rssitbuyer

Building Digital Twins for Decision and Scenario Modeling

Robert Multhaup — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective notes that an advanced group of organizations is building digital twins to help respond to complex business events, where the twin can accelerate decision velocity, objective realization, decision scalability, and continued learning to improve its decision quality. But all of this decision-making activity must be fully monitored and controlled by humans, and this required cultural change can prove more difficult than automating the actual digital twin technology itself.

As Robert Multhaup, adjunct research advisor for IDC's IT Executive Programs (IEP), says, "Big companies are beginning to implement digital twin solutions with a decision-centric approach that exploits the ability of causal AI models to be trained on a chain of reasoning to make decisions. But the bigger question is: Can organizations rework their decision-making operating model to support both synthetic actors and humans working together as a frictionless, high-speed digital twin?"

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Conversational Intelligence and Analytics Software 2026 Vendor Assessment

Hayley Sutherland — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study represents a vendor assessment of the worldwide conversational intelligence and analytics software market through the IDC MarketScape model. This assessment discusses both quantitative and qualitative characteristics that provide guidance about conversational intelligence and analytics software vendors and their offerings. This IDC MarketScape covers a number of major vendors participating in the market and focused on providing conversational intelligence and analytics software tools for a wide variety of use cases, data types, and communication channels. 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 the most influential for success in the market in both the short term and the long term.

"In a fast-moving market where AI is rapidly commoditizing conversational analytics capabilities, choosing a vendor that provides trust, transparency, and partnership may be as strong a factor in success as the technology itself," said Hayley Sutherland, research manager, Conversational AI at IDC. "Technology and business leaders should carefully assess their organization's AI maturity and needs, and examine vendors closely for both forward-looking, easy-to-use technology and the AI partnership and thought leadership they provide for their customers."

AI, GenAI, and Agentic AI Implementations to Optimize Supply Chain Finance

Maria Adele Di Comite — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective examines how AI, generative AI, and agentic AI are being deployed to optimize supply chain finance (SCF) — the financing of receivables, payables, and inventory across buyer-supplier ecosystems. The document maps four layers of AI capability now live in SCF platforms, the use cases and measurable outcomes attached to each, the governance and data challenges slowing broader autonomy, and the road map items vendors are converging on next. While there are open questions regulators and the industry are working through, AI adoption is not a risk to be avoided to be on the safe side but a huge opportunity to optimize supply chain finance, to be handled with care.

"Supply chain finance is no longer a paperwork problem with automation bolted on — it's becoming a live, self-monitoring layer of the trade ecosystem. The institutions furthest along didn't get there by adding a chatbot to old workflows; they redesigned the decision architecture, and the governance around it, at the same time," said Maria Adele Di Comite, senior research director, IDC Financial Insights.

How Company Size Shapes AI’s Impact on B2B Marketing

Sudhir Rajagopal, Roger Beharry Lall, Katie Evans, Supriya Deka — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective is a deeper dive into how AI’s impact on B2B technology marketing varies by company size. Using IDC’s 2026 Marketing Barometer Survey, IDC found that the variations and gaps between company sizes reflect structure, not capability. Each segment carries a distinct exposure: Small firms are expanding capabilities on a thin data foundation, midmarket is losing search traffic faster than its answer engine strategy can replace it, and large enterprises lack buyer visibility despite leading on AI discovery infrastructure. The document offers segment-specific budget and recommendations for CMOs.

“A high AI impact on marketing performance may not always be proof of a better strategy; it’s often proof of a more basic structure,” says Sudhir Rajagopal, research director, CMO Advisory Service, IDC. “Smaller organizations, unrealized technical debt, and more basic buyer signals can make an organization look further ahead on AI than it actually is. In prioritizing and sequencing marketing investments, CMOs must calibrate their existing performance against structural position, technical debt, and AEO visibility to see more sustainable AI returns in marketing.”

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Cloud Professional Services in the AI Era 2026 Vendor Assessment

Jennifer Thomson, Eren Eser — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study represents a vendor assessment of the 2026 cloud professional services market through the IDC MarketScape model. This research is a quantitative and qualitative assessment of the characteristics that explain a vendor's success in the marketplace and help anticipate that vendor's ascendancy. This IDC MarketScape covers a variety of vendors participating in the worldwide cloud professional services market and reflects the dramatic reshaping of buyer expectations driven by generative and agentic AI. A record 27 vendors were evaluated, including six new entrants — Caylent, Infosys, Innova Solutions, Insight, Tech Mahindra, and Wipro — reflecting both the maturation of inclusion thresholds and the broader expansion of cloud professional services capability across the global services landscape.

"Cloud has shifted from being the destination of a transformation to being the foundation of a transformation. In 2026, the question for buyers is no longer 'how do I move to the cloud' but 'how does my cloud estate let me deploy and govern AI agents that materially change how my business runs' and the providers that can answer that question convincingly are the ones that will lead the next decade of this market," said Jennifer Thomson, vice president, Research at IDC.

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Digital Workplace Services 2026 Vendor Assessment

Pushkaraksh Shanbhag — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study represents a vendor assessment of providers offering digital workplace services (DWS) through the IDC MarketScape model. The assessment reviews both quantitative and qualitative characteristics that define current market demand and expected buyer needs across the DWS market. The evaluation is based on a comprehensive and rigorous framework that assesses vendors relative to defined criteria. The framework highlights the key factors expected to matter most for success in the DWS market, both in the short and long term.

