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How Many LEO Communications Constellations Can Be Accommodated in Orbit?

Simon Baker — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective discusses how the LEO satellite business favors large players, and why only a few will prosper. Gaining rights to optimum orbital shells and frequencies is a key factor in success. U.S.-based projects have a clear advantage, with China making moves to ensure it is not left out.

"The filings already in place for LEO constellations will largely determine the shape of the future business. There is much to play (and apply) for, but not much time to achieve it." — Simon Baker, senior research director, Satellite and NTN, IDC

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide AI-Driven Professional Services for Oil and Gas Companies 2026 Vendor Assessment

Gaurav Verma — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study presents a vendor assessment of worldwide AI-driven professional services providers for oil and gas companies using the IDC MarketScape model. The assessment discusses both quantitative and qualitative characteristics that explain success in this market. It covers 17 vendors participating in the AI-driven professional services space for oil and gas. The evaluation is based on a comprehensive and rigorous framework that assesses vendors relative to the criteria and to one another and highlights the factors expected to be most influential for success in both the short term and the long term.

“Oil and gas companies have moved past debating whether AI works to deciding how to run it at the edge, at scale, and safely with guardrails. The professional services firms that industrialize data, integration, and managed operations, and prove they can take AI from pilot to production, will define the next phase of the industry’s digital agenda,” says Gaurav Verma, research director, IDC Energy Insights (Oil and Gas). “As foundation AI models become more capable and widely available, the source of competitive advantage shifts up the stack. In oil and gas, the winners won’t necessarily be the firms with the best AI models — they’ll be the firms that effectively combine AI with deep industry knowledge, proprietary accelerators, integration expertise, and a track record of improving production, reducing downtime, and operating safely.”

IDC TechScape: Worldwide Sustainable AI Infrastructure Management, 2026

Bjoern Stengel — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC TechScape evaluates 18 technology markers shaping sustainable AI infrastructure management — covering advanced cooling, power and grid integration, compute efficiency, measurement and accountability, and water and circularity. Global datacenter electricity consumption is forecast to grow from 397TWh in 2024 to 915TWh by 2028 (23.3% CAGR), as AI workload power density outpaces growth in low-carbon supply. IDC's 2026 AI and Sustainability Survey (n = 1,570) finds 83% of organizations rate AI as very or extremely important to their sustainable transformation and 82% plan to increase investment.

This report is designed for infrastructure and platform leaders responsible for the energy, water, and carbon performance of AI deployments, and for sustainability and operations executives whose ESG targets and regulatory disclosures depend on AI infrastructure decisions.

"AI's energy footprint is growing faster than the grid can decarbonize it. We are projecting datacenter electricity demand to nearly double by 2028, and carbon emissions will still rise even as clean energy supply expands — growth in demand is outpacing supply," said Bjoern Stengel, global sustainability research and practice lead at IDC. The good news is that the highest-leverage interventions are already available: the six Transformational markers in this IDC TechScape — power capping, inference optimization, carbon-aware scheduling, and AI-driven cooling — deliver measurable impact today, at the software and silicon layer, without waiting for the infrastructure cycle to catch up. Our data shows advanced organizations are already capturing sustainable AI business value at 26 times the rate of beginners. That gap will widen as regulatory pressure compounds market scrutiny — and the organizations that wait will face both the carbon liability and the competitive cost."

The Global Evolution of Physical AI and Embodied Intelligence: Strategic Paradigms, Technical Foundations, and Market Realities

Tue, 18 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective discusses the global evolution of physical AI and embodied intelligence. Physical AI is emerging as a systems market where AI models, sensing, simulation, edge infrastructure, robotics, safety, and operational governance converge. This category should be understood as a shift from digital intelligence to controlled physical execution across industrial, commercial, institutional, and consumer domains. The most durable value will come from constrained, measurable environments before general-purpose autonomy becomes economical.

"Physical AI is now the second-highest AI investment priority for the next two years, just behind generative AI assistants, and the returns will go to organizations that scale it deliberately," says Stephanie Krishnan, associate vice president, Manufacturing and Supply Chain, IDC. "For operations leaders, this means governing it well from the start, extending vendor accountability across models, infrastructure, safety states, and human override."

Unification of Traditional and Digital Advertising Management for the Media Industry, 2026

Alex Holtz — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective maps out how broadcasters and publishers can integrate sales, traffic, audience data, monetization, delivery, measurement, reconciliation, and finance into one system rather than running each screen as a separate business. The document shows how traffic and billing vendors are converging from broadcast and digital directions, why reconciliation remains the leading source of revenue error, and how self-service advertising and social commerce extend revenue beyond the traditional ad sale, and then closes with guidance for technology leaders evaluating platforms across the stack.

