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.
The 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 adoption levels within their ...
While the long-term impact of COVID-19 remains to be seen, some changes are obvious as they will merely accelerate existing trends. This means changes in distribution and servicing models, as physical high-touch relationships models will ...
This IDC study presents the top 10 predictions and key drivers for the agriculture industry for the next five years. IDC Energy Insights has identified the main drivers that set the context and conditions for designing and executing agriculture ...
This IDC study provides 10 predictions for the growing blockchain and distributed ledger technology market.
"Blockchain and distributed ledger technology, as a distinct technology discipline, has evolved rapidly in the past two years," ...
This IDC study presents the worldwide education top 10 predictions for 2021.
"The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated online learning into full-production digital services, such as personalized student learning journeys, which connect ...
This IDC study presents the top 10 predictions for the future of industry ecosystems for the next five years.
"Industry organizations, whether in manufacturing, healthcare, government, retail, or finance, need to expand the capabilities ...
This IDC study explores how hospitality, dining, and travel organizations are responding to the drivers of business and offers guidance on actions to consider.
"The hospitality and travel industries have been thrust into a period of ...
This IDC study explores some of the best practices successful companies are employing to overcome the challenges of moving forward with blockchain and effectively "selling" blockchain to their C-suites.
"Technology groups are often ...
This IDC study presents a holistic view of omni-channel retail security and an assessment of the components of security that are most relevant to retail. The IDC TechScape describes security technologies in terms of their transformative, ...
This IDC study presents a vendor assessment of worldwide blockchain services through the IDC MarketScape model. This assessment discusses both quantitative and qualitative characteristics that explain success in the ecosystem. The evaluation ...
This IDC study uses the IDC TechScape model to provide a systematic assessment of technologies related to the use of precision agriculture technologies in the worldwide agriculture sector. The IDC TechScape model is designed specifically ...
This IDC study explores the technology elements necessary for manufacturers across the industry to digitally transform the new product development and introduction (NPDI) process.
"A big reason for a digital platform approach to NPDI ...
This IDC study considers the technologies that make PaaS viable and consumable and attractive for customers today that are deploying modern, cloud-native applications.
"Platform as a service is evolving in a number of ways to embrace ...
Few topics in technology today elicit as much enthusiasm and acrimony as "blockchain." Whether it is digital assets, cryptocurrencies, supply chain, digital identity, or the myriad ways in which blockchain is being applied to numerous vertical ...
This IDC FutureScape presents IDC Financial Insights’ view of the top 10 predictions for financial services in the Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) (APEJ) region in 2020. Each of the top 10 predictions are discussed from the perspective of ...
This IDC FutureScape provides the top 10 predictions for the burgeoning blockchain market and looks at some areas where blockchain's alterations of business processes and models will have significant impact. The predictions are built around ...
This IDC PlanScape outlines the importance of developing a "thinking supply chain" to capture and retain customer loyalty. It describes how supply chain ecosystems must collaborate and accelerate decisions based on a trusted, secure, and ...
This study looks at the impact that IDC’s worldwide security predictions are likely to have in Europe. From skills shortages and IT/OT integration to the prospective adoption of trust frameworks, cyber-risk monitoring, and mandatory breach ...
This IDC study is aimed at offering technology buyers a high-level view of how digital tokens built on blockchain are gaining adoption. From its initial use as the underlying technology for cryptocurrencies, distributed ledger and blockchain ...
The impact of tariffs and trade wars has resulted in several microtrends across the region, prominent among them is the migration of manufacturing from China to Southeast Asia, which has led to the creation of new business priorities. To ...
This IDC study presents a vendor assessment of health plan bundled payment management solutions for payers in the U.S. market for 2019 using the IDC MarketScape model.
"Satisfying the two closed loops of measuring provider contract ...
This IDC FutureScape presents the top 10 predictions for the corporate banking industry. Each prediction is shaped by a common set of key drivers that provides a planning tool for technology leaders and their line-of-business counterparts ...
This IDC study discusses the worldwide blockchain top 10 predictions for 2020.
"Blockchain has been attracting all types of attention in the past few years," said James Wester, research director, Worldwide Blockchain Strategies at ...
This IDC Financial Insights study developed seven drivers that both CIOs and their business partners should consider over the next five years. The list is not meant to be exhaustive nor is it meant to be final. IDC Financial Insights publishes ...
This IDC study provides IDC's top 10 predictions for payment strategies for 2020 and beyond.
