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.
Syncsort's acquisition of Pitney Bowes Software Solutions Business strengthens its position in data management and adds capabilities in the customer communications and location intelligence software and data markets. The acquisition will ...
This IDC study provides IDC's 2020 top 10 predictions for data, integration, and analytics technology trends.
"Predictions highlighted in this IDC FutureScape outline some of the key requirements for the future of intelligence, which ...
ASG Technologies hosted its third annual customer conference, EVOLVE19, on October 21-23, 2019, in Dallas, Texas. With the theme of "see the future," ASG previewed its latest developments in content services with the new cloud-based digital ...
This IDC study provides an assessment of the principal SaaS and cloud-enabled enterprise content applications and presents the criteria most important for companies to consider when selecting a system. This assessment discusses both quantitative ...
This IDC Market Perspective examines and provides an overview of the OpenText Enterprise World conference, held in Toronto in July 2019, where OpenText announced several key product introductions and partnerships, including a major partnership ...
This IDC Perspective extends the research for digital transformation (DX) by looking at content-centric workflow use cases and analyzing them within the context of IDC's artificial intelligence (AI)-based automation framework. Accompanying ...
This IDC Perspective evaluates AI-enabled technologies across three time horizons in the context of IDC's artificial intelligence (AI)-based automation evolution framework. This IDC Perspective complements AI-Based Automation Evolution ...
On July 2, 2019, Ricoh announced the intent to acquire DocuWare later this summer with the goal to strengthen its digital workplace strategy and tie traditional multifunctional print (MFP) streams to digital business workflow. This move ...
Slack held its third-annual Frontiers conference on April 24–25, 2019, at Pier 27 and 29 in San Francisco. This was one day before Slack released its S1 and formal intention to join the NYSE, making Frontiers a key messaging platform ahead ...
This IDC Market Perspective discusses the launch of Kofax's ControlSuite platform. On April 16, Kofax introduced its ControlSuite platform, an integrated solutions ecosystem for MFPs designed to provide businesses with a single platform ...
This IDC study presents the results of IDC's 2018 Customer Communications Management MaturityScape Benchmark Survey and should be viewed as a supplement to IDC MaturityScape: Customer Communications ...
IBM continues to divest legacy on-premise software products via asset sales to large outsourcers. It’s a strategy that benefits all parties: It helps IBM transition to cloud, it lets outsourcers grow their product revenues and create more ...
This IDC Tech Buyer Presentation highlights our recently published analytics and information management digital transformation (DX) use case taxonomy. It includes descriptions of the strategic priority, programs, and use cases for this horizontal ...
Nuance Communications Inc. signed a definitive agreement to sell its Document Imaging division to Kofax Inc. The deal will expand Kofax's intelligent automation portfolio and enable opportunities in existing and new business segments. Nuance ...
"Technology is changing work as we know it. This impacts organizations' culture, required skills, the way talent is sourced, the workspace, and the nature and makeup of the workforce itself. Every organization needs to be prepared to embrace ...
This IDC Vendor Profile examines Quark Software, a provider of a content automation platform that enables the creation, management, publishing, and delivery of content across print, web, and digital channels. This document reviews the vendor's ...
This IDC study presents the results of IDC's 2018 Content-Centric Workflow MaturityScape Benchmark Survey and should be viewed as a supplement to IDC MaturityScape: Content-Centric Workflow 1.0 (IDC #US41904417, ...
This IDC Market Note reviews highlights from OpenText's Enterprise World user conference held on July 9–12, 2018. OpenText welcomed approximately 5,000 customers, partners, and analysts as well as the press to Toronto to review the past ...
This IDC Vendor Profile examines Smartsheet, a provider of a SaaS platform of the same name for executing and automating collaborative work. The document reviews the vendor's technology and solutions, go-to-market and product strategies, ...
This IDC Market Analysis Perspective provides content technology vendors with an overview of the content workflow automation and transformation ecosystem, offering the information required to support strategic planning and strategic marketing ...
This IDC Perspective defines robotic process automation and how it fits into an enterprise's overall automation strategy aimed at augmenting or replacing the manual labor used to execute business processes. Three key questions answered are:
- How ...
This IDC study presents the results of IDC's 2018 Managing Enterprise Content MaturityScape Benchmark Survey and should be viewed as a supplement to IDC MaturityScape: Managing Enterprise Content 1.0 ...
This IDC study describes the organizational characteristics at five levels of content-centric workflow maturity, from a completely ad hoc, highly manual approach to one in which organizations make use of sophisticated integration and machine ...
This IDC study provides IDC's 2018 top 10 predictions for analytics and information management.
"Enabled by machine learning–based automation, the next few years will usher in a period of massive change in the way data and content ...
This IDC study describes the organizational characteristics at five levels of content management maturity, from a completely ad hoc, highly manual approach to one in which the word "management" no longer applies — at least from the human ...