"Digital workplace vendors have moved agentic AI from pilot to production faster than they have moved AI governance from concept to codified practice. Buyers should treat a provider's ability to govern AI in live operation as seriously as its ability to deploy it," says Pushkaraksh Shanbhag, senior research director, Worldwide Services, IDC.

IDC Tech Buyer Presentation: The Agentic AI Maturity Gap in Healthcare Provider Organizations

Mutaz Shegewi — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Tech Buyer Presentation examines the maturity gap in agentic AI adoption among healthcare providers. IDC survey data show that healthcare providers implement AI initiatives with discipline and clear financial visibility, yet their foundations remain fragmented. Strategy remains functional rather than enterprise-wide, and governance is still handled by IT and committees, not by a dedicated center of excellence. The gap stems from data quality and governance issues. To close this gap, this presentation makes key recommendations to follow before scaling, rather than adding more agentic capabilities to the fragmented base.

“Healthcare providers aren’t struggling to make agentic AI work; they’re struggling to make it work at enterprise scale,” says Mutaz Shegewi, senior research director, Worldwide Healthcare Provider AI, Platforms and Technologies, IDC. “Every dimension we measured points to organizations executing well within silos but not having yet built the data foundation and centralized oversight that scaling demands. Closing that gap, not adding more use cases, is the next 12–18 months’ priority for healthcare technology leaders.”

IDC PlanScape: Defining the Opportunity for Hospitality and Travel Media Networks

Dorothy Creamer — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC PlanScape defines what a media network is for a hospitality or travel operator, explains why the category has become important, identifies the stakeholders who must fund and govern it, and lays out a phased path to grow the bottom line by selling advertising, both to outside brands and to the operator's own on-property and brand-owned ancillaries, products, and services. None of this works without the first-party data that an operator already holds. This data is the targeting engine behind every ad sold through the network, whether the buyer is an outside brand or the operator's own spa or restaurant, and it is what turns advertising from an interruption into a personalized offer a guest is more likely to welcome.

"Every hospitality and travel operation is already sitting on vast amounts of valuable guest and traveler data," says Dorothy Creamer, senior research manager, Hospitality and Travel Digital Strategies, IDC. "This very data is often untouched or ineffectually used to drive revenue for properties and operators. A media network offers the potential to leverage this data twice: once to sell an outside brand's ad and once to sell the operator's own spa appointment or dinner reservation. Most travel and hospitality organizations have not decided who inside the organization owns the opportunity. Brands must build for these opportunities while recognizing the importance of organizational ownership along with the technology decisions that need to be made."

The Race to Orchestrate the AI Hospital

Mutaz Shegewi — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Health systems and technology vendors are racing to claim the "control plane" of the AI-driven hospital, but IDC's Phase 1 landscape review of 38 suppliers and 15 real-world deployments found that no architecture has permanently secured that role, although pure operational orchestration is currently furthest ahead on independently corroborated evidence. Room-centric sensor platforms are scaling but remain disconnected from hospital-wide decision-making. EHR vendors have the deepest clinical workflow footprint, but workflow depth is not the same as control-plane status. Pure operational orchestration solutions are delivering independently corroborated, large-scale ROI today without needing the room to be smart first. Physical robotics is bifurcating: Reliability failures have sidelined delivery and mobile-transport robots at multiple health systems, even as platform-level investment and surgical robotics leaders accelerate a separate part of the category, while AI governance is emerging as its own hospital-wide layer that may end up setting the pace for how fast the rest of the architecture is allowed to scale. This document gives technology buyers a sequenced, evidence-led framework for funding what is proven now, scoping what remains a vendor thesis, and monitoring the signals that will determine which architecture ultimately anchors the AI hospital.

"Every vendor in this landscape has a story about why they want to orchestrate the AI hospital. The data says otherwise. While the smart room is scaling and the EHR is deepening, operational orchestration is delivering and governance is quietly outpacing them all. Buyers who fund based on marketing timelines instead of evidence may end up with the wrong AI hospital architecture," says Mutaz Shegewi, senior research director, IDC Health Insights.

Agentic Orchestration Tries It On: The Opportunity for Media Networks Confronts a Reckoning in Fashion and Luxury Retail

Ornella Urso, Alex Holtz — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

“Real retail media programs exist at Saks Global, Nordstrom, Ulta Beauty, Selfridges, Mytheresa, and FARFETCH, but none has the DSP-branded, self-serve vertical infrastructure that travel and grocery retail media have already built — a gap that is simultaneously the category’s biggest limitation and clearest opportunity,” said Ornella Urso, research director, IDC Retail Insights.

“Retail and commerce media networks are set to outpace social as the fastest-growing share of worldwide advertising spend through 2030, and fashion, luxury, and prestige beauty retail is the largest unclaimed pool in that shift,” said Alex Holtz, research director, IDC Worldwide Media and Entertainment Digital Strategies. “The operators that stand up agentic orchestration now — clean first-party data, self-serve buying, measurement a brand advertiser will accept — will monetize demand they already generate. Those that wait will keep renting audiences they already own.”