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IDC MarketScape: U.S. Private and Secure Cloud Infrastructure for Defense and Intelligence 2026 Vendor Assessment

Alan Webber — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study assesses providers of private and secure cloud infrastructure to U.S. defense and intelligence agencies. These platforms give the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Intelligence Community the classified, air-gapped, and tactical edge computing capacity needed to run mission systems, from intelligence processing to AI-enabled decision support, across every classification level. The market centers on two contract vehicles, the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability for DoD and the Commercial Cloud Enterprise for the Intelligence Community, both of which fix the competitive field by vehicle rather than by open market share.

"Cloud infrastructure in this market has moved past cost and agility arguments and become a warfighting and intelligence capability in its own right. Getting a workload into a classified environment now depends less on which provider has the broadest commercial footprint and more on which one can get a given classification level authorized fastest, keep it running when the network drops, and put generative AI inside that same accredited boundary. Holding a seat on JWCC or C2E is table stakes; the real competition happens task order by task order." — Alan Webber, program vice president, IDC Government Insights

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Innovation Management Software 2026 Vendor Assessment

Jeffrey Hojlo — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study analyzes vendors in the innovation management software segment and discusses what criteria are most important for companies to consider when selecting a vendor.

"Yes, AI can help you come up with new ideas for new or extended products, assets, processes, and operations, but cannot (unless embedded within your innovation workflow) structure new initiatives that are aligned with your business strategy, resources, and processes as innovation management platforms can. Human involvement in this process — from inside and outside the company — to verify and validate that any innovation, whether new or expanding on existing products, services, or processes, remains essential," said Jeff Hojlo, research vice president, Engineering and Product Innovation Strategies.

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Life Sciences R&D Lab of the Future Technology Solutions and Consulting Services 2026 Vendor Assessment

Nimita Limaye — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study has a specific focus on LotF solutions and consulting services in the life sciences R&D space. This document seeks to compare major service providers with each other based on criteria that should be important to life sciences companies when considering the selection of a technology solutions and consulting services partner to help implement a LotF strategy, transformation, and modernizing labs, across the value chain, from design of experiment (DoE) to manufacturing, and back. This is the second time that an IDC MarketScape assessment on this topic in life sciences has been performed.

“The ‘lab of the future’ is no longer a pipe dream — it’s an enterprise-level imperative grounded in clear strategic vision, phased execution, and measurable governance. Organizations that move beyond pilots to architecting scalable, end-to-end LotF road maps, building a cloud-native API-first platform, scaling deep scientist engagement, and driving business outcomes aligned with C-suite priorities will build sustainable competitive advantage. These organizations will be the ones leading the market in 2026,” said Dr. Nimita Limaye, research VP, Life Sciences R&D Strategy and Technology at IDC.

The AI-Enabled Health Consumer: How AI Is Reshaping Health Behaviors, Expectations, and Trust

Silvia Piai — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Tech Buyer presentation examines how AI is becoming embedded in the consumer health journey — from how consumers use it today to the trust, comfort, and concerns shaping its expanding role. It explores how authority and accountability influence acceptance and translates these findings into strategic implications for providers, payers, and medtech and digital health organizations.

This analysis draws on the AI module of IDC’s 2026 Connected Health Consumer Survey, conducted online in April 2026 among 1,048 adults in eight countries. The survey findings are complemented by desk research that draws on peer-reviewed literature, regulatory guidance, and other authoritative sources.

“Consumers do not experience AI as a technology decision: They experience it as part of their health journey, and increasingly as a question of whom they can trust with their health. As consumers bring AI into that journey themselves, every organization in the healthcare ecosystem will be judged not only on what AI can do, but on how well it preserves trust, human judgment, and accountability as its role expands,” says Silvia Piai, Research Director, WW Connected Health and Medical Device Digital Strategies at IDC.

Automate 2026: Beyond the Robot Arm — Building the Foundations for Physical AI in Manufacturing

Sarah Lee — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective discusses Automate 2026, which confirmed a shift in where value sits in industrial automation. As standard industrial robot arms converge, competitive advantage is moving to the software, simulation, sensing, orchestration, and data layers around them. Physical AI has moved from demonstration to deployment, but its returns depend on fleet scale and foundations that were the real story of the show: a real-to-sim training and operational twin grounded in site-specific data, a certifiable safety layer that permits cage-free operation, an orchestration layer that avoids lock-in, and hardware-agnostic connectivity that reaches the installed base. Humanoids drew capital but remain a narrow-task bet constrained by reliability and safety, leaving mixed fleets of arms, cobots, mobile manipulators, and autonomous mobile robots as the practical near-term reality. For manufacturers, the advantage will come from building these foundations, protecting ownership of plant data, and treating robots and AI agents as governed enterprise assets.

"The most important automation decisions manufacturers will make over the next few years are not about which arm to buy but about which control plane to trust, whose simulation to build on, and who owns the data their robots generate," says Sarah Lee, senior research director, Manufacturing IT Strategies at IDC.

