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
Vendor Profile
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.
IDC Perspective
The IDC Perspective is a flexible doc that seeks to help business and tech buyers assess their business and IT strategy and/or associated business processes, especially as it relates to the use of technology. The document can be used in areas such as:
- Strategy and planning
- Trends and observations
- IT spending and investment
- Vendor conferences and announcements
IDC TechBrief
The IDC TechBrief helps the technology or business executive get smart about a single technology in the context of the business by answering 6 business critical questions about the technology:
- What is the technology?
- When should I adopt it?
- What can it do for my business?
- What are the critical success factors?
- What are the risks?
- Who are the suppliers?
Market Note
The Market Note is a flexible doc that provides IDC analysis and point of view on an industry event, new product or service, or a company announcement or development or fast breaking news.
Market Perspective
The Market Perspective is a flexible doc that analyzes key changes and developments happening in the market. This flexible research type can be used to analyze areas such as:
- Competitive Environment
- Innovation & Market Opportunity
- New Business Models
- Partner & Channel Strategy
- Enterprise Strategies (targeted to supplier)
- Regulation
- Socioeconomics
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
IDC Blink
IDC Blink
Provides timely context and insight around important market trends and events in a short opinion piece with a 2-minute audio clip. IDC Blinks provide IDC's point of view on:
- Financial announcements
- Product announcements
- Mergers and acquisitions or divestitures
- Events
- Response to news
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.
Presentations
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.
Market 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.
Tech Buyer 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.
IDC Market Glance
Provides a look at the landscape of a tech market, including competitive positioning, adjacent segments, and potential partner opportunities.
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
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 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 one-time study produced by a research group that is not published as a deliverable under a subscription service.
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.
IDC Innovators
IDC Innovators is aimed at informing IT buyers about emerging vendors with an innovative new technology or ground-breaking business model. Vendors identified in the document as innovators are linked together within a specific market area and around solving or alleviating a common business problem. Vendors included have annual revenue under $100 million at the time of selection.
Technology Segment
The IDC Technology Segment offers CEMA clients a comprehensive view of a technology segment in one country or subregion and provides a market view and forecast and/or market share and vendor profiles, including performances and strategies. It is specifically intended to serve smaller country markets and subregions.
AT&T's Internet Air for Business is late to the fixed wireless access (FWA) game, but with the company now touting a holistic portfolio of both wired and wireless connectivity, along with a bevy of business network solutions and pricing ...
This IDC Survey provides a global overview of the current state of the total SMB market as well as small (1-99 employees) and medium-sized businesses (100-999 employees). It provides demographic data on the SMB market as it exists today, ...
This IDC Survey Spotlight examines data from IDC's 2023 Digital Executive Sentiment Survey to discover the new digital technology investments that small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are planning to make in 2024. Digital technology ...
This IDC study provides a thorough assessment of market-leading SaaS and cloud-enabled small business ERP applications and discusses the criteria that are most important for companies to consider when selecting a solution.
"Organizations ...
This IDC Survey Spotlight provides insights from IDC's 4Q23 Cloud Pulse Survey, which investigates global cloud buying adoption trends and challenges, and from IDC's February 2024 Worldwide Small ...
This IDC Survey provides an overview of the current and planned ecommerce capabilities of SMBs. It breaks this down by region, company size, vertical, business stage, and internal IT resources.
This IDC Survey examines the characteristics and purchasing preferences of United States–based microbusinesses. It also presents and analyzes the top challenges; revenue; current and future IT spend segmented by hardware, software, third-party ...
This IDC Survey Spotlight explores six planned finance and ERP capabilities at SMBs across 15 different industries. Finance and ERP tech suppliers investigating the industries they want to target should take a close look at the verticals ...
This IDC Survey provides an overview of how worldwide SMBs identify macroeconomic challenges, including inflation, energy prices, skill shortages, and other key topics, divided by company size, region, industry, and more. This IDC Survey ...
This IDC study provides the top 10 predictions for worldwide small and medium-sized businesses for 2024.
"2023 was a year of intense change for SMBs and their digital transformation journeys — from the thrilling rise of GenAI to choppy ...
This IDC Survey Spotlight explores the communications services in use by Canadian and U.S. SMBs. While collaboration and Web Conference tools are well adopted by these SMBs with the shift to remote work, there are still many opportunities ...
This IDC Survey provides an overview of current and planned cybersecurity investments for U.S. SMBs by company size. It breaks down security spend by type: hardware, software, security appliance, and SaaS. It also explores current and planned ...
This IDC Perspective examines how SMBs are implementing sustainability and ESG initiatives in their operational strategies. This IDC Perspective examines the underlying reasons for organizations that have not yet implemented sustainability ...
This IDC Survey presents a comprehensive look at the present and future investments in marketing and related technologies by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMBs), which include organizations with 1–999 employees. While the data reflects ...
This IDC Survey Spotlight examines the resources SMBs use to maintain and manage IT based on SMB size. It finds that the smallest SMBs tend to use pay-as-you-go support, remote online support, and IT maintenance contracts for most of their ...
This IDC Survey provides an overview of current and planned cybersecurity investments for global SMBs by company size, industry, and geographic region. It breaks security spend down by type: hardware, software, security appliance, and SaaS. ...
This IDC Market Note highlights the key themes, announcements, and strategies at Zendesk's 2023 Relate Conference and what those mean for the future of CX as well as small and medium-sized businesses.
This IDC Survey examines the top selection factors for U.S. SMBs when purchasing technology and how they research technology purchases and the channels they are most likely to use for their next technology purchase. It also evaluates the ...
This IDC Survey Spotlight explores the year-over-year revenue changes at SMBs across 15 different industries. This data helps illustrate the health of SMBs by industry and aids technology suppliers in deciding which verticals to target.
...This IDC Survey provides an overview of the current state of the total U.S. SMB market as well as small (1-99 employees) and medium-sized (100-999 employees) businesses in the United States. It provides demographic data on the U.S. SMB market ...
This IDC Survey examines top selection factors for SMBs when purchasing technology, how they research technology purchases, and the channels they use for technology purchases. It also evaluates the types of executives making technology purchase ...
This IDC Survey, fielded in February 2023, provides a global overview of the current state of small (1-99 employees) and medium-sized businesses (100-999 employees). It provides demographic data on the SMB market as it exists today and examines ...
This IDC Survey Spotlight examines how interest in AI to improve customer experience (CX) varies by company size among SMB organizations (<1,000 employees) and highlights an interesting bifurcation of the market. AI seems to be the latest ...
This IDC Survey Spotlight examines how SMBs leverage no code. No-code platforms typically allow trained business users without any knowledge of how coding works to address some or all of their own development needs. Empowering current staff ...
This IDC Market Note highlights the features of GoTo's Customer Engagement offering and how it meets the unique needs of SMBs. This document also explores how the offering fits in with GoTo's product portfolio as well as how it stacks up ...