, dividing technologies into three major categories based on their impact on the organization and assessing technology relative to adoption levels within ...
This IDC Perspective discusses the critical role of the IT organization in achieving sustainability goals and includes data from an April 2020 study to show what organizations are doing, who drives strategy, and what barriers exist in the ...
This IDC Perspective examines how government agencies approach security as part of their ongoing edge computing efforts.
When computing moves to the edge, traditional security concerns still apply, but new concerns emerge related to ...
This IDC PlanScape provides a road map for hospitality and travel companies to leverage digital transformation strategies to drive seamless, augmented experiences in the appropriate and desired settings, where physical contact with a human ...
IDC Innovators are emerging vendors with revenue <$100 million that have demonstrated either a groundbreaking business model or an innovative new technology — or both. This IDC Innovators study profiles five emerging service mesh vendors: ...
IDC research has found that modernizing enterprise applications, especially those that support core business processes, is a top priority for enterprises in Asia/Pacific. This IDC Perspective discusses the motivation behind enterprises to ...
This IDC Perspective is a guide to the concept and application of adaptive planning in pursuit of IT organizational resilience. Adaptive planning has been developed and applied by ecologists and urban planners who focus on ecosystem and ...
This IDC Tech Buyer Presentation explores solid state storage in the enterprise market and the trends affecting the market and factors influencing adoption that technology buyers should be aware of. This presentation was given at the virtual ...
This IDC Perspective explores selecting digital focus areas, overcoming challenges to demonstrating digital business value, and introducing as well as using new digital metrics. IDC's COVID-19 Impact on IT Spending Survey, ...
This IDC Perspective examines the value of Direct Routing to a business' unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) goals, helping IT buyers incorporate Direct Routing for Teams into their buying decision. Direct Routing for Teams ...
This IDC Perspective looks at the criteria that enterprises should consider when evaluating IT savings, and it provides guidance on the appropriate areas to consider when looking to make a change.
"Enterprise customers have made it ...
This IDC Tech Buyer Presentation investigates the global trends shaping the mining industry while mapping them to IDC’s Worldwide Mining 2021 predictions as identified in IDC’s FutureScape: Worldwide Mining 2021 Predictions ...
This IDC Perspective provides a current view of, and IT buyer recommendations and executive snapshot for, deploying SD-WAN architecture in support of a UC&C workload, as vendors continue to build stronger integrations between their SD-WAN ...
The 2020 New Zealand CIO Summit provided insight into how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the way businesses are leveraging their digital road maps to create opportunities for growth. Overarching themes of trust, empathy, organisational ...
This IDC Perspective is the CIO's guide to the future of industry ecosystems. It is designed to help CIOs lead with an eye to the digital disruptions that are occurring in every industry. This document discusses approaches that companies ...
This IDC study presents the results of IDC's Print and Document Management MaturityScape Benchmark Survey and should be viewed as a supplement to IDC MaturityScape: Print and Document Management 3.0 (IDC #US46265520, ...
This IDC PlanScape discusses a new approach to IT infrastructure cost management, which has become an urgent imperative for enterprises seeking to thrive and adapt in a post-COVID-19 global environment. A few Global 2000 IT organizations ...
This IDC Perspective discusses Microsoft's Office 365 data protection strategy. The adoption of SaaS applications, particularly Microsoft Office 365, is accelerating and its usage expands beyond Exchange to more services such as SharePoint, ...
This IDC Web Conference presents a discussion by the members of IDC's Global Print analyst team on key predictions emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic that will reshape the trajectory of this industry. Past perceptions of enterprise printing ...
This IDC PeerScape examines three best practices for the leveraging of IT to support sustainability policies and goals related to gender equity and diversity in the workplace. It provides concrete examples that should help CIOs identify ...
This IDC study represents a vendor assessment of the digital evidence management solutions for law enforcement market through the IDC MarketScape model.
"By leveraging a secure, open digital platform embedded in the digital investigation ...
This IDC Perspective examines the current state of tying executive compensation plans to ESG performance goals and purpose-driven strategic objectives. At the current time, the majority of global enterprises continue to link executive compensation ...