Global Retail Trends 2026 Across APAC, EMEA, LATAM, NATAM: Key Findings from the Global Retail Survey 2026

Ornella Urso, Ananda Chakravarty, Margot Juros, Filippo Battaini — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study presents key findings from IDC’s 2026 Global Retail Survey, examining retailer priorities, challenges, and technology investment across APAC, EMEA, LATAM, and NATAM. It finds that AI has moved past the pilot stage: in every region surveyed, more than half of retailers report they have already deployed AI and agentic AI rather than merely planning to do so.

The study identifies talent and data readiness as the main constraints on execution and points to inventory management as the leading operational challenge worldwide.

IDC TechBrief: Stablecoins as Payment Rails — Reserve Risk, Transparency, and Integration Patterns

Michael Sek Pheng Yeo — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC TechBrief examines stablecoins as enterprise payment rails, focusing on reserve risk, transparency requirements, and integration architecture. Stablecoin transaction volumes exceeded $27 trillion in 2024, surpassing Visa's annual settlement volume and signaling a structural shift in global payment infrastructure. IDC projects enterprise B2B stablecoin adoption to grow at a 41% CAGR through 2028, driven by regulatory clarity in the EU, Singapore, and the US, and by treasury teams seeking 60–80% cost reductions.

"Stablecoins are moving from the edge of enterprise payment conversations to the center of treasury strategy. Organizations that master reserve governance and integration architecture in the next 24 months will capture real cost and speed advantages in cross-border payments as well as lay the foundations for platformization of digital assets," says Michael Sek Pheng Yeo, associate research director, IDC Financial Insights Asia/Pacific.

Retail Commerce Trends in Europe and the Gen Z View, 2026: Forces Reshaping the Retail Business Model

Ornella Urso — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Tech Buyer Presentation establishes where European commerce retail stands in 2026 as agentic AI reshapes the business model. It looks at where retailers believe AI creates advantage rather than disruption, what the store becomes for a digital-first Gen Z shopper, how retailers are closing the workforce gap with frontline AI tools, and whether omni-channel execution holds together through the “connected middle” between discovery and fulfillment.

It draws on the results of IDC’s 2026 Retail Technologies and Business Process Trends Survey (which includes a 220-respondent Western European subset), IDC’s 2026 Worldwide Retail Consumer Insights Survey, and IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Retail 2026 Predictions (IDC #US53865625, October 2025). This study maps the strategic trade-offs between AI investment and measurable CX outcomes, the store’s reinvention as a real-time, fulfillment-capable hub, and the maturity gap in personalization and channel orchestration that is driving faster customer abandonment among Gen Z.

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Data Intelligence Platform Software 2026 Vendor Assessment

Stewart Bond, Marlanna Harrington — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study evaluates the data intelligence platform software market as it moves from adjacent governance tooling to a first-order AI readiness decision, driven by the demands of generative AI and agentic AI and the need for trusted, AI-ready data. It assesses 15 vendors, Actian, Alation, Ataccama, AWS, BigID, Cloudera, Collibra, Experian, IBM, Informatica, OvalEdge, Precisely, Qlik, Quest Software, and Snowflake, evaluating their strengths, challenges, and suitability for a range of data management and AI initiatives. This document underscores the role of data cataloging, governance, quality, and lineage in delivering the context that both people and AI agents need and the growing convergence around embedded, increasingly agentic automation and open standards such as the Model Context Protocol, OpenLineage, and Apache Iceberg.

"Data intelligence platform software is the control plane for delivering AI-ready data and trusted context to both people and AI agents," says Stewart Bond, vice president, Data Intelligence and Integration Software research at IDC. "Every vendor in this evaluation is embedding increasingly agentic automation into cataloging, quality, and governance to close the skills and capacity gaps that hold AI back at scale, which is why buyers should now treat platform selection as an AI readiness decision measured by outcomes rather than a governance checkbox."

The Last Line Isn’t Defense. It’s Operational Discipline: IDC’s Framework for Cyber-Resilience

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective introduces IDC’s Cyber-Resilience Framework and argues that cyber-resilience is a board-level operational continuity discipline, not a security program. Critically, it defines cyber-resilience as the capability to maintain operations through any disruptive event, whether a cyberattack, a provider outage, or a kinetic event in a conflict zone, not merely a response to adversarial threats. The document defines cyber-resilience, describes the six activities that cyber-resilient organizations perform continuously, and presents the nine domains of IDC’s Cyber-Resilience Framework. It provides guidance for CEOs, boards, CIOs, and CISOs on governing cyber-resilience as a business risk.

“The last line isn’t defense; it’s operations. Whether the threat is a ransomware actor, a failed provider, or a conflict that takes regional infrastructure offline, the organization’s ability to keep running is the only metric that ultimately matters. That is the domain of cyber-resilience, and it belongs on the board agenda.” — Frank Dickson, research group vice president, Security and Trust at IDC