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
Vendor Profile
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.
IDC Perspective
The IDC Perspective is a flexible doc that seeks to help business and tech buyers assess their business and IT strategy and/or associated business processes, especially as it relates to the use of technology. The document can be used in areas such as:
- Strategy and planning
- Trends and observations
- IT spending and investment
- Vendor conferences and announcements
IDC TechBrief
The IDC TechBrief helps the technology or business executive get smart about a single technology in the context of the business by answering 6 business critical questions about the technology:
- What is the technology?
- When should I adopt it?
- What can it do for my business?
- What are the critical success factors?
- What are the risks?
- Who are the suppliers?
Market Note
The Market Note is a flexible doc that provides IDC analysis and point of view on an industry event, new product or service, or a company announcement or development or fast breaking news.
Market Perspective
The Market Perspective is a flexible doc that analyzes key changes and developments happening in the market. This flexible research type can be used to analyze areas such as:
- Competitive Environment
- Innovation & Market Opportunity
- New Business Models
- Partner & Channel Strategy
- Enterprise Strategies (targeted to supplier)
- Regulation
- Socioeconomics
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
IDC Blink
IDC Blink
Provides timely context and insight around important market trends and events in a short opinion piece with a 2-minute audio clip. IDC Blinks provide IDC's point of view on:
- Financial announcements
- Product announcements
- Mergers and acquisitions or divestitures
- Events
- Response to news
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.
Presentations
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.
Market 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.
Tech Buyer 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.
IDC Market Glance
Provides a look at the landscape of a tech market, including competitive positioning, adjacent segments, and potential partner opportunities.
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
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 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 one-time study produced by a research group that is not published as a deliverable under a subscription service.
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.
IDC Innovators
IDC Innovators is aimed at informing IT buyers about emerging vendors with an innovative new technology or ground-breaking business model. Vendors identified in the document as innovators are linked together within a specific market area and around solving or alleviating a common business problem. Vendors included have annual revenue under $100 million at the time of selection.
Technology Segment
The IDC Technology Segment offers CEMA clients a comprehensive view of a technology segment in one country or subregion and provides a market view and forecast and/or market share and vendor profiles, including performances and strategies. It is specifically intended to serve smaller country markets and subregions.
On November 13, 2024, Cisco announced earnings results for the first quarter of its 2025 fiscal year, which coincides with the third quarter of 2024. Revenues fell on a year-over-year (y/y) basis but were in the high end of the company’s ...
Ericsson recently announced enhancements to its enterprise networking strategy and offerings, including rebranding the company's Cradlepoint business to Ericsson, while launching a new neutral host offering and two new IoT and mobile routers. ...
On August 14, 2024, Cisco announced the results of its fiscal year 2024 fourth quarter, which generally align with the second calendar year quarter of 2024. Continuing a recent trend, the company's revenue fell when compared with record-high ...
Juniper Networks announced last week a multivendor Ops4AI Lab for validating AI datacenter solutions and automated operations with switching, routing, storage, and compute solutions from participating vendors. The company also introduced ...
Oracle and Google Cloud recently announced a cloud interoperability partnership targeted at enterprise buyers, globally. This is for utilizing a combination of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and Google Cloud technologies and services ...
There is no doubt that Cisco serves as a bellwether when it comes to networking, security, and unified communications. All three were front and center at last year's Cisco Live US (CLUS), an event that strongly emphasized tactical advancements ...
We came away impressed with Cisco's new product introductions and the company's focus on "AI for Products" and "Products for AI" — the Cisco Live 2024 industry analyst event, product demos, and our interactions with enterprise IT and business ...
On May 15, 2024, Cisco announced the results of its fiscal year 2024 third-quarter earnings, which coincide with the first quarter for calendar year 2024. Quarterly revenue for the company declined 13% on a year-over-year (y/y) basis to ...
We provide the key takeaways from our leadership team meetings and company presentations at the Equinix Americas analyst event held in Dallas, Texas, last week. Equinix, in our view, is executing well on its products and services road map ...
We share insights on AI and multicloud networking that we inferred from the CEO keynote, the industry analyst event, and our primary research at Google Cloud Next 2024, held in Las Vegas last week.
We share key insights on AI, cloud, and datacenter networking that we inferred from the CEO keynote, industry analyst event, and our primary research at the expo at NVIDIA GTC 2024, held in San Jose, CA.
On February 14, 2024, Cisco announced the results of its fiscal year 2024 second-quarter earnings, which coincide with the calendar year 2023 fourth quarter. Quarterly revenue for the company declined 6% on a year-over-year (y/y) basis to ...
On January 29, 2024, Juniper announced its AI-Native Networking Platform, utilizing AI/ML technologies for delivering differentiated enterprise, service provider and end-user experiences. This news is a directional positive in IDC’s view ...
Hewlett Packard Enterprise's (HPE's) proposed acquisition of Juniper Networks could reshape the enterprise campus and branch networking market by creating a strong company that can meet the varying needs of enterprise buyers. However, with ...
We share insights on the launch of Equinix Fabric Cloud Router (FCR) offering. FCR is a key multicloud networking capability for enterprise use cases such as cloud-to-cloud data transfer and implementing distributed applications across private, ...
IDC is positive on HPE's acquisition of Juniper. The combined company has a tremendous opportunity to leverage the platforms' breadth — in networking, software, compute, and storage — and global direct and channel sellers' expertise, for ...
We recap key insights on generative AI and cloud networking that we inferred from the keynotes, industry analyst summit presentations, and our primary research at the Expo floor — at AWS re:Invent, held in Las Vegas last week.
On November 15, 2023, Cisco announced earnings results for its fiscal year 2024 first quarter, which coincide with the third quarter of the 2023 calendar year. Revenue in the quarter increased at a healthy 8% year-over-year (y/y) rate, but ...
Cisco's largest acquisition to date offers SaaS (cloud), subscription, and on-premises revenue streams; a direct sales team; and a Global 2000 install base of security and observability solutions, with a strong focus on logs, metrics, traces, ...
- Bigger picture: IDC believes that Cisco's R&D and sales & marketing investments in Generative AI - in both the Cisco and Splunk platform - leveraging Cisco's worldwide customer base and its strong worldwide channel partner ...
Juniper announced enhancements to its Apstra multivendor datacenter automation 4.2.0 software release with new intent-based network tooling. This is for validating and automating the design, deployment, and day 0 to day 2+ operations of ...
At Google Cloud Next '23, Google introduced Cross-Cloud Network — a large scale, global multicloud networking platform that enables secure, programmable, and optimized connectivity across multiple cloud and on-premises IT infrastructures, ...
On August 16, 2023, Cisco Systems announced its fiscal year 2023 fourth quarter and full fiscal year earnings, which generally coincides with the second calendar year quarter of 2023. Cisco's quarterly revenue grew 16% year-over-year (y/y) ...
At VMWare Explore 2023, VMware introduced NSX+, a SaaS-based multicloud networking, security and load-balancing offering that enables enterprise IT to utilize NSX – virtualized network infrastructure services seamlessly across public, hybrid, ...
Lumen's first NaaS offering is an aggressive first step to leverage its digital infrastructure capabilities to provide cloudlike flexibility and scalability to the legacy networking consumption model. It's a clear and concise service offering, ...