IDC Research Types
Analyst
Analyst Profile
Provides complete background information on an IDC analyst. Each profile provides a biography, a notable quotation, a frequently asked question relevant to the particular analyst's focus, and a list of research authored by that analyst.
Team Profile
Lists the analyst members of a topical team. Outlines general areas of coverage and any specialties.
Briefs
Flash
Provides rapid IDC insight and analysis about a significant industry event or conference, merger or acquisition, product announcement, or other fast-breaking news affecting the IT market.
Forecast Update
Provides a short, quick look at an updated forecast and the changed assumptions behind the update. It updates a market forecast published in the same calendar year, identifies changed and key forecast assumptions, and highlights actions for participants to consider in light of the changes.
IDC Insight
Provides coverage and analysis of an industry event, new product or service, or a company announcement or development.
Update
Provides brief overview coverage of what is happening in a market.
Vendor Profiles
Provides a concise, hard-hitting profile of an emerging vendor. A profile will highlight new players and technologies and the potential paradigm shifts or disruptions a vendor represents.
Daily Graphics
Daily Graphic
Illustrates IDC's keen analysis of major market trends in downloadable PowerPoints. Available as a free download the day it appears, an IDC Daily Graphic provides valuable material for speeches and strategic planning.
Event Proceedings
Event Proceeding
Provides published slides, audio, and other materials from IDC and Insights Web conferences, briefings, forums, or other events.
Events
Conference
Delivers dependable, relevant, and high-impact data and insight to help organizations make sound business and technology decisions. eBusiness executives, IT professionals, IT suppliers, and services suppliers benefit from the strategic insight and networking opportunities IDC conferences offer. Generally, all presentation slides are available online, and for most conferences, streaming audio of key discussions is available as well.
Web Conference
Focuses on significant trends and paradigm shifts. Each Web conference will provide attendees with leading-edge market information that will enable them to make smart business decisions. For those unable to attend in person or those wishing to review the content presented, these synchronized multimedia presentations are available online.
IDC DecisionScapes
IDC FutureScape
Serves as a framework for IT/tech professionals' IT strategy and planning for the next one to three years. It lists IDC's top 10 worldwide technology trends for the coming one to three years in a given research area and includes related drivers, projected IT/business strategy impact, and guidance.
IDC MarketScape
Helps IT/tech professionals develop a short list of suitable suppliers when selecting a vendor. Provides an unbiased assessment of tech suppliers in terms of offerings, strategy, capabilities, and other important factors in a given technology area.
IDC MaturityScape
Describes five stages of "maturity" or capability for a particular technology area, helps IT/tech professionals understand where their organizations fit within those stages, and provides guidance on key components for planning successful improvements to a tech initiative.
IDC MaturityScape Benchmark
Helps IT/tech professionals to benchmark their maturity against peers, develop a business case for a tech initiative, and build consensus about where critical IT investments should be made. Presents quantitative research results that show the market distribution for a given tech initiative across the five stages of maturity presented in the related IDC MaturityScape. Shows the results and components of particularly successful initiatives.
IDC PeerScape
Gives IT/tech professionals insight into best practices (and practices to avoid) by providing specific use case examples implemented by peers. Identifies practices that have the most impact on the success of a tech or business initiative, and provides actionable guidance for each practice.
IDC PlanScape
Helps IT/tech professionals to justify and plan a business and/or technology investment or opportunity by exploring why, what, who, and how (these are also the main section headings). Presents key players, critical success factors, risks, and actions to consider for a designated technology and/or business management area.
IDC TechScape
Helps IT/tech professionals with developing IT strategic plans and evaluating emerging technologies in terms of their risk to the business. Shows the adoption curve and risk levels over time for a specific emerging technology. Sorts technologies into three "adoption model" categories (transformational, incremental, opportunistic) to help tech leaders determine the potential impact for their organization.
IDC Links
IDC Link
Provides timely context and insight around important market trends and events in a short opinion piece. IDC Links provide IDC's point of view on:
- Financial announcements
- Product announcements
- Mergers and acquisitions or divestitures
- Events
- Response to news
Insights-only Research
Best Practices
Correlates the use of specific practices and superior performance as indicated by an analysis of the benchmarking database. Highlights any significant differences between industries. Conclusions provide a set of process priorities for improving a business case and advice on how to overcome change management issues.
