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CIO Peer Perspective: Moving from AI ROI to Measurable Business Value

Giulia Carosella, Martina Longo — Thu, 12 Nov 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective summarizes a discussion between IDC and members of the IDC CIO Research Board on how CIOs can move from AI ROI to measurable business value. With only 15% of organizations realizing AI ROI above 100% and 69% reporting a significant gap between AI spending and measurable financial outcomes, the discussion explores why traditional ROI and productivity metrics fall short and why time saved does not automatically become financial value. It concludes with the following advice for technology buyers: anchor AI initiatives to existing business outcomes and baselines, put value and cost on the same dashboard, keep outcome ownership with the business while the CIO provides the measurement framework, and treat value measurement as a life-cycle discipline.

“AI value should not be measured by technology adoption or the amount of activity it eliminates, but by whether the capacity it creates translates into better business outcomes. The CIO’s role is to make that connection measurable, while accountability for the outcome remains firmly with the business,” says Martina Longo, research manager at IDC.

“Hours saved are potential capacity, not realized value. Until organizations can show where that time went, whether to new revenue, more meaningful customer conversations, or better decisions, the benefit has not been banked. That is why ROI can no longer be a onetime calculation; it has to become a dynamic discipline, revisited as adoption, costs, and workflows evolve,” says Giulia Carosella, senior research manager, AI-Fueled Business Strategies, IDC.

IDC MarketScape: North America Public Cloud Object Storage 2026–2027 Vendor Assessment

Dave McCarthy, Jasdeep Singh — Thu, 12 Nov 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC MarketScape evaluates providers of public cloud object storage in North America, scoring durability and resilience architecture, performance, security and access control, life-cycle and tiering mechanics, data services, and the commercial structures through which capacity is consumed.

The assessment finds that capacity and 11 nines of durability are no longer differentiating. Competitive separation now comes from two places: whether the storage layer actively participates in the workloads that read from it and whether the commercial model remains legible as data grows.

"Object storage stopped being a commodity the moment workloads started reading from it directly," said Dave McCarthy, group vice president at IDC. "When analytics queries, training pipelines and agents all operate against the bucket rather than a copy staged somewhere else, the storage layer starts determining query performance, accelerator utilization and how much data engineering a workload needs before it can run at all. That is a platform decision, not a capacity purchase, and providers no longer converge on the same answer."

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide eSIM Management Platforms 2026 Vendor Assessment

John Gole, Alejandro Cadenas, Jitesh Bhayani, Jason Leigh — Thu, 12 Nov 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC MarketScape evaluates vendors providing eSIM management platforms to communications SPs worldwide. These platforms help communications SPs manage eSIM provisioning across consumer devices, travel eSIM services, and IoT, going beyond provisioning to deliver the orchestration and digital connectivity enablement, including integration with operators' business systems, that each segment requires. The study analyzes vendors' capabilities, strategies, and positioning, giving communications SPs a structured framework to assess offerings across these layers and segments.

"The eSIM market is entering a critical period of acceleration, with midmarket devices, travel eSIM services, and SGP.32 all raising volumes and expectations at once. Provisioning remains the foundation, but orchestration and digital enablement are where communications SPs will win or lose, and the platforms that prove themselves in production now will define what comes next," said John Gole, Director, IoT and Mobility at IDC.

