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The headlines from InfoComm 2026 said the industry moved “from rooms to experiences.” We’ve been observing this transition for a while. But what’s more relevant to anyone who buys, runs, or just sits in meeting rooms is that the room has become another device on the corporate network, and that changes who is in charge of it. 

For years, the meeting room was the thing on the wall you hoped would just work. InfoComm 2026 in Las Vegas, the pro AV industry’s big annual show, made the case that those days are over. The room is no longer a fixed installation. Yes, it is becoming an experience, but it also bears a striking resemblance to something IT knows all too well, a textbook case of AV/IT convergence: a managed device, bought like an endpoint, run like part of a fleet, and increasingly able to collect data about the people inside it. 

The industry has agreed on the theme: outcomes, not spec sheets, now drive what companies spend on collaboration technology. Buyers want rooms that simply work and that prove their value. But what’s worth exploring is how they get there. What is different in how a meeting room is bought, run, and governed? And who ends up operating it? 

Let’s look at some numbers. Attendance at InfoComm 2026 fell about 9% year on year. What rose was the share of buyers in the room. AVIXA (the Audiovisual and Integrated Experience Association, which owns and produces InfoComm) reported that end users made up 37% of attendees, a record, up from 35% last year and 29% in 2024. So fewer people came, but more of them were the ones who sign the purchase order. What they found was a transitioning market: value is continuously moving away from hardware and installation labor toward software, cloud, and AI. 

Three groups of announcements at the show summarize this: one each for how a room is bought, how it is run, and how it is governed. 

Your next room upgrade starts with the chip that runs on-device AI 

For years, a room upgrade meant better cameras, microphones, and displays. InfoComm 2026 reframed it as a decision about processing power. HP introduced its Poly Studio Room Compute, and Cisco showed new endpoints, built on an operating system called RoomOS 26 that it developed with NVIDIA, that run AI agents directly on the device rather than in the cloud, an approach some now call edge AI. 

Cisco leaned hardest on this point, and the argument threaded through the entire show: the features that do real work in a meeting, not just record it, need on-device AI processing, so a room built on incompatible or aging hardware simply cannot run them. In other words, AI in the meeting room is no longer only a software question. It’s about hardware. Perhaps the more uncomfortable part for most buyers is that a lot of the equipment bought in the last few years may not run the features now being sold, which turns a routine refresh into a spending decision that requires a business case. 

Enter the agentic AI 

Think about what happens today when a meeting room misbehaves. Someone files a ticket and waits for a technician. Well, according to InfoComm 2026, you will soon be asking an AI assistant to sort it out. 

Several vendors connected their room systems to AI assistants using the Model Context Protocol, the open standard that companies are adopting to let AI act on their other software. Neat’s version runs on your own network and works with assistants like Claude or Cursor, so the assistant can see what is wrong in a room, change the settings, and resolve common problems without specialist knowledge or a site visit. Others are taking their own routes to the same idea: Shure, the show’s headline partner, is moving beyond hardware with ShureCloud, which manages devices centrally and adds an AI assistant for troubleshooting and support, while Cisco has connected Microsoft’s Copilot to Webex. Related tools now watch over rooms from many brands, and across Teams, Zoom, Google Meet, and Webex, from one place. 

Why should anyone outside AV care? Because this is the same move toward AI agents that is happening across the workplace, only now reaching the meeting room, and the payoff is both money and time saved: fewer call-outs, fewer help-desk tickets. It also pushes the firms that install AV toward ongoing service instead of one-off projects. However, it is still early. Most of this was shown as a capability, not a full rollout, and whether “agentic” lives up to the label is still unproven. 

So the room is now collecting data. But who governs it? 

The moment a room becomes “intelligent”, it starts producing data: who was in it, who spoke, and how the space was used. That makes it interesting to a lot more people. HR, legal, and security now have a stake in it, alongside IT, and each comes at it from a different angle. 

HR sees a room that can log who attended, who spoke, and how much, and wants to reassure employees that this isn’t being used against them and retain their trust. Legal sees the recordings and transcripts as personal data: information that carries consent, retention, and residency obligations, and that can be pulled into discovery if a dispute arises. Security sees a networked device sitting in on confidential conversations and asks the obvious questions, namely who can access that data, where it is stored, and how much bigger a target the room has become. IT, which used to own the room outright, now runs it on behalf of all three. And there is still no security standard written specifically for AI in these systems, and general ones like NIST cover only part of it. 

The industry’s early answer is to keep the processing and the data inside the room rather than sending it to the cloud, which helps with privacy and with rules about where data is allowed to live. Those questions are climbing the data governance priority list for IT and security teams this year, and writing the policy before you roll rooms out widely saves you the harder job of untangling it later. 

The room reads you now. Time to read the room. 

The meeting room is now bought like any other endpoint, run as part of your device fleet, and governed as a data source. That is a long way from the box on the conference-room wall. 

