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Agents as Apps: The Rise of Agents — A Vendor Business Model Reset

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Since early 2025, new AI agents have been hitting the market, and recently, the pace has increased significantly. These new agents are reshaping business processes while helping organizations reinvent themselves around a new technology operating model. In this AI era, the winner is not the app with the best UI but the agent that reliably completes outcomes — at scale, with trust and economic leverage.

This comprehensive guide brings forward the trends driving the markets and highlights the 10 moves enterprise software vendors and services providers must make quickly to survive in the agentic era. Without this immediate strategic focus and emphasis, vendors will face limited growth — and even extinction.

"The world is changing quickly. AI agents represent the next evolution of the application model, shifting from tool-based interaction to outcome-based execution," said Mickey North Rizza, group vice president, Enterprise Software, IDC. "Don't get left behind!"

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide AI-Enabled Utility Customer Experience Management Solutions 2026 Vendor Assessment

Gaia Gallotti, Jean-François Segalotto — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study evaluates vendors providing AI-enabled customer experience management (CXM) solutions to utilities worldwide. It analyzes vendors' capabilities, strategies, and comparative positioning in a market undergoing structural transformation. The report provides utilities with a structured framework to assess vendor offerings across industry depth, platform architecture, data readiness, AI integration, and ecosystem extensibility. It is intended to support utilities as they modernize customer operations to reduce cost to serve, strengthen customer trust, enable electrification-driven business models, and scale AI adoption responsibly.

"Utilities are operating in an environment defined by increased customer vulnerability, heightened regulatory scrutiny, expanding product portfolios, and rising expectations for seamless digital engagement," said Gaia Gallotti, research director, IDC Energy Insights. "At the same time, generative AI is beginning to deliver measurable productivity gains within customer operations, particularly across contact centers and digital self-service. Utilities that modernize their CXM platforms with strong data foundations, embedded AI capabilities, and flexible, industry-specific architectures will be better positioned to reduce cost to serve, unlock new revenue streams, and build long-term customer trust in an increasingly complex energy landscape."

NVIDIA and Storage Partners Back New STX Reference Architecture to Accelerate Agentic AI

Carol Sliwa, Henry Arzumanian — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT

At GTC 2026 in San Jose, NVIDIA spotlighted storage as a critical component of the infrastructure necessary to keep AI factories running at optimum performance with the launch of its BlueField-4 STX reference architecture. Major AI storage players confirmed their intention to codesign and support STX – which includes the previously announced Inference Context Memory Storage (CMX) Platform to accelerate and scale agentic AI – starting in the second half of 2026. Many storage vendors also took the occasion to provide updates on their support for the NVIDIA AI Data Platform, a customizable reference design introduced at last year’s GTC event, as well as the latest developments on their AI infrastructure.

Cisco Talks Agentic Identity at RSAC

Frank Dickson, Emanuel Figueroa, Grace Trinidad — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT

At the RSAC 2026 Conference, Cisco announced new capabilities aimed at securing AI agents, particularly those interacting through Model Context Protocol (MCP) by extending zero trust principles into agentic environments and combining identity, access control, and runtime monitoring. Cisco's Duo Agentic IAM introduced identity constructs for AI agents, enabling organizations to discover agents, associate them with ownership, and manage their life cycle. Cisco Secure Access applies policy enforcement to regulate what agents can access and what actions they can perform, using contextual and time-bound authorization to align privileges with operational context and task requirements.

The announcement underscores a pivotal industry shift: AI agents now act with autonomy comparable to digital employees, raising the stakes for identity-driven governance. Cisco's framing acknowledges that securing agentic AI is no longer an extension of IAM; it is the next frontier of identity itself. By integrating Duo IAM with its SASE offering, Cisco aims to provide consistent policy enforcement.

This shift signals a deeper architectural reality: As AI agents gain the ability to initiate, chain, and execute actions across enterprise systems, identity emerges as the first anchor of trust. Cisco's announcement reflects a recognition that agent governance cannot rely on traditional access models; it requires continuous evaluation of who the agent is, what it is allowed to do, and why a given action is justified in context.

15 Key Trends Shaping EMEA Partnering Ecosystems in 2026

Stuart Wilson, Andreas Storz — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Presentation discusses 15 key trends that will shape EMEA partnering ecosystems in 2026 and beyond. The document describes how accelerated AI innovation and adoption, buying behavior, and changing competitive dynamics reshape partner business models, vendor ecosystem strategies, and go-to-market models across the region.