IDC MaturityScape Benchmark: AI-Fueled Government Organization Worldwide, 2026

Massimiliano Claps, Ruthbea Yesner, Claudia Medina, Nigel Wallis — Thu, 12 Nov 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC study presents results from IDC's MaturityScape Benchmark AI Survey, released worldwide in May 2026, drawing on a government subsample of 99 organizations out of 1,900 organizations surveyed. This document is a refined, government-specific segmentation of IDC's prior public sector benchmark (see IDC MaturityScape Benchmark: AI-Fueled Public Sector Organization Worldwide, 2025, IDC #US53583125, July 2025), which covered a broader public sector subsample that also included public education and smart-city programs; federal, state, and local governments were the largest single component of that earlier cut. This document applies the framework set out in IDC MaturityScape: AI-Fueled Organization 2.0 (IDC #US54450625, April 2026). The most significant change this year is the elevation of governance to a distinct fourth dimension alongside strategy, people, and technology. Note: Because the underlying survey methodology and question set were revised for 2026, and because this government subsample is a narrower cut than the prior public sector benchmark's broader population, year-over-year figures are not directly comparable to the 2025 Public Sector benchmark, and this document does not present numeric comparisons against prior-year results.

The primary audience for this study is government technology buyers, including chief information officers, chief AI officers, chief data officers, and the AI program and line-of-business leaders at federal, state, and local government agencies who plan, fund, and govern AI investments. Technology suppliers serving government may also use it to benchmark where agencies stand on AI maturity.

Government organizations post a lower overall AI maturity score than the worldwide average (mean of 2.24 versus 2.43), led by governance (at 2.33, the most advanced of the sector's four dimensions, echoing the global pattern), while technology, at 2.17, remains the least mature, reflecting persistent data and platform readiness gaps as agencies work to modernize legacy infrastructure.

This is consistent with the sector's high-accountability nature: government agencies can face intense legislative oversight, adverse audit findings, and erosion of public trust for governance and compliance failures, giving them a strong incentive to mature AI governance ahead of the other dimensions.

"Government agencies are formalizing AI governance faster than any other dimension, a reflection of new mandates around chief AI officer roles, interagency coordination, and human oversight of AI-driven decisions. But governance leadership is not the same as leadership everywhere; technology remains the sector's weakest link, and as agentic AI extends into case management and benefits administration, agencies will find that governance alone cannot carry the transformation." — Massimiliano Claps, research director, IDC Government Insights

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Augmented Identity Security Solutions 2026 Vendor Assessment

Emanuel Figueroa — Tue, 10 Nov 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC MarketScape evaluates vendors of augmented identity security solutions (AISS), software that acts on identity risk while access is in use, not only when it is granted. Vendors were assessed against five pillars (identity coverage, continuous risk scoring, automated enforcement, bidirectional interoperability, and observability and delegation governance) using capabilities generally available on August 14, 2026. The assessment reflects a market where AI agents have moved identity from deciding who has access to governing what happens next. No single platform covers every customer's needs, and platforms and specialists now aim at the same target: to discover, control, and act on the risk AI agents pose. This document discusses each vendor's strengths and challenges and gives buyers guidance on visibility, ownership, enforcement evidence, pricing, and piloting.

"Identity has been practiced for decades, and enforcement was largely implied: Control was assumed, and remediation was someone else's job. Agents change the arithmetic. They are far more numerous and far less predictable than people or service accounts, so the asymmetry is volume: Actions arrive in seconds, and discovery still runs in weeks. Judge vendors by what they fix, not only what they find," said Emanuel Figueroa, senior research analyst, Identity Security, Worldwide, IDC.

The AI in Sovereign AI: Are National AI Models Strategic Assets Worth Investing In?

Alessandro Perilli, Melih Murat, Deepika Giri, Ewa Zborowska, Daeil Chun — Tue, 10 Nov 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective examines whether national AI models are strategic assets worth investing in. It looks at how broad reliance on foreign-controlled AI models can create systemic dependency, and what happens to an economy when access is cut off for political or technical reasons, particularly in mission-critical industries. It then reviews national AI model investments across regions and countries and gives IDC's perspective on what has worked, what has not, and who benefits from these investments, including nations, technology vendors, end-user organizations, and investors. The document closes with recommended actions for policymakers, technology solution providers, investors, and technology buyers.