What to do before your next upgrade:  

  1. Ask which AI features run on the hardware you already own, and what you would need to buy for the rest.  
  1. Before you believe any “agentic” pitch, run a small pilot and hold it to a measurable result, such as fewer support tickets.  
  1. And before you scale, decide who owns the data the rooms collect.  

Do that, and the answer to who operates your meeting rooms, AV, IT, or an AI agent, becomes all three, working alongside. The companies that treat the room that way will get the most out of what vendors are now building. 

Navigate your next workplace technology decision with the evidence to back it. Explore IDC’s Intelligent Workplace research, forecasts, and analyst guidance, or speak with our analysts. 

Gala Spasova

Gala Spasova - Senior Research Manager, Europe Smart Office and EMEA Content & Knowledge Management Strategies

Analyst Profile
Gala Spasova is a senior research manager in IDC's Future of Workplace & Imaging team. Her research focus is on Hybrid working, Smart Office technology and Content & Knowledge Management Strategies in EMEA.  Spasova is also part of the European…

IDC recently brought together 20 senior technology executives for an invitation-only dinner with analysts Carla Arend, Andrew Buss, Duncan Brown, and Rahiel Nasir to discuss digital sovereignty in Europe. Here’s what came out of the room.

Sovereignty is real. The conversation around it isn’t.

IDC opened with a provocation: the word “sovereignty” is doing more harm than good. It’s politically loaded, definitionally contested, and vendors have been guilty of “sovereign washing”. Meanwhile, IT departments struggle to translate the concept into something their internal stakeholders actually care about.

What European organisations do care about is entirely concrete: protection against extra-territorial data requests, regulatory compliance, and supply chain resilience. According to IDC research, these are operational risk priorities, not political statements. The vendors making progress in this space have figured out how to speak to that gap. Those still foisting their own definitions of sovereignty on to the market and/or offering nothing more than so-called solutions for data localisation/residency largely haven’t.

The cloud strategy picture is more nuanced than the headlines suggest

Europe is re-assessing its options for cloud and technology providers. Global hyperscalers remain part of the picture, but how they are used is increasingly open to question. IDC’s data points to a clear shift toward layered architectures that combine global scale with local control. A specific model is emerging as the dominant pattern, and the vendors positioned within it are seeing very different conversations than those sitting outside it.

The regulatory picture adds another layer of complexity. NIS2, DORA, the AI Act: each creates compliance obligations that directly shape how organisations think about their technology infrastructure and provider relationships. Navigating that landscape without a clear positioning is increasingly difficult.

Private cloud is not the safe harbour it looks like at first glance

IDC commonly emphasizes that private cloud is the ultimate sovereign cloud, and this remains strongly the case as very few companies wish to exit all their datacenters and move wholesale to the public cloud. As adoption of private cloud has grown and evolved, it has moved from bespoke private cloud implementations towards being built on end-to-end private cloud stacks from major providers, with popular options being Microsoft Azure Local, Google Distributed Cloud, AWS Outposts, or VMware Cloud Foundation. This has resulted in unprecedented capability for enterprises running their own applications and services – but with this has also come a co-dependency on external providers for the ongoing operations of the control plane of the private cloud.

Should any serious technology or political issues arise that interrupts the connection between the public cloud based control plane and the private cloud, services deployed and delivered on the private cloud infrastructure may remain static, degrade over time, or even stop working. The end result is a bought and paid for sovereign physical infrastructure that is unable to operate effectively due to a non-sovereign operations management dependency – and this is a major risk today that a few years ago seemed unthinkable.

European customers have been providing forceful feedback to private cloud stack providers that this public cloud control plane dependency is untenable, and the market is beginning to respond. Most, but not all, providers of private cloud stacks have begun to offer an on-premises approach to the control plane, allowing fully disconnected management of applications or digital services deployment and operations, as well as of licencing tracking and billing, or updates and patching from offline sources.  The big challenge though is that these disconnected options are often limited when it comes to go to market, with vendors limiting access to the largest companies or critical national infrastructure providers or the defense industrial complex. While this may be acceptable initially as solutions come to market and are proven, for the longer-term vendors will need to make disconnected operations a core part of their value proposition across the whole customer base.

AI sovereignty: the new frontier

AI sovereignty has been part of the digital sovereignty debate for some time. But it has now emerged as the new frontier: the question of who controls the models, the data used to train them, and the inference infrastructure is becoming as contested as data residency was five years ago. The general read in the room: AI sovereignty is harder to achieve than data or infrastructure sovereignty, and the messaging across the industry remains inconsistent.

Dig deeper into the research

The dinner was one part of a broader IDC programme on digital sovereignty across Europe. If the themes above are relevant to your positioning or go-to-market strategy, here is where to go next.

