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CX Path: Executive Summary, 2026 — Examining the CX Buyer’s Journey

Nadia Ballard, Aly Pinder, Eric Newmark, Tiffany McCormick, Douglas Hayward — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Presentation provides an executive summary of the worldwide findings from IDC’s 2026 CX Path program.

IDC’s 2026 CX Path polled 2,530 respondents across 12 countries to collect information on CX application and AI adoption, the CX buyer’s journey, and CX vendor preferences and ratings.

Coverage includes application adoption, use of generative AI and/or agentic AI, deployment models, budget plans and replacement cycle timing, purchasing preferences and attitudes toward CX buying channels, pricing options, CX management platforms, ratings, spend, and advocacy scores. The study covers 14 functional application markets: advertising; marketing; sales; digital commerce; configure, price, quote (CPQ); product information management/experience management (PIM/PXM); contact center and customer service; voice of the customer (VOC); customer experience orchestration; content and experience management; customer data platforms (CDPs); customer and digital experience analytics; aftermarket service life-cycle management; and price optimization.

IDC Survey: Open Source Software Trends, 2Q26

Matthew Flug — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey presents findings on open source software (OSS) adoption across the enterprise software development life cycle (SDLC), based on a March 2026 online survey of 213 U.S. respondents with responsibility for OSS across seven enterprise functional areas. The study examines OSS use case adoption, workload distribution, response to security incidents, and the role of open source in generative AI deployments.

The results position OSS as the default substrate of enterprise software rather than a supplement to it. More than 80% of organizations run community-supported OSS, commercially supported OSS, or both, and open source accounts for roughly 70% of workloads across all nine SDLC layers measured. In each layer, more than 77% of respondents rated OSS as critical or very important to their operations. Developer productivity and speed of innovation drive adoption, while reduced software cost ranks near the bottom of stated benefits.

“Open source software functions as the foundation of how enterprises build and operate software, accounting for roughly 70% of workloads across every layer of the SDLC,” said Matthew Flug, research manager, Intelligent Application Modernization and Deployment Platforms at IDC. “Survey data indicates that security incidents accelerate investment in governance and DevSecOps tooling rather than force a pullback from open source software.”

IDC Survey: Worldwide Data Utilization Survey 2026 — Data Volume and Analysis

Adam Wright — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey details results from IDC’s 2026 Worldwide Data Utilization Survey, which was fielded in March 2026. The survey asked respondents questions regarding the ways in which organizations generate, collect, use, and store digital data. This presentation focuses on aspects of the survey related to data volume and analysis.

“Most organizations already believe their data holds real value, but the problem is they’re not acting on it,” said Adam Wright, senior research manager for IDC’s Global DataSphere and Global StorageSphere. “That gap between what data could do and what it actually does is where the real cost is hiding, and it’s only getting wider as data keeps piling up faster than organizations can make sense of it.”

IDC Survey: U.S. Enterprise XR Survey, 2026 — Collaboration

Ramon T. Llamas — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC presentation draws on IDC’s Commercial XR Survey, fielded among U.S. professionals who used a VR, MR, AR, or ER headset for work in the first quarter of 2026, narrowed to those who named collaborating with colleagues, whether through virtual meetings or shared virtual spaces, as their primary use case.

The study covers which headsets and delivery models this group has standardized on and how many hours a week they spend in one, how far their deployments have progressed and how broadly they reach the workforce, how collaboration software is acquired (e.g., in-house, through a partner, or off the shelf) and where it runs, and how expected outcomes such as knowledge sharing, error reduction, productivity, and the core collaboration experience compare with what organizations report once the tools are in use.

Headset makers, software vendors, and the integrators between them can use the study to see how enterprise XR collaboration is structured today.

MacKenzie-Childs: Extending Customer Intelligence Beyond Marketing to Support Growth

Ornella Urso — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective examines how MacKenzie-Childs, a U.S. home and lifestyle brand, has moved from a catalog-led model to a digital-first business that uses customer data across marketing and, increasingly, product development. The document describes the company’s acquisition-led growth strategy, the company’s adoption of Amperity as its customer data platform alongside systems such as NetSuite and Yotpo, and the early benefits of self-service analytics and AI-assisted querying through AmpAI.

