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CIO Peer Perspective — Engineering Sustainable AI Economics in the Agentic Era

Heather Herbst, Jevin Jensen, Martina Longo, Robert Parker — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study highlights the growing complexity of AI cost structures, the impact of agentic AI on resource consumption, and the need for robust cost governance. As AI becomes integral to enterprise operations, CIOs are shifting focus from rapid deployment to engineering sustainable AI economics. Best practices include early FinOps integration, architectural optimization, and disciplined vendor management to ensure measurable business value and cost efficiency as AI adoption scales.

“The future of AI leadership isn’t about deploying the fastest—it’s about engineering the most sustainable economics in an era where every token counts,” says Heather Herbst, research director, CFO Buyer Insights at IDC.

Cisco Partner of the Year Award and BT International: The Importance of a Wide Portfolio and Owning the Full Life Cycle

Chris Barnard — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Note examines the importance of partner awards handed out by networking infrastructure vendors. It focuses on Cisco selecting BT International as its Global Networking Partner of the Year. "Key elements in this decision include the scale of BT International, its ability to layer services on top of Cisco equipment, and its early embrace of the new Cisco Partner program. BT International also leverages Cisco equipment in Global Fabric, a multi-service, multicloud network platform designed to transform the economics, quality, and competitiveness of its wide array of solutions," said Chris Barnard, VP Networking and Infrastructure Services, IDC.

IDC Survey: European Print and Document Management-Related Security

Gala Spasova, Jacqui Hendriks — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey document presents findings from IDC’s European Imaging, Printing, and Document Solutions Survey, conducted in April 2026 among 2,057 respondents across Europe. It examines the current landscape of print and document management–related security, including the prevalence of security breaches and how risk is evolving across organizations.

The research explores the growing importance of device-level vulnerabilities alongside document-related risks and assesses how organizations are responding through a range of security controls. It also highlights ongoing gaps between where risks originate and how security investments are being prioritized.

Market Forecast: Worldwide PC Forecast, 2026–2030: 1Q26 Update

Bryan Ma — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC presentation provides the five-year forecast for the PC market and delivers insight into the drivers and inhibitors of growth.

"Price hikes as a result of the memory shortage will be an inhibitor in the medium term, but in the short term, they will actually accelerate the market as buyers scramble to pull in purchases in advance," says Bryan Ma, VP on client devices, IDC.

News Response: Major Datacenter Update 1Q

Andrew Buss, Luis Fernandes, Mikhail Jaura — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC presentation tracks the most significant datacenter and AI infrastructure announcements of 1Q26 and examines how AI-driven expansion is reshaping the broader infrastructure ecosystem. Across major projects spanning the biggest datacenter players today and across multiple regions, this study analyzes demand and its influence on power generation, transmission planning, permitting, sustainability strategy, and community engagement, constraints that increasingly extend well beyond the datacenter facility itself.

Nuclear’s Colocation Moment: Reading the Signal Behind the July 2026 Criticality Milestones

Olga Yashkova — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Perspective examines how Executive Order 14301 and the Department of Energy’s accelerated Reactor Pilot Program, which saw four advanced reactors achieve criticality by July 4, 2026, are reshaping colocation providers’ energy strategies. It highlights nuclear’s emerging role alongside renewables, evolving financing models, and the execution risks datacenter operators face as they pursue small modular reactor (SMR) power to address grid constraints, sustainability goals, and regulatory changes.

“We are seeing real momentum behind nuclear in the datacenter clean energy mix, and hitting four criticality milestones ahead of the July 4 deadline is a meaningful proof point. But there’s still a gap between a test reactor going critical and a commercial reactor delivering power to a live campus. That said, the timeline for closing that gap looks shorter than it did even a year ago,” says Olga Yashkova, research manager, Worldwide Telecommunications Services, IDC.

The CIO’s Balancing Act: Navigating AI Value, Cost, and Sustainability in 2026

Bjoern Stengel — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective examines how chief information officers (CIOs) are reconciling AI’s financial ROI mandate with AI’s own environmental and social footprint. It updates and consolidates two earlier IDC documents — ESG for the CIO: An Organizational Perspective (IDC #US49582222, September 2022) and IDC’s Global CIO Advisory Board — Making Sustainability Real for the CIO (IDC #US51897224, March 2024) — with new peer-level survey evidence.