According to Rivka Gewirtz Little, research director, Worldwide Payment Strategies, "Payment modernization goes beyond speed and will be defined ...
This IDC study provides IDC's top 10 predictions for manufacturing product and service innovation for 2020 and beyond.
"In the 2020 IDC FutureScape for product and service innovation, innovation augmentation is a major theme throughout. ...
This IDC study provides manufacturers with the top 10 predictions and underlying drivers that we expect to impact manufacturers' IT investments in 2020 and beyond.
"Manufacturing companies are transforming from efficiency-oriented ...
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 study focuses on the transformational, incremental, and opportunistic technologies necessary for successful digital twin implementation and operation. While there are multiple existing enterprise technologies available within organizations ...
This IDC PeerScape reviews best practices that supply chains are using blockchain for traceability to offer ideas and processes to organizations just getting started or in process on their blockchain or traceability initiatives.
According ...
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 TechScape discusses technologies that are essential to enable innovation through a retail commerce platform and to execute commerce everywhere business models efficiently and effectively. The study aims to help senior executives ...
This IDC study provides a systematic assessment of intelligent treasury management systems software technologies in the context of established and emerging use cases and deployment scenarios. This IDC TechScape is an evaluation based on ...
This IDC study — a collaboration of IDC and IDC Retail Insights teams — provides an assessment of the next-generation infrastructure components that enterprises need to use as the foundation for a more successful and future-proofed digital ...
This IDC study considers the collective technologies in the application life-cycle, development, DevOps, and PaaS market areas.
"Given the high degree of interest in moving to an agile, DevOps-managed development and deployment practice, ...
This IDC study provides an assessment of the most prominent SaaS and cloud-enabled accounts payable application software solutions and discusses what criteria are most important for companies to consider when selecting a system.
"AP ...
This IDC Presentation discusses the Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) (APEJ) regionalization of the Worldwide IT Industry FutureScape for 2019. It provides an outlook view of the ICT industry as it relates to tech buyers' road maps, priorities, ...
This IDC study provides IDC's top 10 Smart City and Communities predictions for 2019. The IDC Smart Cities and Communities team outlines key recommendations for government leaders who want to understand trends impacting IT investments and ...
This IDC study provides manufacturers with our top 10 predictions for 2019.
According to Reid Paquin, research director, IT Priorities and Strategies, IDC Manufacturing Insights, "The manufacturing industry continues to evolve. Digital ...
This IDC study discusses the top 10 predictions for worldwide national governments in 2019. National governments face a host of challenges in the coming years. Citizen expectations are stoking new investments from government agencies working ...
This IDC study explores how different drivers are collectively impacting technology in the health industry and offers guidance on actions to consider. Healthcare and life science organizations are hard pressed in the new digital era to respond ...
This IDC study provides details behind IDC's top 10 predictions for IoT for 2019 and beyond.
"The next chapter of IoT is just beginning as we see a shift from digitally enabling the physical to automating and augmenting the human experience ...
This IDC FutureScape discusses the worldwide corporate banking sector and is a planning tool for technology leaders and their line-of-business (LOB) counterparts to use in their IT strategic planning efforts. It provides foresight for tech-based ...
This IDC study provides IDC's top 10 predictions for worldwide services for 2019 and beyond.
"Most companies will choose to engage a service firm to help fulfill their IT and business aspirations but will be seeking new ways of contracting, ...
This IDC study explores how different drivers are collectively impacting technology in the hospitality industry and offers guidance on actions to consider. Hospitality organizations are hard-pressed in the new digital era to respond to a ...
This IDC study provides our top 10 predictions for the worldwide manufacturing ecosystems market for 2019 as well as highlights emerging trends and key drivers. These predictions reflect IDC's vision for the 10 most important trends in this ...
This IDC FutureScape provides worldwide education 2019 top 10 predictions.
"An education IT initiative is not about how many cutting-edge devices or intelligent solutions will be in next year's budget. The focus should be on discovering ...
This IDC study for the 2019 mobility market provides our global team's view on some of the key topics we expect to affect businesses over the next few years. Some of the topics we raise in this year's IDC FutureScape are:
- Business-transforming ...
This IDC study provides an overview of the many technologies available to support or run a thinking supply chain. It recognizes not only technologies that have been used for decades but also those that have only emerged in the past months ...
This IDC TechScape considers the evolution of modern products built using open source software in contrast to closed source software.
"Open source software continues to make inroads in virtually every level of the software stack," ...