rssitbuyer

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Secure Access Services Edge 2026 Vendor Assessment

Brandon Butler, Pete Finalle — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study provides a comprehensive evaluation of the leading vendors competing in the rapidly evolving SASE market, assessing the depth of their integrated networking and security capabilities, architectural approaches, and the ability to support enterprise transformation across distributed environments.

"Networking is a foundational element of any SASE architecture, and today's leading vendors are delivering a compelling and diverse range of approaches to integrated networking functionality. Whether organizations prioritize global POP-based architectures with impressive performance, standalone SD-WAN depth, or campus and branch integration, the market offers strong options that balance optimal connectivity and enhanced end-user experience with the robust security capabilities that define modern SASE platforms." — Brandon Butler, senior research manager, Network Infrastructure and Services, IDC

"The SASE network security stack has matured greatly over the past 24 months, and few vendors struggle with providing the basics (ZTNA, SWG, inline CASB, and API CASB). However, in the face of increasingly fragmented ecosystems, AI usage and AI-powered threats, quantum computing development, and data/security sovereignty concerns, the basics are no longer good enough. For competing vendor products in this research, keeping one step ahead of the game/buyer requirements has never been more imperative or more difficult." — Pete Finalle, research manager, Trusted Access and Network Security, IDC

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.

IDC TechBrief: AI-Enabled Kubernetes Optimization and Security

Stanley B. Gibson, Jevin Jensen, George Mironescu — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC TechBrief examines how vendors are augmenting Kubernetes with AI and explains how organizations can gain from investing in these technologies.

The quest to optimize Kubernetes predates the current wave of AI. The surge in AI innovation, applied to Kubernetes environments, aims to deliver highly efficient configurations that yield significant savings to organizations.

But not all AI optimization tools are alike: some are essentially chatbots that suggest configuration improvements, some are standalone, and others are embedded in SRE suites. Which is best depends on the scope of a Kubernetes implementation; whether AIOps, SRE, FinOps, or DevOps/SecOps is involved; and what level of Kubernetes expertise the organization currently employs.

"Since the downsides of a suboptimal Kubernetes implementation are significant — money wasted, lackluster service levels, and security holes — IT leaders should explore the benefits of AI in the quest for an optimal Kubernetes environment while exercising caution in implementing technologies that might be new and unproven," said Stanley B. Gibson, adjunct research advisor with IDC's IT Executive Programs (IEP).

IDC TechScape: Worldwide Frictionless Experience-Enabling Innovation in Air Travel, 2026

Dorothy Creamer — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC TechScape maps 24 technologies shaping the frictionless airline traveler experience in 2026, organized across transformational, incremental, and opportunistic adoption phases. The study covers the full passenger journey, from booking and pre-trip planning through security, in-flight experience, luggage handling, and post-trip engagement, as well as the crew- and operations-facing technologies that directly determine whether travelers encounter a friction-free journey or a frustrating one.

“Passenger and traveler demands are at an all-time high and the opportunities for disruption and frustration lurk at every digital touch point. The airlines and travel providers that are working to support travelers with proactive and predictive engagement and operational strategies will win with contextualized and frictionless experiences every time,” says Dorothy Creamer, senior research manager, Hospitality and Travel Digital Strategies, IDC. “The constraint separating leaders from laggards in air travel is no longer which vendor relationships they hold; it is whether their data estate is mature enough to let these technologies work together and deliver on their promise.”

Medidata NEXT London 2026: AI Moves from Pilot Purgatory to Platform Scale

Silvia Piai — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Medidata Solutions’ (Medidata) NEXT London 2026 marked the shift from AI experimentation to enterprisewide agentic deployment, anchored by the commercial launch of Medidata Plus and the full rollout of Dot. Key innovations include AI-driven simulation workspaces for protocol and enrollment planning, a proprietary Patient Burden Index, GenAI-powered site selection, and an expanded patient engagement platform that integrates continuous sensor data. Customer evidence, including a 37% enrollment uplift in atopic dermatitis trials and up to 70% reduction in budget build times, confirmed operational impact. Medidata also presented its “orchestrated intelligence” vision, extending clinical research intelligence across the life sciences value chain through partnerships with Anthropic, NVIDIA, and Mistral.

Clinical organizations should prioritize data standardization, adopt simulation and site selection tools early in protocol design, and evaluate contract research organization (CRO) partners on AI readiness. Medical device companies navigating the evolving regulatory environment in 2026 should treat early platform engagement as a strategic opportunity.

“Medidata NEXT London 2026 showed an industry moving from AI ambition to AI accountability. The evidence is real. Enrollment gains, faster builds, smarter site selection, and platform models such as Medidata’s offer one indication of how these capabilities can move from pilots to enterprise scale. For medical device companies, the moment to start engaging is now while both the underlying platforms and regulatory landscape are still being defined,” says Silvia Piai, research director, IDC.

Navigating Shortening Obsolescence Cycles: Actions Technology Leaders Should Take Now

Niel Nickolaisen — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective reveals that a critical success factor for technology leaders is the ability to adapt as technologies, technology providers, and organizational needs change. We have entered an environment of increasing change — driven by AI innovation. One of the consequences of increased technological change is the shortening of obsolescence cycles. As technology lifetimes shrink, there is an increased need to shorten technology planning and modernization timelines while also reviewing and changing business practices and decisions regarding the useful life and payback period of technology investments.

Technology leaders, departments, and their broader organizations that perform best in an environment of rapid change are those that make their processes, plans, and architectures more agile and adaptive and that recognize that such capabilities are now the minimum required.

“The pace of technology change has always defined the technology leader’s challenge,” says Niel Nickolaisen, adjunct research advisor for IDC’s IT Executive Programs (IEP) practice. “What is different currently is that the pace itself is accelerating — and the organizational models, planning horizons, and financial assumptions that served technology leaders well at a slower pace are no longer adequate. The technology leaders who recognize this structural shift and adapt their practices accordingly will increase the likelihood of their and their organization’s success.”

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.

Driving Operational Excellence with Digital Twins in Manufacturing

Sarah Lee, Carlos Gonzalez, Gunjan Bassi — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective examines how digital twins are evolving from visualization tools into the simulation and orchestration backbone of physical AI on the shop floor. It distinguishes between the simulation role, which models processes and assets to support engineering and AI training, and the orchestration role, which coordinates physical systems, AI agents, and workers in real time. It examines divergent adoption patterns across process and discrete manufacturing and profiles the vendor landscape. It provides guidance for operations and plant leaders on sequencing investments, building data foundations, and pairing twin programs with workforce enablement.

"Digital twins are evolving beyond visualization to become the operational backbone of AI-enabled manufacturing. As manufacturers move toward autonomous operations, digital twins provide the simulation environment to train AI and the orchestration layer to coordinate assets, systems, and people in real time," says Sarah Lee, senior research director, Manufacturing IT Strategies at IDC.

"A digital twin may be technically secure yet still become operationally unreliable if its data, models, and assumptions drift from reality. Trust requires both protection and continuous validation," says Gunjan Bassi, research manager, Worldwide Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and Intelligence Strategies at IDC.

"A digital twin is only as good as the data beneath it. Without a unified industrial data layer that mirrors real-world plant conditions, even the most sophisticated twin serves only as a virtual mirror. For real digital twins to evolve in the world of physical AI, real-time data analysis and automation must be in sync with digital twin simulation," says Carlos Gonzalez, research manager, Event-Driven Automation and Analytics at IDC.