The document is based on IDC’s January 2026 AI and Sustainability Survey (n = 1,570 IT and line-of-business [LOB] respondents worldwide), cut by a CIO persona of IT, data, cybersecurity, or networking leaders at the director level and higher, and cross-referenced against IDC’s September 2025 Worldwide C-Suite Tech Survey (n = 914 EVP level and higher across nine functions).

“CIOs are already measuring AI’s business case and footprint together, well ahead of the rest of the C-suite. The job now is to make this a formal, governed practice instead of something that happens inside IT operations by default,” says Bjoern Stengel, global sustainability research and practice lead, Sustainable Strategies and Technologies at IDC.

Beyond Check the Box: Choosing a Security Framework Built for AI Risk, Quantum Threat, Regulatory, and Your Organization's Reality

Philip D. Harris, CISSP, CCSK — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective updates IDC's foundational guidance on framework selection to reflect a materially changed landscape: NIST CSF 2.0 expanded scope and added a Govern function in 2024; DORA became applicable to approximately 22,000 EU financial entities in January 2025; and PCI DSS v4.0 retired the legacy standard in March 2024. Security framework selection is a risk management decision, not a technical checklist. Organizations that have not revisited their framework strategy since 2022 are likely operating against outdated assumptions about both the available options and the regulatory obligations that may constrain — or drive — their choice.

Two criteria that did not exist as first-order considerations in 2022 now demand explicit attention. AI adoption has introduced new attack surfaces — model poisoning, prompt injection, and agentic system risks — for which NIST published a draft Cyber AI Profile in December 2025. Post-quantum cryptography (PQC) has moved from theoretical concern to operational imperative, with NIST finalizing three PQC standards in August 2024 and regulators establishing migration deadlines. Organizations that embed both considerations into their framework selection process now will be substantially better positioned than those that treat them as future-state concerns.

"The right security framework is a critical factor in adequately managing security risks not only present today but also risks that could appear in the future," says Phil Harris, research director, Cybersecurity GRC Solutions at IDC. "The 2026 landscape demands that organizations evaluate AI governance and post-quantum cryptography readiness as first-order criteria, not future-state considerations. Organizations that apply a structured, criteria-driven approach, supported by capable GRC technology, will make framework choices that are the right fit today and resilient enough to evolve as the threat and regulatory landscape continues to change."

Cinven's Acquisition of Salsify: A Bet on a Retail Network Marketed as a Bet on Bots

Heather Hershey — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Cinven, the international private equity firm, announced on July 22, 2026, that it has agreed to acquire Salsify, the Boston-based cloud-native product experience management (PXM) vendor, for undisclosed terms and subject to customary regulatory approvals.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Advances Simulation and AI Infrastructure Across Supercomputing and Enterprise Environments

Madhumitha Sathish, Peter Rutten — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s (HPE) announcements at ISC 2026 and HPE Discover 2026 highlight an approach centered on bringing together modeling, simulation, and AI capabilities within integrated infrastructure environments delivered through hybrid and private cloud models. Across its portfolio, which includes supercomputing systems, AI Factory solutions, and GreenLake, HPE demonstrates how accelerated computing, networking, and software can be combined to support simulation workflows alongside AI-driven data processing and analysis. Enterprise deployments, cloud-scale environments with partners such as Vultr, and continued advancements in HPE Cray supercomputing platforms reflect how these capabilities are being applied to address a range of data-intensive use cases. Overall, HPE’s announcements emphasize the role of unified infrastructure in enabling organizations to run complex workloads while maintaining performance, control, and scalability.

IDC views this direction as representative of how organizations are increasingly applying simulation and AI capabilities together to support engineering, research, and operational objectives. As these workloads continue to grow in complexity and scale, integrated environments that combine high-performance compute, networking, and software are expected to play an important role. Hybrid deployment models, along with consumption-based approaches, provide flexibility for organizations to deploy these capabilities while maintaining governance and operational oversight.

“Across HPE’s portfolio, including supercomputing with HPE Cray, AI Factory solutions, networking, and hybrid cloud, modeling, simulation, and AI capabilities are increasingly brought together, building on the company’s long-standing HPC expertise to support performance-intensive workloads across the energy, manufacturing, healthcare and life sciences, financial services, and public sector industries,” says Madhumitha Sathish, research manager, IDC.