Digital Sovereignty Beyond the Label – IDC’s Strategic Guide cuts through the definitional noise and explains what buyers actually evaluate when assessing sovereign solutions and providers. Download free.

From Sovereignty Claims to Credible Positioning – A customer case study on how technology providers are turning sovereignty into a commercially viable proposition. No form required.

Missed the webinar? Rahiel Nasir and Duncan Brown covered buyer expectations, sovereign washing, and practical go-to-market guidance on June 18. The on-demand recording is available here.

IDC’s Digital Sovereignty research covers cloud strategy, data governance, regulatory compliance, and infrastructure sovereignty across European markets. Research presented at the dinner was drawn from IDC’s European Digital Sovereignty Survey and the Semiannual Public Cloud Services Tracker.

Rahiel Nasir

Rahiel Nasir - Research Director, Cloud and Datacenters, Enterprise Infrastructure

Analyst Profile
Rahiel Nasir is Research Director within IDC’s enterprise infrastructure global research domain and part of the Cloud and Datacenters subdomain. Rahiel is IDC’s global lead on digital, cloud, and AI sovereignty. In this capacity, he covers emerging sovereignty initiatives and…
Duncan Brown

Duncan Brown - Group Vice President, Global Domain Lead: Worldwide Security & Trust

Analyst Profile
Duncan Brown leads IDC’s worldwide Security and Trust research, encompassing cybersecurity hardware and software products as well as professional and managed services. His analysis and opinions on security, cyber-resiliency, sovereignty and AI governance are widely sought by industry leaders and…

Last week, a select group of senior print and imaging executives gathered in London for IDC’s Print and Imaging Leadership Dinner. During this invitation-only evening, a conversation unfolded between IDC analysts and the people shaping the industry, moderated by IDC’s Sandra Ng.  

What came out of that dinner? Some of the discussions reaffirmed what many already suspected. But some of the insights revealed will fundamentally change how forward-thinking vendors approach the next 18 months. Here’s a taste of what was discussed, and why you’ll want to be in the room for one of IDC’s executive dinners next time.  

The buying committee has expanded, and most vendors are still selling to the wrong people  

Two years ago, a print deal sat with IT and procurement. That’s no longer the world we’re operating in. IDC’s 2026 European Print Survey, covering 2,000 organisations across eight markets, revealed that the stakeholder landscape has shifted dramatically. The conversation that used to happen in one room now happens in four.  

The implications for how vendors structure their go-to-market approach are significant, and the dinner surfaced a very specific playbook that the those gaining the most ground are already executing. We’ll leave the details for the briefing room.  

Security just overtook cost reduction as the #1 investment driver in print. 

A striking 24% of European technology buyers now cite security and compliance as their primary reason for investing in print. That puts it ahead of both cost reduction and productivity.  

This is more than a repositioning opportunity, as it moves the conversation to a different level within the organization,  with a different buyer. Those in the room heard exactly which messaging reaches the CISO, which regulatory triggers are opening budgets right now, and where the hardware story needs to evolve to stay relevant.  

IDC predicts that 40% of worldwide new office MFP shipments will be classified as AI MFPs by 2027. The vendors with a credible roadmap published today will be the ones with a strategic seat in 24 months. Those without one are already behind.  

The buyer has already formed a view before your sales team picks up the phone  

This was the session’s sharpest insight, and the one most likely to keep vendor CMOs up at night.  

GenAI-sourced web traffic grew 1,200% between 2024 and 2025. Two in three searches today end without a single click. Buyers are shortlisting vendors, forming preferences, and making preliminary decisions inside AI assistants, before they’ve seen your website, opened your brochure, or taken a sales call.  

IDC’s Gala Spasova gave a demonstration that stopped the room. When major AI assistants were asked the questions a head of digital workplace would actually type, around 30 vendor names came back consistently. Not a single print OEM appeared. When the question became print-specific, all the familiar names showed up.  

The print category is owned. The workplace category, where your buyers are actually looking, is invisible.  

What it takes to change that, and how fast it compounds once you do, was laid out in detail at the dinner. The short version: it’s not pay-to-play, and the window to act is narrow.  

Three places the money is actually moving in 2026, and the 12–18 month window you can’t afford to miss  

IDC analysts Jacqui Hendriks and Gala Spasova mapped out three near-term growth areas where European buyer investment is already building, from value-add software and services through to Intelligent Document Processing and a sustainability play that changes both the buyer and the budget.  

The most time-sensitive of these? A three-way alliance opportunity, vendor, channel, certified refurbisher, that’s unserved by the larger SIs and telcos, but not for long. European refurbished device shipments grew 28% in 2025. Demand is running well ahead of vendor readiness. The potential of such a model was discussed at the dinner in some detail.  

