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IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Conversational AI Platforms for Front-Office Use Cases 2025–2026 Vendor Assessment

Hayley Sutherland — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC study represents a vendor assessment of the conversational AI platforms for front-office use cases market through the IDC MarketScape model. This assessment discusses both quantitative and qualitative characteristics that provide guidance about front-office-focused conversational AI platform vendors and their offerings. This IDC MarketScape covers a variety of vendors participating in the market and focused on providing platforms that can provide conversational AI solutions, including AI assistants, copilots, and agents, for a wide variety of front-office use cases 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.

"Over the past three to four years, IDC has seen vendors continue to expand their conversational AI platform offerings to support a wider variety of front-office use cases, adding to customer support self-service and customer service agent assist with specialized capabilities for marketing outreach, lead scoring, and real-time sales agent assistance," said Hayley Sutherland, research manager, Conversational AI at IDC. "This IDC MarketScape evaluation of conversational AI platforms for front-office use cases should help business and IT leaders gain valuable insight into what is available in the market today, as well as help inform longer-term strategies."

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Enterprise Governance, Risk, and Compliance Services 2025–2026 Vendor Assessment

Bill Latshaw — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC study highlights the shift from static GRC controls to agile, integrated, and AI-enabled operating models. It evaluates vendors on their ability to deliver holistic resilience, unify risk and compliance, and leverage automation and analytics, guiding organizations to select partners that support rapid decision-making, transparency, and trusted reporting in a dynamic threat landscape.

"In a world where disruption is constant and cyberthreats multiply, organizations cannot remain reactive. Companies must make the choice to transform their enterprise GRC into a unified, AI-driven force for resilience, rapid decision-making, and trusted accountability across their lines of business. The ever-changing and confused future demands nothing less." — Bill Latshaw, research director, Worldwide Business Consulting Services at IDC

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Retail GenAI-Driven Product Discovery and Search Tools 2025–2026 Vendor Assessment

Ornella Urso, Ananda Chakravarty — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC study on worldwide retail GenAI-driven product discovery and search tools highlights the transformative impact of generative AI on retail product discovery, moving the industry from basic keyword search to advanced semantic, vector, multimodal, and agentic AI–driven experiences. Retailers are now leveraging conversational interfaces, real-time personalization, and unified data integration to deliver intuitive, context-aware, and highly personalized shopping journeys. This study evaluates 16 vendors on their ability to provide scalable, flexible, and innovative AI-powered search and recommendation solutions, emphasizing the need for retailers to modernize data infrastructure and adopt agent-ready systems.

"The rise of omni-channel and multimodal discovery is challenging retailers' readiness for a new era of product search. Search bars are evolving into discovery engines, chatbots into digital stylists, and every interaction becomes a moment to inspire," said Ornella Urso, research director, IDC Retail Insights. "To succeed, retailers must move beyond keyword-based systems toward a full integration of conversational AI and semantic search. Their search and discovery engines need to interpret natural language, context, and nuance while ensuring that every query, recommendation, and digital conversation feels effortless, personal, and true to the brand's signature."

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Unified AI Governance Platforms 2025–2026 Vendor Assessment

David Schubmehl, Raghunandhan Kuppuswamy — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC study provides an in-depth evaluation of the worldwide unified AI governance platforms market, a category growing rapidly as enterprises seek to manage AI systems responsibly and at scale. This study reviews established platforms designed to govern traditional AI, generative AI, and agentic AI by providing comprehensive oversight across the AI life cycle. It examines 20 vendors, highlighting technical capabilities as well as challenges and potential.

"As organizations begin to deploy AI solutions at scale, AI governance has become a 'must have,'" says David Schubmehl, VP, AI Research and Automation at IDC. "The emergence of a broad range of unified AI governance platforms is and will continue to help companies as the needs for compliance, discovery, checking, and monitoring increase. The vendors in this IDC MarketScape are already helping companies solve their largest AI governance challenges."

What Are the Main On-Premises Compute Bottlenecks for IT Buyers? IDC IT Buyer Report, 2025

Chris Drake — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey explores the challenges, limitations, and bottlenecks IT organizations face in their on-premises compute environments. These include challenges related to CPU speeds, server memory, and server network interface technology, as well as datacenter power and cooling technologies. It includes data from IDC's 2025 Enterprise Infrastructure Pulse Survey, which surveyed global users of server platforms and compute technologies.

According to Chris Drake, senior research director, Compute Infrastructure and Service Provider Trends at IDC, "Many of the limitations and challenges in on-premises compute environments are interrelated and impact one another. Server performance can be undermined by network latency, while memory limitations can negatively affect server performance by contributing to slower response times, reduced scalability, and higher levels of power consumption." He continues, "Addressing bottlenecks and limitations in on-premises compute environments often requires a holistic approach that addresses the adequacy of existing hardware infrastructure and the ways in which poorly configured software and applications contribute to subpar system performance. It also needs to consider the impact of the surrounding datacenter environment."