"Broadcasters and publishers already run every piece of the workflow; the problem is that they run it across seven or more disconnected systems that rarely agree on the same number. Reconciliation is where that gap shows up first, and it is the cheapest place to fix. Self-service and social commerce are new revenue channels nobody was collecting five years ago." — Alex Holtz, research director, Worldwide Media and Entertainment Digital Strategies, IDC

Bosch ConnectedWorld 2026: Manufacturing Co-Intelligence and the Next Phase of Industrial AI

Gunjan Bassi — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective captures key observations from Bosch ConnectedWorld 2026, where Bosch outlined its vision for physical AI, Manufacturing Co-Intelligence, and the role of semantic data architectures in scaling industrial AI. The event highlighted how agentic AI is moving from pilot projects to operational deployments, supported by governance, trust, and industrial context. Bosch also emphasized software-hardware decoupling, robotics ecosystems, and master data foundations as critical enablers of future manufacturing competitiveness. The document assesses the implications for manufacturers evaluating industrial AI adoption and for technology vendors competing in an increasingly context-driven market.

“BCW26 showed that industrial AI is moving beyond the model itself. Competitive advantage increasingly comes from operational knowledge, data context, and the ability to deploy AI at scale. Bosch’s message was clear: industrial AI succeeds when it is built on strong data foundations, governance, and operational discipline,” says Gunjan Bassi, research manager, Worldwide Industrial Internet of Things and Intelligence Strategies, IDC. “The real challenge is no longer proving that AI works but embedding it into manufacturing operations in ways that deliver repeatable business value.”

Edge AI in 1H26: From Pilot to Production Across the Edge

Olga Yashkova — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective examines what changed in edge AI between January and June 2026, the barriers that remain, and the actions technology buyers should take now. Physical AI, memory cost pressures, and mature on-device silicon pushed edge deployments from pilots to production, while agentic AI reached industries from manufacturing to telecom. The main barrier ahead is not hardware; it is orchestration and governance, as regulation moves from theoretical to operational under the EU AI Act and Cyber Resilience Act.

“1H26 marked a shift from isolated edge devices to integrated deployments. Physical AI, memory economics, and agentic orchestration are converging to push intelligence to the device; the hardware is ready. The remaining challenge is ensuring governance and fleet management keep pace with the speed of deployment,” said Olga Yashkova, research manager, Worldwide Telecommunications Services at IDC.

Headless, Agentic, and Overhyped: A Buyer’s Guide to CRM’s Loudest Year

Michelle Morgan — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

CRM vendors have swapped “copilot” for “agent” across all major platforms, but governance, identity management, and data hygiene have not kept pace. Salesforce’s headless push removes the browser-based review step most oversight was built around, while AI-native challenger CRMs pick up early-stage buyers without touching enterprise renewals just yet. This IDC Perspective separates real pressure from hype and offers concrete steps for buyers.

“The vendor community moved fast from ‘copilot’ to ‘agent’ this year,” says Michelle Morgan, senior research manager for AI-Enabled Sales, Customer Services, and Contact Center Strategies at IDC. “The data mess most CRMs are sitting on has moved nowhere. That gap is the whole story.”

IDC PeerScape: Practices to Implement Software Bill of Materials for Security Purposes

Nick Kirtley — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC PeerScape draws on interviews with IT and security leaders at organizations that have incorporated SBOMs into their processes.

"IT and security teams have a blind spot in terms of software components used across the organization. If a new vulnerability drops, or if the industry recognizes vulnerable software being abused in the wild, it can be a difficult and time-consuming job to identify and confirm where those software components are used within the organization," says Nick Kirtley, adjunct research advisor for IDC's IT Executive Programs (IEP). "Also, we're seeing more attacks on the software supply chain requiring more insight into the software composition of third parties and partners. SBOM and software identification techniques vary greatly from organization to organization, which shows that there are many solutions that get the job done. Organizations are implementing SBOM as part of a wider effort to better understand the software and applications used within the IT landscape, along with better vulnerability identification and remediation."

The New Cloud Edge: Emerging Workloads, Drivers, and Placement Advice for Asia/Pacific Enterprise Decision-Makers

Daphne Chung — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective examines the trends, drivers, and challenges reshaping edge investment across Asia/Pacific and presents a four-tier placement framework — latency, sovereignty, economics, and autonomy — to guide workload placement decisions.

“Edge has stopped being a latency fix and has now become the default architecture,” says Daphne Chung, research director on cloud and datacenter, IDC Asia/Pacific. She adds, “Sovereignty mandates and CFO-grade unit economics are now independent reasons to place a workload at the edge. Enterprises that treat placement as a one-time build rather than a dynamic scoring exercise will be rearchitecting sooner than they expect.”