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 study provides an assessment of the leading SaaS and cloud-enabled travel and expense software solutions and discusses the criteria that are most important for companies to consider when selecting a system.
"The user experience ...
This IDC study provides an assessment of the leading SaaS and cloud-enabled travel and expense software solutions and discusses the criteria that are most important for companies to consider when selecting a system.
"The user experience ...
This IDC study provides an assessment of the leading SaaS and cloud-enabled travel and expense software solutions and discusses the criteria that are most important for companies to consider when selecting a system.
"Enterprises need ...
This IDC Survey document examines the current state of adoption of software-as-a-service (SaaS) workloads in Canada. This Survey draws responses from 344 organizations surveyed as part of IDC's Canadian IT ...
This IDC study contains vendor shares for the video platforms software market for 2016–2018. It includes commentary on growth of the market and emerging trends and provides actionable advice for technology suppliers.
"The video platforms ...
This IDC Survey analyzes end-user responses regarding the firms they engage for consulting and integration services on IT infrastructure, examining both IT vendors and systems integrators. IDC's Infrastructure Services Survey, ...
This IDC study presents the worldwide hybrid cloud infrastructure services market forecast for 2019–2023. This market includes the professional services for infrastructure across public, private, and traditional deployments. The forecast ...
This IDC Perspective examines IDC's third European CISO Summit, held in November 2019. It saw IDC's CISO community gather for an intensive two-day program, with three clear aims: to explore how security teams can demonstrate business value ...
This IDC Survey Spotlight shares findings from IDC's Cloud Archiving and Data Privacy Survey that was completed in November 2019. The survey explores archiving applications in on-premises and cloud environments as well as the privacy ...
This IDC study presents the worldwide datacenter network consulting and integration services forecast for the 2019–2023 period.
"In an increasingly multicloud world, it is imperative that the datacenter infrastructure and, most importantly, ...
This IDC Market Presentation, which was given on October 29, 2019, provides insight into the Global StorageSphere, how it is calculated, how it is changing from 2014 to 2023, and the key implications for technology suppliers.
VMware announced their financial results for the third quarter of fiscal year 2020. Revenue for the third quarter was $2.46 billion, an increase of 12% from the third quarter of fiscal 2019. License revenue for the third quarter was $974 ...
This IDC Survey analyzes European public sector IT infrastructure transformation. European public sectors' need to digitally transform, while copying with tight budgets, is pushing government and education institutions to a tipping point ...
This IDC Market Perspective summarizes the current state of container infrastructure software in the enterprise IT organization. This document includes data from IDC's 2019 Infrastructure Services Survey that includes customer adoption ...
This IDC Market Note explains why VMware recently provided a technology preview of its Project Maestro teleco cloud orchestration platform.
"One of the greatest challenges communications SPs face today as they move toward a multicloud ...
This IDC Survey summarizes key technology investment trends based on IDC's U.S. Enterprise Communications Survey, 2019, an online survey of 800 United States–based businesses fielded in August 2019. It provides ...
This IDC study provides the forecast for the 5G network infrastructure market for 2019–2023.
"While Release 15 paved the way for initial commercial 5G launches, Release 16 (1H20) and beyond will be what unlocks 5G's full potential ...
Nokia is under pressure after cutting its profit outlook during its 3Q19 earnings call and pausing its dividend payout for the next six months. During its annual Global Analyst Forum, the vendor shared how it intends to move forward from ...
This IDC Survey Spotlight examines the factors that cause technology buyers to move their digital commerce applications off of public cloud deployments to the private cloud or on-premises. The data shown in this study comes from IDC's 2019 ...
This IDC Market Note provides an overview of the recent pricing trends in the wireline telecommunications sector and the efforts of service providers to pivot away from competing solely on price to emphasis the transformative capabilities ...
This IDC study examines some of the key technologies that are expected to trend upward in 2020, and it looks at ways in which IT and business services firms can address these technologies with customers to advance usage. The document highlights ...
This IDC FutureScape presents the top 10 predictions and key drivers for the European IT industry over the next five years. It tracks the biggest IT stories of our time — the digitalization of enterprises, edge buildout, tech-driven innovation, ...
This IDC Market Presentation discusses about 5G operational readiness. Portions of this presentation served as a backdrop for an industry-level panel session at the 2019 Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) conference held in Los Angeles, California, ...