Bringing PLM into the Boardroom, 2025 — The Opportunity for AI in Engineering

John Snow — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Tech Buyer Presentation describes the opportunity for product manufacturers' engineering and R&D organizations to leverage AI-enhanced PLM and have greater influence within their company's boardrooms. Data is derived from several 2025 IDC surveys that measure various aspects of AI and PLM strategies, business initiatives, and use cases across discrete and process manufacturing industries. Additional data is derived from research into financial statements from more than 1,000 publicly traded manufacturing companies. Opportunities and recommendations for AI-enhanced PLM are discussed.

"PLM is no longer just an engineering tool — it's a strategic lever for improving financial performance. When manufacturers embrace modern PLM applications that can derive AI-driven insights from digital threads that span design, manufacturing, and supply chain, they unlock the ability to reduce production costs, improve NPI success rates, and deliver measurable business outcomes that resonate in the boardroom," said John Snow, research director, Product Innovation Strategies at IDC.

IDC Market Glance: Omni-Channel Retail POS and Payments Software, 4Q25

Margot Juros, Filippo Battaini — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Glance presents a high-level overview of vendors that enable retail transactions/payments across stores, ecommerce, and mobile channels, as well as for omni-channel commerce applications, such as BOPIS/click and collect and curbside pickup. The ability to offer seamless cross-channel transactions has become increasingly important for retailers to meet new customer expectations to be able to shop from wherever and in whatever way they want, regardless of channels.

Key retailer trends impacting omni-channel POS and payments offerings include growing demand for POS/commerce platforms that are unified and composable, a drive toward AI-fueled, data-driven retailing, increasing adoption of mobile POS to drive customer engagement, and new importance of payments innovation and flexibility for competitive differentiation.

IDC MarketScape: North America IT Training Services 2025–2026 Vendor Assessment

Gina Smith, PhD — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC study provides an assessment of IT training services vendors catering to the North American market. North American organizations continue to face persistent IT talent shortages as digital transformation outpaces workforce readiness. The emergence of AI and new digital workflows is redefining the skill sets required, amplifying pressure on companies to adapt more rapidly.

"AI is transforming not just technology but the very definition of what it means to be skilled," says Gina Smith, Ph.D., research director, IT Skills for Digital Business at IDC. "In the coming years, the winners will be those who cultivate adaptable, AI-fluent workforces capable of learning and evolving as technology evolves."

IDC MarketScape: U.S. Provider Data Management for Payers 2025–2026 Vendor Assessment

Jeff Rivkin — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC study provides an evaluation of vendors that provide payer solutions for provider data management. The vendors included in this study are representative vendors in the industry that met the established criteria for market share and potential growth opportunities.

This study also identifies vendors in the provider data management market that did not qualify for this IDC MarketScape but are still identified as "vendors to watch" in this active space.

According to Jeff Rivkin, research director, Payer IT Strategies at IDC Health Insights at IDC, "Provider data management systems of record are being evolved by payers that want to automate workflow, solidify data, and enable flexibility in their back office to reduce operational costs. As payers attempt to respond to governmental mandates and competitive pressures, the ability to maintain, control, and evolve provider networks fast and effectively is a competitive advantage. Those payers that cannot upgrade may not survive the onslaught of value-based reimbursement, expanding provider types, and the increased consumer and regulatory demand for directory accuracy and network adequacy."

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Cybersecurity Governance, Risk, and Compliance Consulting Services 2025–2026 Vendor Assessment

Philip D. Harris, CISSP, CCSK — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC study explores the services underpinnings required to enable a successful and fully implemented cybersecurity GRC program that can be managed either by the end customer or by the service provider that built it. This study also raises questions that buyers and vendors in this space can use as a guide to make informed decisions and achieve desired outcomes. The discipline and design of cybersecurity GRC services can provide a framework for orienting organizations from optimizing standard checkbox outcomes to optimizing a value-added program that effectively manages cybersecurity risks. This framework should also provide a prescriptive life-cycle approach that drives commitment and support from senior executives, board members, and various stakeholders in between.

"A well-defined cybersecurity GRC program is critical in today's ever-changing and growing threat landscape," said Phil Harris, research director, IDC's GRC Services and Software program. "Attackers are in the business for the long haul, extracting as much valuable data or intelligence while undetected to reap as many benefits as possible. A practical and pragmatic way to combat this is to adopt an ongoing methodical approach to assessing the depth and breadth of cybersecurity controls and the maturity to cull new or not-so-obvious vulnerabilities and exposures that attackers exploit. This is an ongoing race, and organizations with strong cybersecurity GRC programs will be better prepared to withstand evolving attacks."