The commercial model shift that separates the winners  

The evening closed with a discussion on what’s actually different about the vendors capturing European growth. It’s not just what they’re selling. It’s the contracts they’re willing to sign, the conversations they’re prepared to have, and the partnerships they’re building now.  

Roberto Alunni and Phil Sargeant laid out, with uncomfortable precision, the behaviours that distinguish vendors gaining ground from those defending yesterday’s revenue. Some of it is replicable quickly. Some of it takes 18 months of investment to build. All of it was on the table.  

Were you in the room?  

If you weren’t at IDC’s Print & Imaging Leadership Dinner, or if you’re wondering how to get on the guest list for the next executive dinner, now is the time to reach out. Events like this are where the defining conversations happen: the information and insight that doesn’t make it into LLMs and the strategic debates that shape how the market moves, alongside networking and the connections that open doors.  

Whether your focus is European print and imaging, AI-driven workplace transformation, digital sovereignty, channel partnerships, or any of the many other topics shaping the European technology landscape, IDC brings together the senior leaders and the research to drive the conversation forward.  

To find out more about IDC’s European print and imaging research programme, or to join the conversation at our next event, contact your IDC representative or simply fill in our contact form.  

IDC’s European print and imaging research covers 2,000 organisations across Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, the UK and the Nordics, across 15 verticals. The 2026 European Print Survey data underpinning this dinner is available to IDC clients and select briefing participants.  

Phil Sargeant

Phil Sargeant - Senior Program Director, Imaging and Hardcopy Devices and Document Solutions, European Region

Analyst Profile
Phil Sargeant is IDC’s leading expert in the field of imaging, hardware devices and document solutions. As senior program director, he researches and reports on the key aspects of the multifunction, production and large format printer markets and is also…
Gala Spasova

Gala Spasova - Senior Research Manager, Europe Smart Office and EMEA Content & Knowledge Management Strategies

Analyst Profile
Gala Spasova is a senior research manager in IDC's Future of Workplace & Imaging team. Her research focus is on Hybrid working, Smart Office technology and Content & Knowledge Management Strategies in EMEA.  Spasova is also part of the European…
Jacqui Hendriks

Jacqui Hendriks - Associate Research Director, European Print Vendor Transformation Strategies

Analyst Profile
Jacqui Hendriks, Associate Research Director, European Imaging, Printing and Document Solutions Jacqui Hendriks heads up IDC's European Print Vendor Transformation Strategies research program, in collaboration with various IDC research domains. Hendriks has more than 30 years of experience of working…
Roberto Alunni

Roberto Alunni - Senior Research Director, EMEA Data & Analytics

Analyst Profile
Roberto Alunni is a Senior Research Director at IDC for imaging, print, and document solutions research across the EMEA region. He is responsible for strategic and operational implementation and leads an international analyst team. He is a specialist in imaging…
Sandra Ng

Sandra Ng - Senior Vice President, WW and APJ Research

Analyst Profile
Sandra Ng is Senior Vice President at IDC and the Global Domain Leader for Devices, Consumers, Imaging, and Japan. Based in Singapore, she advises technology buyers and vendors worldwide on technology investments, financial priorities, and go-to-market strategies. She leads a…

AI is redrawing the rules of the partner ecosystem faster than most organisations can adapt. Last week, Stuart Wilson, IDC’s Senior Research Director for Partnering Ecosystems, and Andreas Storz, Senior Research Manager in the same practice, shared IDC’s latest research on what that means in practice for vendors, partners, and distributors operating across Europe and beyond. Drawing on survey data from more than 1,000 established partners, direct feedback from IDC’s European Partner Advisory Board, and real-world vendor examples, they made the case that the ecosystem is not simply evolving: it is being structurally reset. Here is a brief overview. The full recording is available on demand. 

How AI is eroding traditional partner revenue streams 

Stuart opened with a finding that will resonate with anyone tracking partner economics right now: AI is systematically compressing the lifecycle phases where partners have historically earned the most. Implementation, integration, and basic support are not disappearing, but they are becoming thinner and, in a growing number of cases, absorbed directly into vendor platforms. IDC has documented specific examples of how this compression is already playing out at scale, with leading vendors publicly committing to timelines and automation levels that would have seemed ambitious just 18 months ago. 

What makes this moment different from previous platform shifts is the speed and simultaneity of the impact. AI is hitting vendor economics, partner margins, and customer expectations at the same time. Partners who are waiting for the dust to settle before repositioning are likely to find the window has already closed. 

Where partner value is growing: advisory, AI governance, and outcome-based services 

The compression of execution-heavy activities does not mean the overall ecosystem opportunity is shrinking. IDC’s data points clearly to a redistribution of spend toward higher-order roles: AI solution design and agent creation, governance and compliance services, industry advisory, data engineering, and reusable marketplace IP. These are areas that reward deep domain knowledge and customer trust rather than delivery capacity. 