"AI can raise a nation's GDP while leaving the technology sustaining that growth under foreign control," said Alessandro Perilli, vice president, Research, AI Economics, IDC. "Countries invest in defense, nuclear, and space programs because the long-term implications of dependence can outweigh the effort required to build domestic capability. AI sovereignty warrants the same calculation. More than 350 national AI model releases occurred outside the United States and China from March 2024 to September 2026. Yet very few have become competitive, widely adopted alternatives, even in the world's 10 largest economies. Governments and the private sector must now choose: Make the sustained investment strategic AI capability requires or let others set the terms."

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide AI Agents for IT Service Management Software 2026–2027 Vendor Assessment

Snow Tempest — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC study presents a vendor assessment of the worldwide market for AI agents for IT service management software through the IDC MarketScape model.

"AI agents for IT service management are an emerging market, for which customer demands include not only agent capabilities but security, governance and accurate organizational and technical context," said Snow Tempest, research manager, IT Service Management at IDC.

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Digital Service Providers for Large Capital Projects in Energy and Water 2026 Vendor Assessment

Gaia Gallotti, Jean-François Segalotto, Gaurav Verma — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC study evaluates digital service providers supporting large capital projects in energy and water worldwide. It analyzes vendors’ capabilities, strategies, and positioning in a market undergoing structural transformation as owners face a capital investment cycle that outstrips the capacity of traditional, project-by-project delivery models and move toward governing capital programs as connected portfolios. The report provides energy and water companies with a structured framework to assess service providers across capital portfolio planning, project controls, engineering data and digital thread, construction and commissioning digitalization, IT/OT integration, advanced analytics, AI, and digital twins, and platform implementation and managed services.

“The volume of capital that energy and water owners must now deploy is so vast that the operating model behind large capital projects for the past several decades is simply no longer viable, and no amount of incremental effort will make delivering one program at a time scale to the size of this investment cycle. Owners need service providers capable of restructuring how capital is governed, funded, and executed across the entire portfolio, with shared data, standardized delivery patterns, and AI proven in production, because the old way of delivering large capital projects will not survive the demands now being placed on it.” — Research Director Gaia Gallotti, IDC Energy Insights

IDC TechBrief: World Models

Dan Everett — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC TechBrief defines world models, explains how they are being used, and recommends how buyers should evaluate models and suppliers. World models help buyers train AI on a wider range of scenarios, cut simulation cost, and reduce the need for human intervention in autonomous systems. Technology leaders should invest in use cases, not architecture, and guard against the risk that matters most: a simulation that looks realistic but gets the physics wrong.

"Wait on world models, and you risk falling behind. Overinvest before the technology is proven, and you risk compliance gaps and legal liability. Buyers with a clear view of the market that invest strategically in use cases and build expertise and adaptability through learning will be the ones that realize business value." — Dan Everett, research director, Spatial Intelligence and World Models at IDC

AI and Agentic-Enabled Managed Services: Pricing and Penalties

David Tapper — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective discusses different pricing models that organizations prefer when procuring managed services using AI and agentic AI. The document also analyzes an array of market and industry factors influencing the optimal portfolio of pricing models that managed services providers (SPs) should target against the backdrop of types of operating models for AI. Factors assessed involve structuring defensible contracts, driving scalability of comparable outcomes, orchestrating external systems, adapting to changing inputs, adjusting to exogenous triggers, controlling cost structure and operating leverage, and managing financial downside.

"Effective use of outcome-based pricing for managed services using AI and agentic AI requires managed SPs to address a wide array of exogenous and endogenous factors shaping the risks associated with each type of pricing model, particularly outcome-based pricing," says David Tapper, program VP, Outsourcing and Managed Cloud Services at IDC. "Critical investments that managed SPs need to pursue involve building a robust governance structure, aligning use of pricing models across operating models, using portfolio risk management for pricing models, implementing repricing structure as a means of adapting to change, investing in an autonomous operations platform to assess pricing impacts, developing a road map to scale outcomes, structuring pricing arrangements with partner ecosystem, and architecting AI-enabled managed services based on risk to overall business."