Business Strategy
Helps buyers to assess their business strategies and/or associated business processes, especially as they relate to the use of technology.
Methods and Practices
Provides a step-by-step description of a method or methods that can be applied. As appropriate, the report may compare the benefits and drawbacks of several methods.
Perspective
Presents an article written by an Insights analyst on a topic of special interest to a target audience. This information has generally already appeared in an industry publication and is repackaged for display on the Insights Web site.
Vendor Assessment
Helps buyers select the right IT supplier. The report helps buyers understand the various providers of a technology by providing analysis on market landscape, vendor profiles, vendor market share, and vendor assessments.
Pivot Tables
Pivot Table
Presents an interactive spreadsheet tool for analyzing trends and activities in a specific market segment. These tables are available only through an annual subscription service.
Predictions
Top 10 Predictions
Provides bold, well-conceived market predictions grounded in solid methodologies, primary research, and analyst experience. Lays out a clear road map to understanding major market opportunities and trends.
Presentations
IDC Presentation
Provides the latest, select CIS forecast data, primary research survey findings, and critical IDC analyst opinion in a succinct, easy-to-digest PowerPoint format.
IDC Survey
Presents a hypothesis about what is happening in the market backed by the results of a demand-side or supply-side survey. The focus is on interpreting and analyzing the survey results and providing a strong point of view along with actionable advice.
IDC Survey Spotlight
Answers a timely question and provides a strong opinion backed by IDC survey data. This is a quick nugget of information that is presented in two concise PowerPoint slides.
Insights Presentation
Provides an easy-to-use format to post on the Web presentations that were previously delivered at public forums (such as conferences and events) or for internal client meetings and client presentations. It may not come as part of a consulting/custom engagement.
Market Analysis Perspective
Delivers a concise current state view of a market and insight into the impact of future trends. Business executives, product managers, and MI/AR professionals can use this information when looking to understand buyers' perspectives and market impacts.
Press Releases
Press Release
Announces significant corporate news, such as key hirings or promotions, performance milestones, event highlights, or speaking engagements.
Product Information
Fact Sheet
Describes a research product. Usually details the major areas of coverage and deliverables, and outlines key questions and competitive market conditions that the research will address. Includes links to all published research for a research product.
Studies
Competitive Analysis
Provides a detailed accounting and review of a vendor's programs, processes, products, service, satisfaction, and/or strategy in a target market. This knowledge helps clients reduce their risk of losing market share or enhance their position over the competition.
Customer Needs and Strategies
Focuses on the important decisions that business and IT professionals make every day.
Industry Developments and Models
Provides a detailed assessment of a specific target market's expansion pattern. This analysis helps clients develop and deploy the right mix of value-add products, programs, or services to support their sales and/or partnering efforts.
Market Analysis
Provides an in-depth examination of the dynamics and future of a single market or a group of related markets. The Market Analysis is where we will typically present our forecasts and assumptions, using a key forecast assumptions table.
Market Forecast
Provides the future of a single market or a group of related markets. It presents a new or updated market forecast, including key drivers and assumptions used in the forecast.
Market Share
Provides data on market size, regional allocations, and platform splits as well as a summary of vendor shares for the most recently completed period (year, quarter).
Special Study
Provides a onetime study produced by a research group that is not published as a deliverable under a subscription service.
Survey
Provides a study and interpretation of the results of a demand- or supply-side survey.
Taxonomy
Highlights and emphasizes how IDC tracks the market while also making it easier for customers to find and identify IDC Taxonomy documents.
Technology Assessment
Provides an analysis of the intricacies of an emerging or established technology or the technologies contained within a specific product.
Vendor Needs and Strategies
Provides an in-depth analysis of a company, a small group of companies, a division of a company focused on a particular market, or a best practice that the company exemplifies.
Oracle announced new features in marketing, sales, and service applications within Oracle CX that extend the use of AI and automation and improve integration between CX products that will help enterprise customers improve personalization ...
This IDC Market Presentation provides an overview of smartphones used for online education or home-based learning as schools were shut down in various countries across Asia/Pacific, with school closures lasting almost a year in many of these ...
This IDC Market Presentation is an executive summary of IDC's 3Q20 Cloud Pulse, with a focus on cloud vendors, loyalty, and trade-offs.
