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Alphabet 2Q26 Results: AI Investments Drive Commercial Returns

Matthew Eastwood, Dave McCarthy — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Esri Positions Location as Core Context for the AI-Era Data Estate at the 2026 User Conference

Marlanna Harrington, Megha Kumar — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

At its 2026 User Conference in San Diego (July 13–17), Esri drew more than 18,000 attendees around the theme “GIS: creating a more intelligent world.” The company wove AI across ArcGIS in three layers: AI assistants for everyday workflows, AI tools and models, and agentic AI that exposes authoritative GIS content to external agents through Model Context Protocol (MCP). Esri also introduced ArcGIS for ServiceNow, extended real-time capabilities with Velocity on ArcGIS Enterprise, and reinforced digital twins and cloud data warehouse integration. IDC views location as a critical but still under-exploited input to the enterprise data and decisioning estate, one the AI shift could finally push from the periphery toward the core. Esri’s challenge is converting breadth into governed, integrated production systems rather than another data silo.

IBM Quantum to Acquire HRL Laboratories, Expanding Its Quantum Technology Portfolio and Developmental Roadmap

Heather West, PhD — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

The acquisition of HRL Laboratories by IBM Quantum (further referred to as IBM) reflects a shift toward acquiring, rather than solely developing in-house, the complementary technologies needed to scale quantum computing beyond a single hardware modality. The deal adds silicon-spin qubits, quantum sensing, and advanced materials expertise to a growing set of IBM investments that increasingly resemble the foundation of a full-stack, distributed quantum computing infrastructure.

Netskope and AI in the Fast Lane

Frank Dickson, Grace Trinidad — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Netskope's AI in the Fast Lane roadshow stop in New York City on July 14, 2026, showcased the vendor's effort to make AI-native operation governable, organizing Netskope One around a three-stage lifecycle of discovering AI usage, securing the AI pipeline, and protecting runtime interactions, with AgentSkope agent risk scoring, MCP scoring, and the AI Command Center as that lifecycle's operational layer. The event reinforces IDC's view that competitive differentiation is shifting from the underlying AI model to the harness that governs it, and IDC expects inline enforcement, AI acceleration, and transparent risk scoring to be the dimensions on which vendors in this category separate over the next 18 to 24 months.

The Building Blocks of a Sustainable Datacenter, 2026: An AI-Era Update

Bjoern Stengel — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Perspective is a 2026 update — version 2.0 — of IDC's framework for sustainable datacenters, refreshing The Building Blocks of a Sustainable Datacenter (IDC #US53167225, March 2025). The five building blocks — goals, commitment, and transparency; sustainable design and construction; natural resources sourcing; natural resources efficiency; and circularity — are preserved within the plan–build–operate model, but each is updated with AI era content. Model and workload efficiency is elevated to a primary subsection under natural resources efficiency; firm clean power, grid-interactive datacenters, and AI hardware supply chain risk are new subsections under natural resources sourcing; AI rack density, modular AI datacenters, and design-time heat recovery are new subsections under sustainable design and construction; and AI-specific ITAD is a new subsection under circularity. The 2026 regulatory landscape — overtaken by EU EED datacenter reporting, the Data Centre Energy Efficiency Package, CSRD Omnibus, CS3D, the EU AI Act, and California SB 253/261 — is treated explicitly, correcting the 2025 edition's assessment that regulation was unlikely to be a significant accelerant. All figures are sourced from IDC's Datacenter Facilities Index, 2H25, and IDC's Datacenter Trends, 2H24, with demand-side evidence from IDC's 2026 AI and Sustainability Survey (n = 1,570) and 2024 comparisons where overtime shifts are material. This IDC Market Perspective serves as the narrative deep dive for Segment 1: Sustainable digital infrastructure of IDC's Sustainable Strategies and Technologies Taxonomy, 2026.