Customers are also changing how they expect to be served. Rather than relying on a single partner to cover the full lifecycle, they increasingly want a coordinated network of specialists. That shift has direct implications for how vendors structure their ecosystems and how partners think about collaboration rather than competition. The recording covers the full breakdown of where IDC sees demand growing and shrinking, and what partners are doing today to get ahead of it. 

Agentic marketplaces and the new partner go-to-market playbook 

Andreas Storz walked through a structural shift in how technology solutions are discovered and bought. Marketplaces are moving inside products, and IDC is seeing real evidence that customers are making decisions before a formal procurement process ever begins. This compresses buying cycles, introduces new buyer personas including business users and domain specialists who are not traditional IT buyers, and moves partner influence upstream into phases where most partner programs have little presence today. 

Partner Advisory Board members were frank about what this looks like from the front line. One dimension that generated particular discussion was the growing scrutiny customers apply to every new AI investment: 

“Customers scrutinize every purchase order. We are having to prove the ROI to the last penny before new AI work is approved.” — IDC Partner Advisory Board member, November 2025

Co-sell models are adapting accordingly. The shift away from field-led selling toward digital and telemetry-driven motions is not a future state: it is already shaping how the most forward-leaning vendors are structuring partner engagement today. The recording covers what that looks like in practice and what partners need to do to remain visible in these new buying journeys. 

Why vendor partner programs need a fundamental redesign for the AI era 

The structural conclusion Stuart and Andreas reached is that most partner programs in operation today were designed for a world that is rapidly ceasing to exist. The incentive structures, metrics, and engagement models built around resale transactions and implementation milestones are misaligned with where ecosystem value is now being created. Vendors that do not address this gap will find themselves losing the partners best positioned to deliver AI-driven outcomes to customers. 

The research points to a dual imperative: accelerating existing partners toward AI-centric delivery models while simultaneously cultivating a new generation of AI-native partners who bring differentiated industry IP and a very different set of expectations around how vendor relationships should work. How to run both strategies in parallel, without letting either undermine the other, is one of the more complex programme design challenges IDC is helping clients navigate right now. 

“AI-native competitors without legacy delivery models are coming. If we don’t pivot, we will be disrupted.” — IDC Partner Advisory Board member, November 2025 

The Q and A that followed also surfaced sharp questions on how AI model providers are disrupting established alliance hierarchies for global systems integrators, and whether the net effect of all this change will be a more consolidated or more fragmented ecosystem. Stuart’s answer to the latter was more nuanced than a binary either/or, and worth hearing in full. 

►  Watch the full recording on demand 

The complete recording includes data from the IDC EMEA Partner Survey data (N=1,001), a detailed breakdown of the dual partner strategy framework, and a live Q and A with both analysts. If the topics covered resonate with your ecosystem strategy, IDC’s Partnering Ecosystems practice offers advisory support, custom research, roundtables, and strategic workshops tailored to vendors, distributors, and partners navigating this transition.  
 
Our experts are always happy to continue the conversation. Simply reach out via the contact form.  

Stuart Wilson

Stuart Wilson - VP, WW Partnering Ecosystems, Alliances and Channels

Analyst Profile
Stuart Wilson is VP, Worldwide Partnering Ecosystems, Alliances & Channels at IDC. He leads IDC's research and advisory agenda focused on partnering ecosystems, strategic alliances, channels, marketplaces, and ecosystem-led growth. He currently leads IDC's EMEA Partnering Ecosystems research program and…
Andreas Storz

Andreas Storz - Research Director, Software Channels and Ecosystems

Analyst Profile
Andreas Storz is Research Director for IDC's Software Channels and Ecosystems program. Based in the US, Andreas focuses on the evolution of go-to-market models, new digital value chains and the wider impact on partner ecosystems, exploring how current and future trends will…

Digital accessibility is shifting from a compliance requirement to a key driver of inclusion, productivity, and innovation in the modern workplace. This blog explores where European organizations stand today and outlines a practical, technology-driven approach to turning accessibility into a competitive advantage. 

What Is Digital Accessibility in the Workplace? 

Digital accessibility refers to the design, development, and delivery of digital technologies, products, and services in a way that ensures they can be perceived, understood, navigated, and interacted with by all people, consistent with the principles established by the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative. This applies regardless of ability or disability and includes individuals with physical, sensory, cognitive, and neurodivergent conditions, such as impairments related to vision, hearing, motor function, speech, and information processing, as well as situational or temporary limitations. 

It encompasses not only compliance with accessibility standards and guidelines, but also the proactive inclusion of diverse user needs throughout the entire lifecycle of digital experiences, enabling equitable, independent, and dignified access for everyone. 

In simple terms, in today’s AI-enabled workplace, accessibility is no longer just a legal box to tick. It is a design choice that determines who gets to fully participate, innovate, and grow. 

