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.
IDC's Worldwide Channel Partner Ecosystem provides an in-depth view into the channels and partners of IT vendors. It showcases the interconnections across IT vendor partners, identifying their area of technology coverage, industries ...
The Worldwide Semiannual Software-Defined Infrastructure Tracker® tracks the software-defined infrastructure (SDI) software market, key components of this market (compute, storage, and networking), and some of the leading vendors ...
IDC's Worldwide Semiannual Public Cloud Services Tracker® monitors the evolving and shifting competitive dynamics of the public cloud services market. It tracks and measures the individual public cloud services providers' historical ...
IDCPreferred provides IDC clients with the flexibility to access IDC global services, research, and/or speak with IDC analysts outside current subscriptions. Clients gain access through a dedicated client service specialist (CSS), ...
The newest front on the war for talent is employee experience. The new Employee Experience: Benefits, Wellness, and Employee Engagement program explores these interconnected human capital management (HCM) domains as they benefit from ...
The Analytics and Intelligent Automation Services program looks at the entire life cycle of services related to the deployment of analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and intelligent automation technology solutions. Analytics, ...
Industry AIPath 2021 provides deep insight into the use and impact of AI/ML within each industry, 8 enterprise software application markets, and over 200 industry applications and use cases.
Industries includes healthcare ...
China Quarterly PC Tracker: Consumer and SMB® segmentation provides details on vendors, consumer and SMB new segmentation market opportunity, and trend analysis in the growing consumer and SMB PC market. It provides detailed ...
IDC's Storage Systems service delivers a detailed analysis of vendor performance and industry trends, as well as the anticipated rate of the adoption of new storage technologies and delivery models and their impact on existing markets ...
This product provides an overview of AI infrastructure adoption and trends among IT buyers via annual worldwide primary research surveys. It looks at current and future AI infrastructure investments and adoption rates, workloads, and economics ...
This product provides an overview of AI infrastructure adoption and trends among IT buyers via annual worldwide primary research surveys. It looks at current and future AI infrastructure investments and adoption rates, workloads, and economics ...
IDC's Future of Digital Infrastructure - Agenda research program addresses the ongoing technology, deployment model, and operational changes transforming the way businesses use IT infrastructure to create competitive advantage. This ...
Most new enterprise applications are being developed to cloud native principles based on standardized platforms, runtimes and integrated orchestration. However, Enterprise Infrastructure is still being bought, built and operated largely ...
Trust is a nebulous concept. It has traditionally been viewed through one of two lenses: either in a broad sense, relating to equally nebulous themes such as perception and loyalty; or in a narrow sense relating to specific technical approaches ...
Software becomes a bigger piece of how every organization competes and many are redesigning the app delivery function as a strategic business capability. Organizations are transitioning to become both a user and producer of software based ...
IDC's Privacy and Legal Technology analyzes the market for software tools and platforms to allow companies to manage, comply, and report on issues surrounding privacy and legal challenges. This service also analyzes the trends, technology, ...
Enterprise investments in RPA helped validate the benefits of automation. Today, enterprises are thinking more broadly about what automation is, how it is changing, and how they can enhance and extend ways to automate to gain even greater ...
IDC's Tier 2 SOC Analytics covers advanced cybersecurity analytics platforms targeting Level 2 and Level 3 SOC analyst roles including adversary emulation, disk image creation tools, evidence collection, incident management, log analysis ...
IDC's C-Suite Tech Agenda program advises technology suppliers on the new offerings, competencies, and go-to-market approaches needed to effectively reach the C-suite and other line-of-business buyers. By studying tech spending and ...
The Future of Digital Innovation - Agenda program provides guidance to C-suite executives at IT buyer companies and to technology suppliers on digitally innovative products and services. The program is focused on advice for IT buyer ...
Trust is the up-leveling of the security conversation that goes beyond the traditional idea of lack of harm to include risk, compliance, privacy, and even business ethics. It also includes the ability to make decisions that are about more ...
All economic activity is underpinned by trust, and as we understand the importance of digital commerce, the need to demonstrate trust in this environment is critical to ongoing success. IDC's Asia/Pacific: Future of Trust research ...
IDC’s Europe: Future of Customers and Consumers competitive intelligence service (CIS) envisages how customers and consumers' technology buying behaviors, preferences, and perceptions will evolve during the 2020s. Business customers ...
Europe: Future of Connectedness enables organization and individuals to connect seamlessly regardless of their location, situation, or context. Connectivity is the foundation of the Future Enterprise in terms of aligning people, things, ...
IDC's SaaS Momentum Index provides buy- and sell-side firms with a leading indicator of business momentum for the top 100 SaaS vendors serving the enterprise application markets, including ERP, SCM, procurement, PSA, financials, tax, ...