"AI has changed what it means to build and operate a sustainable datacenter. The five building blocks still hold, but each now includes AI era content that wasn't in the 2025 edition — from model and workload efficiency to firm clean power, grid-interactive operation, and AI hardware life cycle. Operators and suppliers that internalize these shifts now will be the ones with credible sustainability stories and resilient business models by the end of the decade." — Bjoern Stengel, global sustainability research and practice lead, Sustainable Strategies and Technologies at IDC

Tigera Targets Networking in VMware Migrations with Calico for VMs on Kubernetes

Taranvir Singh — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Tigera launched Calico for VMs on Kubernetes, extending its established Kubernetes networking and security to virtual machines so that VMs and containers run on one network under one policy model, preserving existing IPs and firewall rules. The launch is aimed at the networking aspect of a VMware exit strategy, which, if not executed properly can stall the entire migrations. While vendors like Cisco, Red Hat, and SUSE are pursuing this opportunity in their own ways, Tigera's existing Calico footprint in Kubernetes gives it a credible position as a neutral networking layer to consolidate VMs and containers on Kubernetes.

Certinia Acquires Moonnox, Creating Digital AI Value: Professional Services Automation Platform with AI Architected at the Core

Mickey North Rizza — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Today, Certinia, an AI-powered Professional Services Automation (PSA) vendor, announced it has acquired Moonnox, an AI-native services delivery platform purpose built for the professional services sector. This combination of both an AI-powered PSA vendor and an AI-native services platform enables Certinia to bring even more value with its systems of records of PSA, Financial Management, and Customer Success Cloud Services, through the extension of Certinia's AI System of Action, called Veda, enabling Certinia to become a platform that powers AI-native services with AI architected as the core customer delivery mechanism.

IDC Survey Spotlight: Is AI Strategy Now the Board’s Top Priority, Ahead of Security and Risk?

Frank Dickson, Philip D. Harris, CISSP, CCSK — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey Spotlight examines results from IDC’s Worldwide CEO Survey showing that CEOs now regularly brief their boards on AI strategy and are making it the most-discussed nonfinancial topic in the boardroom. AI strategy just leapfrogged everything else on the board agenda. Security, risk mitigation, and sustainability all lost ground over the same period, but that doesn’t mean boards have stopped caring about risk. Boards are folding risk and security into the AI conversation rather than treating them as separate agenda items, since missing out on AI now looks riskier to directors than a cybersecurity incident.

IDC Survey: Enterprise Risk and Cybersecurity Risk Management GRC — Asia/Pacific

Philip D. Harris, CISSP, CCSK — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

In a recent IDC survey on the state of worldwide enterprise and cybersecurity risk management GRC trends, the following theme emerged — Decoding the Asia/Pacific GRC Market: Investment Signals, Program Priorities, and the Provider Performance Gaps Defining Competitive Advantage in 2025 – highlighting the Asia/Pacific GRC trends:

Budgets are growing incrementally, anchored by stability rather than acceleration.
Programs cover operational and supply chain risk first, specialized compliance last.
Provider satisfaction is solid but undermined by execution gaps and hidden charge concerns.
Providers are trusted partners at the relationship level but struggle at the delivery level.

Windows on ARM Gains Momentum: NVIDIA Hardware and ISV Engineering Address the Creative and AI Gap

Mohamed Hefny, Linn Huang — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Perspective examines how Windows on ARM is maturing from a battery-life proposition into a more credible platform for creative and AI-accelerated work. It reviews Adobe’s native ARM64 work across the company’s Creative Suite, the set of native releases from Blackmagic Design, Serif, Blender, and Capture One, and NVIDIA’s entry with workstation-class hardware that addresses the platform’s long-standing GPU gap. It also examines NVIDIA’s ISV engineering model, in which the company embeds engineers with software partners to port, tune, and certify applications, and assesses where native readiness stands across media, development, and music production.

“The hardest problem for Windows on ARM has been delivering real GPU performance, and that gap is now closing,” said Mohamed Hefny, senior program manager, Data and Analytics, IDC. “The other half of the challenge is getting ISV applications to run natively on Windows on ARM, and NVIDIA’s hands-on engineering with software partners is helping address it.”