The State of Digital Accessibility in European Organizations 

European legislation on workforce accessibility is comprehensive but uneven. Countries such as Italy, France, Germany, and Poland enforce employment quotas for people with disabilities, while the UK and Denmark rely on antidiscrimination and reasonable-accommodation laws. To harmonize these differences, the European Commission introduced the Disability Employment Package and the Strategy for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities 2021 to 2030, outlining shared approaches to inclusive recruitment, workspace adaptation, flexible working, and assistive technology adoption. 

Despite this robust framework, execution lags. IDC research shows that diversity and inclusion, including accommodation for people with disabilities, ranks near the bottom of EMEA organizational priorities at just 27 percent, well behind talent retention and reskilling. Around 30 percent of employees say their organization has not adopted any digital accessibility solution at all. Interestingly, employees are more optimistic than their employers. One in two believe AI is already improving digital accessibility and will help close the digital divide. 

The real issue is not missing legislation. It is the gap between what companies say they will do and what they actually deliver. 

How to Build a Digital Accessibility Strategy 

So how can organizations close that gap? IDC’s The Four Tech Pillars to Create a Digital-Accessible Work Environment lays out a closed-loop, five-step journey that keeps accessibility moving instead of getting stuck in a one-off project. 

  1. Start by listening. Assess what employees actually need through surveys, one-on-ones, and functional and contextual evaluations.  
  1. Review your technology stack. Evaluate hardware, software, productivity suites, and assistive tools for compatibility and gaps.  
  1. Embed accessibility early. Integrate accessibility into design and procurement, turning standards such as WCAG and EN 301 549 into mandatory checkpoints.  
  1. Establish governance. Define clear roles, responsibilities, escalation paths, and cross-functional ownership.  
  1. Measure impact. Use data to track ROI and support CSRD reporting on productivity, inclusion, and compliance.  

This should be seen as a continuous loop rather than a checklist, one that evolves alongside people, technology, and regulation. 

The Four Technology Pillars of Digital Accessibility 

Assistive technologies alone are not enough. IDC identifies four interdependent technology pillars, all supported by a foundation of best practices. 

  • AI-enabled assistive technologies: AI-driven screen readers, image and audio descriptions, captioning, and voice input integrated into mainstream collaboration platforms, matching the right technology to the right user.  
  • Accessible-by-design AI-driven platforms: HR, productivity, and collaboration tools built from the outset to meet EU accessibility standards, shifting remediation earlier and reducing long-term costs.  
  • AI-empowered configuration and orchestration layer: A governance backbone that sets standards, automates testing, and scales accessibility across workflows, teams, and vendors.  
  • AI, data, and analytics: Privacy-preserving analytics on usage, barriers, and outcomes to demonstrate ROI, support ESG and DEI reporting, and anticipate future needs.  

Underlying these pillars, best practices, including executive sponsorship, shared accountability, training, and continuous feedback loops, ensure that strategy translates into everyday operations. Without them, even the most advanced technology stack risks remaining underutilized. 

Why Digital Accessibility Is a Competitive Advantage 

Digital accessibility is no longer just about compliance. It plays a critical role in attracting diverse talent, enabling innovation, and responding to increasing ESG scrutiny. European regulation provides the framework, but culture, technology, and governance determine the outcome. 

By combining a closed-loop approach with the four technology pillars and strong best practices, organizations can move beyond risk mitigation and position accessibility as a true competitive advantage. 

Want the full picture? For the European legislative landscape and where organizations stand today, see IDC’s Digital Accessibility for the Workforce: European Legislation and Organizations’ Responses (IDC #EUR154346826, March 2026). For a practical technology playbook, refer to The Four Tech Pillars to Create a Digital-Accessible Work Environment (IDC #EUR154347126, April 2026). 

And if you would like to explore what these trends mean specifically for your business, our experts are always happy to continue the conversation. Simply reach out via the contact form. 

Erica Spinoni

Erica Spinoni - Senior Consultant, IDC4EU IDC European Government Consulting

Analyst Profile
Erica Spinoni is a Senior Consultant at the IDC4EU European Government Consulting unit. She led IDC’s EMEA-focused research for the Future of Work group, examining how AI, automation, and emerging workplace models are reshaping employee experience and productivity across the…

Three forces reshaping European cybersecurity buying decisions in 2026 

Last week, Joel Stradling, IDC’s Senior Research Director for Global Security and Trust, and David Clemente, IDC Research Director for European Security Services, presented the latest IDC intelligence on three topics that are driving security buying decisions across Europe right now: AI agents, security platform consolidation, and digital sovereignty. 

The session was built around IDC survey data and direct input from European CISOs. Here is a summary of the key findings. The full recording is available on demand. 