Cloud Pulse provides an overview of cloud adoption and cloud trends among IT buyers. Cloud Pulse ...
This IDC Survey addresses tech buyer digital behaviors while balancing their preferences for personalized communication. The survey explores trust factors and the impact of trust and customer experience on the buyers' willingness to purchase ...
On December 1, 2020, Salesforce announced its FY 3Q21 earnings. Earnings this quarter were strong, with total revenue of $5.42 billion for the quarter, a 20% year-over-year (YoY) increase from FY 3Q20. This was the second time the company ...
This IDC Survey Spotlight examines how digital KPIs are being used in 2020 versus 2019. The encouraging news is that companies did a much better job of both designing digital measures and employing them into their management systems in 2020. ...
This IDC Survey Spotlight provides insight into why corporate brand identity program investment and staff allocation are trending upward this year. Respondents to IDC's 2020 Tech Marketing Benchmark Survey showed that, in 2020, brand ...
WPP has merged creative commerce specialist Geometry into VMLY&R to form VMLY&R Commerce. The move represents both organizational streamlining and a doubling down on the hot areas of ecommerce and platforms, with a focus on driving ...
In mid-November, Adobe announced its intention to acquire work management and project and portfolio management (PPM) provider Workfront for $1.5 billion. The acquisition will augment its Adobe Experience Cloud and broadly adopted Adobe Creative ...
Khoros, the platform built from the merger of Lithium communities and Spredfast social media management and marketing, announced an array of new and useful features in its autumn 2020 release. These are designed to help brands improve human ...
This IDC Survey Spotlight analyzes how retailers are executing innovation pilots in the context of a broader business model innovation process. It explains why retailers must pay close attention to capitalizing at an optimal level the resource ...
This IDC Survey Spotlight provides insight into the dramatic shift of tech buying behaviors to digital sources. Respondents to IDC's IT Buyer Survey reveal that there are differences in preferences and buying behaviors across the ...
Twilio, the messaging and email API company, announced its intention to acquire Segment, a customer data management platform (CDP) provider. The combination would bring together Twilio's massively scalable cross-channel messaging and Segment's ...
On October 1, 2020, SAP announced its intention to acquire the European omnichannel marketing platform provider Emarsys. The deal is expected to close in 4Q20. Emarsys serves a customer base concentrated in Germany, SMB, retail, and travel. ...
Containers, especially Kubernetes platforms, are becoming the de facto compute option for application modernization in companies' software-based innovation journeys. Pure Storage, with the acquisition of Portworx's container-native data ...
This IDC Market Analysis Perspective (MAP) summarizes key buyer and seller trends driving the sales force productivity and management software market. The MAP includes market forecast and vendor data, buyer trends and insights, key technologies ...
This IDC Survey Spotlight depicts the value of customer engagement and customer experience (CX) technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic across seven industry sectors in two dimensions: helping firms operate an effective digital enterprise ...
Enterprises in Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) (APEJ) struggling with the complexities of disparate customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications causing data inconsistencies are embracing cloud ...
This IDC Survey Spotlight highlights IT security FTEs as a percentage of the enterprise IT total FTEs for 2020. The findings are based on data from IDC's 2020 Data Security Survey, which reached 620 IT and IT security professionals ...
This IDC Survey Spotlight presents findings on top sales technology challenges based on responses from 100 U.S. large enterprises with 1,000+ employees. More than 45% of respondents cited "identity, privacy, and consent management" as their ...
This IDC Survey Spotlight presents findings on top marketing technology challenges based on responses from 100 U.S. large enterprises with 1,000+ employees. 35%+ of respondents cited integration, identity, and compliance as the three top ...
In dealing with the challenges brought by the current COVID-19 outbreak, some partners are performing better than others. Vendors are also handling the situation with varying degrees of efficiency. This IDC Market Presentation is designed ...
This IDC Market Glance gives buyers a high-level view of the digital agency services supplier landscape. It shows a selection of the vendors and lays out key segments of the market.
The digital agency services market contains multiple ...
This IDC Survey looks at data related to at-home workers, including ongoing technology requirements to support those workers. Though many organizations in the United States are still focused on cost optimization, almost one-third are making ...