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 Survey looks at the use of open source software, both community supported and commercially supported, in the context of the overall use of software use among U.S. businesses with over 249 employees.
"Open source software has ...
This IDC Survey provides insights into U.S. enterprise adoption of communications platform as a service (CPaaS). IDC surveyed about 800 United States–based decision makers responsible for network/strategy and operations about their organization's ...
Slack holds two major U.S. conferences each year: Slack Frontiers and its developer conference Slack Spec. This year, Spec hosted over 600 developers from companies of all sizes in San Francisco, California, from October 22 to 23, 2019. ...
This IDC Market Note reviews announcements made at the inaugural Khoros Engage conference. The Khoros Engage conference is the first conference since the merger of Lithium and Spredfast. Over 500 enthusiastic enterprise users saw the new ...
The positive vibe around Zoom and all its recent success was certainly present at the Zoomtopia 2019 event, not just about some of the new features/enhancements announced for its staple video collaboration offering, Zoom Meetings, but also ...
Two weeks prior to the Slack Spec conference, designed for its developer audience, Slack released new usage numbers and announced the general availability of its workflow product, Workflow Builder, which was previewed at the Frontiers Conference ...
This IDC Market Analysis Perspective explores the market leaders in the collaboration functional markets: team collaborative applications, conferencing, enterprise social networks (or enterprise communities), and email. This document also ...
Smartsheet placed a spotlight on new technology features and customer stories at its third annual ENGAGE customer conference held September 30 – October 3, 2019, in Seattle, Washington. As a SaaS platform for managing and automating collaborative ...
This IDC Perspective discusses the role of social media, communities, and collaboration in the rise of the social enterprise and provides recommendations for enterprises seeking to become a social enterprise. Social media, communities, and ...
This IDC Market Analysis Perspective (MAP) presents the worldwide digital transformation professional services market. Some form of this presentation was delivered to clients throughout various dates in 2019. The presentation was designed ...
This IDC study explores 3rd Platform and other new technologies for changing previous customer centricity approaches or frameworks in Asia/Pacific banks. The focus of this study spans planning (why, what, and who) to designing (how) without ...
This IDC Market Analysis Perspective (MAP) considers the open source ecosystem market view, provides data on acceptance of open source software, and offers insight into where open source development and adoption will go in the future.
"Open ...
This IDC Vendor Profile analyzes Solo.io, a start-up that develops open source and enterprise software by helping enterprises adopt and operate innovative cloud-native technologies such as microservices, serverless, and service mesh. This ...
This IDC study presents a vendor assessment of the 2019 cloud communications platforms (CPaaS) vendor market using the IDC MarketScape model. This assessment covers eight key cloud communications service providers on a worldwide basis. The ...
This IDC Survey looks at the technology investment priorities that utilities across Asia/Pacific have. In most countries in Asia characterised by government ownership, regulation, and integrated operators across the value chain, the level ...
This IDC Tech Buyer Presentation showcases IDC's cloud infrastructure and workloads research and provides a view of the intersection between workloads and cloud. The Presentation includes a brief overview of IDC's cloud infrastructure and ...
This IDC Tech Buyer Presentation provides a summary of the digital transformation initiatives within the Canadian healthcare sector. Comprehensive data on the importance, adoption, benefits, and challenges of digital technologies such as ...
This IDC study forecasts worldwide revenue for the enterprise social network applications market for the 2019–2023 period.
Collaboration is becoming the key to the digital workplace, not just the technology. It is, for many, a different ...
This IDC study examines the vendor revenue performance in the overall enterprise social network applications market for 2018.
Collaboration is becoming the key to the digital workplace, not just the technology, but the way of working ...
This IDC study examines the vendor revenue performance in the overall team collaborative applications market for 2018.
Collaboration is becoming the key to the digital workplace, not just collaboration technology but the new way of ...
The IDC TechScape provides a list of technologies that retailers should invest in considering their current level of customer experience personalization and their need to differentiate their offerings. The IDC TechScape aims to support retailers:
- Identify ...
This IDC Survey provides technology leaders and technology vendors with current insights into the use of collaboration applications and the purchasing processes in the collaboration applications market.
For years, the mobile consumer ...
This IDC study examines the vendor revenue performance in the overall collaborative applications market for 2018.
Collaboration is becoming the key to the digital workplace, not just the technology, but the way of working that leverages ...
This IDC study forecasts worldwide revenue for the collaborative applications market for the 2019–2023 period.
"The rise of the collaborative workforce and workspace is underway. Increasingly, tech-savvy mobile users are ready for ...
This IDC Perspective reviews the role that collaboration applications and company culture play in accelerating productivity, customer experience, and employee experience. Collaboration is the interpersonal activities that creates value when ...