“MacKenzie-Childs shows how a heritage retailer can make customer data useful to teams well beyond marketing,” said Ornella Urso, head of IDC Retail Insights Europe. “The value is less about any single tool and more about the combination of self-service analytics, clear business definitions, executive alignment, and modernized operational systems. The next test for the company, and for the wider industry, will be turning that foundation into personalized customer experiences while keeping data handling disciplined as AI-assisted analysis spreads across the organization.”

Crusoe-Aalo Nuclear Partnership Signals a New Power Playbook for Hosting and Colocation

Olga Yashkova — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

On July 30, 2026, Crusoe and Aalo Atomics announced a partnership to power AI datacenters with small modular nuclear reactors, beginning with a 2027 proof of concept at Idaho National Laboratory and scaling to 50MWe of Aalo Pod reactors across Crusoe's facilities by 2029. For colocation (colo) and hosting providers, this partnership signals that power, not space, is becoming the product to sell and that some AI infrastructure players will not wait for traditional providers to solve grid interconnection bottlenecks, making a credible power road map spanning onsite generation, grid upgrades, and long-term supply agreements essential to winning the large, power-hungry AI workloads driving today's growth.

Siemens Realize Live 2026: AI-Fueled Engineering and Operations Quickly Evolve

Jeffrey Hojlo, Gunjan Bassi, Lorenzo Veronesi, Aly Pinder — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Note summarizes our views and analysis derived from recent attendance at Siemens Realize Live Americas (in Detroit) and Siemens Realize Live Europe (in Amsterdam).

"Engineering intelligence was a primary theme at Realize Live, with the enabler being, of course, generative and agentic AI. With digital, cloud, and AI in place at a rapidly growing set of organizations across industries, it is more feasible than ever before to connect product design and simulation with processes, production, asset and building management, and the service life cycle. The advancement of Siemens Simcenter combined with Intelligence Center X and Teamcenter is one example that enables this connectivity," said Jeffrey Hojlo, research vice president, Industrial Ecosystems, Engineering and Product Innovation Strategies at IDC.

2026年国内ネットワーク機器市場企業ユーザー調査

Kenichi Kusano — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

本調査レポートは、企業ネットワークに関するアンケート調査の結果を分析したものである。本調査は、2026年5月に、従業員数10人以上の国内の企業700社（官公庁を含む）を対象に実施した。主な調査項目は以下のとおりである。

企業ネットワークのトレンドと課題
ネットワーク障害への対応状況
ネットワークセキュリティの動向：ネットワーク管理者の視点
ネットワーク運用管理におけるAI（Artificial Intelligence）活用への期待

「汎用的なAIツールは、企業のネットワーク運用管理業務にもすでに浸透している。生成AIが得意とする社内提案資料や手順書といった文書の作成や、マニュアルやRFC（Request for Comments）の要約に加えて、コマンドラインベースの運用業務にも活用されている。ネットワークソリューションベンダーは、独自のAI活用機能やソリューションを導入しているが、汎用的で軽量な業務は、汎用的な生成AIツールで代替される可能性に留意して機能開発を進めるべきである」とIDC Japan、Network & Securityのシニアリサーチディレクターである草野賢一は述べている。

IBM Advances Trusted Quantum Computation, Introducing a New Framework for Quantum Advantage

Heather West, PhD — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

As enterprises increasingly prepare for quantum computing to deliver business value, confidence in the reliability and reproducibility of quantum results will become just as important as computational performance. IBM Quantum's latest research advances this objective by introducing complementary approaches for trusted quantum computation, representing an important milestone on the path toward fault-tolerant quantum computing and future enterprise applications.

IBM Earnings 2Q26

Lars Goransson, Shari Lava, Ashish Nadkarni, Robert Parker, Rick Villars — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

IBM entered the second half of 2026 with a softer quarter than it expected, reporting revenue up 1% year over year (y/y) in constant currency to $17.2 billion, below its own guidance. All references in this document are in constant currency. Software grew 5%, and Consulting grew 1%, while Infrastructure declined 7%. As IBM noted in its pre-announcement on July 13, the shortfall came in the final weeks of June, when clients shifted spending toward servers, storage, and memory to secure supply-constrained infrastructure ahead of expected price increases, and tens of large software deals failed to close on the timelines IBM expected. IBM still expanded its operating pretax margin by 30 basis points, generated $2.5 billion of free cash flow in the quarter and $4.8 billion through the first half, and revised its full-year outlook to 4–5% constant currency revenue growth while maintaining its target of roughly $1 billion in free cash flow growth.