What your buyers are prioritising around AI agents 

IDC projects 1.2 billion AI agents in operation by 2029, performing 217 billion daily actions across four categories: custom-configured, in-application, standalone, and bespoke agents. For security vendors, the relevant signal is what this proliferation is doing to your buyers’ security priorities and investment patterns. 

On average, 16.7% of planned AI investment worldwide is currently allocated to AI agent security and governance. That is a meaningful budget line, and it reflects a genuine gap that security buyers are trying to close: most European organizations cannot fully account for the non-human agents already operating in their environments.  

Joel framed this in the session with a question that resonates with CISOs: how many agents are running in your ecosystem right now without being part of any governance programme? The answer, frequently, is that they do not know. 

IDC’s forthcoming MaturityScape Benchmark on AI-fuelled organizations gives a precise picture of where European enterprises stand on AI maturity. The details of that data, including the significant divergence between organizations IDC categorizes as survivors versus those that are thriving, are covered in the recording and available through IDC’s research programme. 

Where the platformization opportunity actually sits 

Joel was direct about the state of the market: security is, to a degree, broken. Vendor sprawl and complexity are the most consistently cited concerns in IDC’s CISO conversations, and the move toward vendor consolidation is real and accelerating. In IDC’s December 2025 survey, 84% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that their organization is prioritizing security platformization. 

The gap worth understanding, however, is the one between customer intent and vendor positioning. IDC’s CISO Hub data from March 2026 shows that while close to two-thirds of senior security decision-makers say they already have a platform, there is no shared definition of what that means or where it is anchored. The result is fragmented islands of platformization rather than genuine consolidation. 

For vendors, the implication is that the buying conversation is not uniform. Joel walked through how platformization incentives differ by stakeholder: a CISO is looking at visibility, proactive defence posture, and operational efficiency; a CIO is focused on speed, agility, and reduced contract complexity; a CEO is weighing business growth, risk reduction, and regulatory accountability. Understanding which stakeholder is in the room changes the pitch considerably. 

The barriers to consolidation are equally important market intelligence. Tool sprawl, technical debt, skills gaps, upfront costs, and the desire to avoid vendor lock-in are all factors slowing decisions that, on paper, buyers have already made. The session explored each of these in detail. 

What the sovereignty conversation looks like from the buyer side 

David Clemente covered how European security buyers are currently thinking about sovereignty, and it is a more complex and more urgent conversation than it was 18 months ago. 

IDC’s 2025 Worldwide Digital Sovereignty Survey asked European cloud buyers about their main motivations for choosing a sovereign cloud. The top three responses were: concerns about extraterritorial data requests, compliance with national legislation and European directives such as NIS2, DORA, the Cyber Resilience Act, and the AI Act, and the baseline desire to improve data privacy and security. 

David framed the trade-offs buyers are navigating using a cost-versus-control matrix that maps different procurement categories from commodity hardware through cloud services, AI, and sovereign or defense-grade infrastructure. The useful insight for vendors is that these positions are not stable. The past 12 to 18 months have introduced a level of volatility that has caused many European buyers to revisit assumptions they had previously considered settled, including assumptions about suppliers headquartered in the United States. 

During this time, a number of developments have shifted that calculus, and buyers who were not questioning their vendors about sovereignty a year ago are now asking them directly. For US-headquartered vendors in particular, the session covered what buyers are asking and what kinds of responses are building or eroding confidence. 

The core message from David was straightforward: vendors who have genuinely thought through their sovereignty positioning, who can offer tangible provisions and answer specific regulatory and political questions, are in a different position from those who have not. That distinction is becoming visible to European buyers quickly. 

Watch the full session on demand 

The webinar covered substantially more than this summary captures, including the full benchmark data on AI maturity, the complete breakdown of platformization incentives by buyer persona, and a detailed Q&A with both analysts. 

►  Watch the recording here  

IDC Security Summits Europe 2026 are taking place across the continent throughout the year, connecting vendors with 700+ senior security decision-makers in Madrid, Lisbon, London, Paris, Milan, Cologne, Stockholm, and Barcelona. The IDC European CISO Xchange takes place in Sitges, Spain, 8–10 November. Contact IDC for sponsorship and participation details. 

Joel Stradling

Joel Stradling - Senior Research Director

Analyst Profile
As senior research director within IDC's Global Security and Trust research team, Joel Stradling leads content and analysis for the European security segment and Global Digital Identity Services. His focus areas include supporting IDC's European CISO and Field CISO communities…
David Clemente

David Clemente - Research Director, European Security

Analyst Profile
Dave Clemente is a Research Director in IDC's Security Services research practice, with a focus on managed services and professional services. His coverage areas include governance, risk and compliance, regulation, managed detection and response, incident response, cyber insurance, security budgets,…

AI is reshaping how partner ecosystems create value. As automation absorbs traditional delivery work, partner-led growth is shifting toward influence, orchestration, and trusted advisory roles. Here’s what ecosystem leaders need to know for 2026. 