2026 Strategy for Software Delivery: Mandates, Tactical Priorities, and Tech Investment Areas

George Mironescu — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Tech Buyer Presentation discusses the key software engineering mandates and technology investment areas for 2026. The presentation draws on insights from over 1,000 decision-makers surveyed from November 2025 to January 2026 for IDC's AI and Cloud-Native Software Delivery Survey.

The presentation provides insights into the thinking of various roles involved in shipping software, including application development, solution architecture, infrastructure and platform engineering, security, and IT leadership.

Drawing from 2025 initiatives and areas where delivery gaps persist, the presentation informs senior IT leaders about the most important tactical and strategic priorities shaping the agenda in 2026 and beyond.

Adobe 1Q26 Earnings: Enterprise AI Is a Resilient Moat

Gerry Murray — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Adobe announced its FY 1Q26 earnings results on March 12, 2026, reporting continued growth across its three audience segments: business professionals and consumers, creators and creative professionals, and marketing professionals. The results highlight how generative and agentic AI capabilities are increasingly embedded across Adobe's product portfolio, enabling enterprises to accelerate digital content production, streamline marketing workflows, and deliver personalized customer experiences (CX) at scale.

Agentic AI Adoption in Asia/Pacific: From Experimentation to Enterprise Scale

Deepika Giri, Shashank Nigam — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Presentation explores how Asia/Pacific enterprises are moving decisively from AI pilots to enterprise-scale implementation. The emphasis is on agentic AI orchestration, unified platforms, and establishing AI-ready data foundations. Organizations are strengthening infrastructure, enhancing data quality, and transforming their workforce to enable automation, augment decision-making, and unlock business value. Effective change management, governance, and leadership are essential for scaling agentic AI. IDC recommends building resilient foundations, preparing talent, and redefining value metrics to ensure secure, trustworthy deployment and sustained innovation.

"Asia/Pacific enterprises are rapidly advancing AI adoption by making data excellence, infrastructure readiness, and workforce transformation top strategic imperatives. Achieving scalable business impact demands not only robust governance and agile leadership but also a culture that champions agentic AI as a catalyst for enterprisewide innovation and competitive advantage," says Deepika Giri, associate VP, IDC Asia/Pacific.

Amazon Connect Innovations Remove Agent Friction to Enable Meaningful Customer Relationships

Oru Mohiuddin — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

At AWS re:Invent 2025, Amazon Connect unveiled innovations focused on removing agent friction and enabling meaningful customer relationships through agentic AI. Key launches included QuickSuite for AI-powered workforce automation and enhanced CX capabilities (e.g., real-time guidance, workflow automation, and unified customer insights). AWS's approach allows organizations to adopt AI at their own pace, with built-in governance and scalable infrastructure. The most sustainable value lies in AI augmenting, not replacing, human agents — improving speed, consistency, and personalization while keeping humans central to oversight and relationship-building. Amazon Connect's progressive AI, infrastructure strength, and flexible economics position it as a strategic enabler for enterprisewide transformation beyond the contact center.

Buyer Trends: HR as a Data Lead and Rethinking Performance as an Outcome

Zachary Chertok — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Perspective discusses buyer trends — HR as a data lead and rethinking performance as an outcome. HR, IT, and people leaders are rapidly growing as responsible and accountable strategists for how AI is configured, gated, and deployed for everyday use. The elevation of HR and IT as tandem leads means that solution value narratives need to become more holistic and inclusive of end-user enablement and augmentation aggregated into performance context directly embedded in business metric outcomes. Ecosystem alignment and data readiness are now as important as feature depth, with HR and IT leaders prioritizing HCM platforms and specialized data solutions that can plug into enterprise data strategies, support cross-functional governance, and sustain AI-driven context and personalization in the flow of work.

"The definitional framework of 'workforce performance' is changing to focus more on accessible measured outcomes and less on standard, evaluative processes for engagement," says Zachary Chertok, senior research manager, HCM Applications and Agents at IDC, "The evolution means that performance insights are increasingly forming the core of HCM ecosystem considerations with data, context, insights, and trends feeding how AI personalizes employee enablement and drives collective reporting to influence business performance planning. Consequently, HR, IT, and the line of business are taking on new stakeholder roles in how HCM ecosystems take shape."