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.
Today, SAP announced two executive board–level position changes. Adaire Fox-Martin, a member of the executive board of SAP SE leading Customer Success, is leaving at the end of January. In addition, SAP noted the hiring of Julia White for ...
On January 13, VMware announced that CEO Pat Gelsinger will leave the company to become the CEO of Intel, effective February 15. Current Intel CEO Bob Swan is stepping down after taking over the position, first as interim CEO for seven months ...
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 ...
Quest Software is a leading provider of system management and database tools and utilities, including the Toad product line for database development and tuning, the SharePlex product for database replication, and the monitoring tools Foglight ...
This IDC Web Conference presents a discussion by IDC's Mutaz Shegewi on the key predictions that will impact CIOs and IT professionals in the worldwide healthcare industry over the next one to five years. Senior IT leaders and line-of-business ...
This IDC Perspective summarizes key takeaways from IDC's European Manufacturing Executive Digital Forum 2020, which took place on November 24, 2020. It summarizes the highlights of our partner and CXO community presentations from the perspective ...
This IDC Perspective delves into hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) architecture and how it can enable a hybrid cloud architecture that can provide a single, consistent view of both on-premises and public clouds.
"Software vendors ...
This IDC Perspective covers the definition of the feature store, its value to businesses, and associated challenges. While early in the life cycle, this capability will support the growth and adoption of ML technology and enable companies ...
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 Perspective looks at data in action in the Canadian marketplace. The initial focus of this study was to assess the role that data plays in industry disruption. What we found is that Big Data and analytics, on its own, does not drive ...
This IDC Perspective points to a current challenge of retailers trying to mature their analytics capabilities that is often overlooked. Improving analytics isn't just about adding analytics teams and people, but it's about improving access ...
This IDC study represents a vendor assessment of Salesforce implementation services through the IDC MarketScape model. This assessment discusses both quantitative and qualitative characteristics that explain success in the Salesforce implementation ...
This IDC Perspective highlights interesting news in the state and local government space with regard to data, analytics, AI, digital trust, regulations, security, and privacy.
"The growth of data and analytics work in state and local ...
This IDC Perspective provides a view into how manufacturers have adapted to the challenges imposed by COVID-19, the investments still needed, and why the industry needs to embrace the future of work to succeed in the short term and long ...
This IDC Perspective looks at adopting DevOps approaches for quality execution and faster deployments. IDC sees organizations seeking to establish effective strategies for coordinated change and quality management as part of their DevOps ...
This IDC Perspective provides an excellent example of a major multinational information and media company that began its OSS journey around 12 years ago originally (in 2008) and has progressed to consistent organizational process and automation ...
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 ...
For companies planning on digital patient engagement initiatives, it is important to closely examine the whole spectrum of use cases to spot the opportunities and the key benefits therein. This IDC PlanScape offers a comprehensive framework ...
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 TechBrief examines what options are available for upstream oil and gas companies with regard to land management software.
"There is a balance of functionality, cost, best practices, and business philosophy that will be balanced ...
This IDC TechBrief discusses the adoption and integration of digital technologies into mental health care plans. Digitally enabled mental health technologies can greatly support access to mental health care, enable care continuity, and improve ...
This IDC TechBrief helps healthcare provider IT leaders and buyers come quickly up to speed on enterprise imaging. Medical images and imaging-related data can serve as a valuable source of clinical insight but will pose more challenges than ...
This IDC Perspective discusses COVID-19's effect on AI spend in the Canadian healthcare system. Process- and workflow-specific AI solutions drive monetarily quantifiable benefits right now by utilizing the existing healthcare IT infrastructure. ...