Artificial intelligence (AI) has moved from experiment to operating reality across the technology ecosystem. Models are scaling fast, agents are being embedded into platforms, and automation is absorbing activities that partners have historically delivered as billable services. For ecosystem leaders, this has created an uncomfortable question: where does partner value sit in an AI-driven world – and how does growth happen next? 

The short answer is that partners are not being disintermediated. But their role is being fundamentally rewritten. 

Across IDC’s 2026 partnering ecosystem research, partner advisory board discussions, and recent market analysis, a consistent pattern is emerging. AI is not eliminating partners – it is reshaping where, when, and how value is created across the ecosystem. This shift is happening faster than many organizations’ partner models, metrics, and engagement structures can keep up with. 

How AI Is Shifting Partner Value from Delivery to Decision Influence 

One of the clearest signals we see is that AI is absorbing many traditional partner value activities: configuration, basic implementation, tier-one support, and even elements of solution design. Agentic systems and AI-driven service layers are reducing friction and cost in these areas – but they are also compressing margins and undermining longstanding partner revenue assumptions. 

At the same time, customer expectations are changing just as quickly. Buyers are no longer navigating linear vendor-to-partner journeys, or making decisions through a single buying role. Instead, buying journeys are fragmented, non-linear, and shaped by multiple stakeholders across IT, business, finance, and operations. 

Influence is spread across a blend of direct and indirect touchpoints – platforms, marketplaces, peer communities, embedded AI recommendations, and trusted advisory relationships that cut across suppliers and traditional channel boundaries. 

In this environment, execution alone is no longer a sufficient source of partner differentiation. 

What customers increasingly need is help deciding where and how to apply AI, how to control risk and cost, how to curate models and agents, and how to operationalize them inside real business processes. That shifts partner value up the stack – from doing, to guiding; from delivering, to shaping outcomes. 

Why AI Is Raising the Bar for Partner Value in the Ecosystem 

Another consistent theme from partner advisory board discussions is that while AI lowers barriers to entry in some areas, successful AI adoption at customers is anything but “plug and play.” 

AI must be: 

  • Created and adapted for specific business contexts  
  • Curated across multiple models, tools, and platforms  
  • Governed for security, cost, compliance, and performance  
  • Controlled over time as usage, scale, and risk increase 

These are not one-off tasks. They require ongoing judgment, trust, and ecosystem coordination. In practice, this makes the partner role – particularly the trusted advisor role – more critical, not less, as the pace of change accelerates. 

The challenge is that many partner programs and metrics are still optimized for yesterday’s value creation logic: certifications, headcount leverage, implementation scale, or resale volume. As AI reshapes economics, these signals tell an increasingly incomplete story. 

AI-Driven Partner Transformation: What’s Changing in 2026 

All of this points to 2026 as a transition year. Not a collapse of partner models, but a period of accelerated partner transformation. 

We see clear divergence emerging: 

  • Partners who double down on execution alone face margin pressure  
  • Partners who invest in advisory, IP, ecosystem orchestration, and AI control layers are gaining influence  
  • Vendors and platforms that continue to treat all partners the same risk misallocating investment 

The opportunity now is to rethink ecosystem strategy through the lens of buyer influence, value creation, and AI-driven change, rather than legacy program structures. 

Ecosystem Strategy in 2026: Key Trends and Insights 

In our upcoming webinar, Ecosystem Strategy in 2026: Turning AI Disruption into Partner-Led Growth, IDC will bring together: 

  • 2026 partnering ecosystem trends  
  • Real-world partner advisory board insights  
  • Buyer journey and influence models  
  • Practical guidance on where focused ecosystem investment can drive sustainable growth 

This session is designed for leaders across cloud platforms, enterprise SaaS, GSIs, distributors, infrastructure vendors, and AI-driven ecosystems who are shaping partner and growth strategy for the years ahead. 

If you are navigating how AI is reshaping your ecosystem – and where partners fit next – this is a conversation you will not want to miss. 

Watch the recording here.

If you have any questions about anything in this blog, please drop them in here.  

Stuart Wilson

Stuart Wilson - VP, WW Partnering Ecosystems, Alliances and Channels

Analyst Profile
Stuart Wilson is VP, Worldwide Partnering Ecosystems, Alliances & Channels at IDC. He leads IDC's research and advisory agenda focused on partnering ecosystems, strategic alliances, channels, marketplaces, and ecosystem-led growth. He currently leads IDC's EMEA Partnering Ecosystems research program and…
Andreas Storz

Andreas Storz - Research Director, Software Channels and Ecosystems

Analyst Profile
Andreas Storz is Research Director for IDC's Software Channels and Ecosystems program. Based in the US, Andreas focuses on the evolution of go-to-market models, new digital value chains and the wider impact on partner ecosystems, exploring how current and future trends will…