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Beyond Customer Data: The Context Foundation AI Agents in CX Are Missing

Tapan Patel — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective examines why AI agents deployed across customer experience (CX) functions like marketing, sales, advertising, digital commerce, customer support, and field service systems require dedicated context foundation beyond unified customer data. It defines the three architectural foundations — knowledge graphs, semantic definitions, and context management — that enable agents to reason over shared context, coordinate actions across functions, and make autonomous decisions. The document provides guidance for both business and technology buyers evaluating context readiness for AI agents in CX.

“Customer data platforms gave us unified profiles, but that foundation alone is not sufficient for AI agents to make autonomous decisions,” said Tapan Patel, research director, AI-Enabled Customer Data and Analytics, IDC. “AI agents need a next layer — one that provides detailed understanding into CX relationships, shared business logic across functions, and runtime context that reflects customer intent, life-cycle stage, and prior actions to deliver real value.”

IDC Survey: SMB Communications Services Survey, 2025 — AI Adoption in SMB Communications

Jason Blackwell — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

AI investment is moving from exploration to structured deployment:

Generative AI is now the top SMB technology investment priority, with agentic AI emerging as well, confirming that SMBs are moving beyond passive evaluation toward structured spending plans and operational deployment in the next 12–18 months.

Competitive advantage is increasingly tied to customer engagement and data-driven decisioning:

SMBs are now viewing GenAI to reshape how they engage customers and use data to inform decisions, reframing AI from an internal efficiency tool to a growth and differentiation lever embedded within communications, collaboration, and analytics-driven workflows.

Execution readiness determines the pace of scale:

Although interest is high, scaling AI remains difficult due to challenges like regulatory and data‑governance requirements, cost control, and limited in‑house expertise. This underscores the need for secure‑by‑design solutions and well‑defined ROI models and marketing.

AI monetization will flow through bundled, managed connectivity models:

Broadband remains the anchor service in the SMB relationship, but strategic influence over AI/AIOps road maps is consolidating with cloud providers and integrators, pressuring telecom and cable providers to evolve toward integrated, managed, and consultative service models to protect wallet share and relevance.

Meta's Newest Commerce Strategy: Partnering with Shopify, Payments, and AI to Close the Transaction Loop

Roger Beharry Lall, Heather Hershey — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Friction is the enemy of impulse. Frictionless checkouts almost always convert better than the alternatives. That's exactly what Meta is partnering to tap into via the strategies announced at Shoptalk on March 24, 2026. Meta wants to reduce or eliminate redirection off its platform for the completion of purchases to compress the customer journey to maximize impulse-driven opportunities.

Beyond Stripe, Meta is building out a broader payments ecosystem that gives merchants flexibility at checkout. Initial rollouts center on Stripe and PayPal, both of which power the current one-tap, in-app transaction flow. Additional integrations with Adyen are already planned, with merchants able to select their preferred provider at the point of purchase.

Stripe brings modern, developer-centric infrastructure; PayPal contributes global wallet reach and consumer familiarity; and Adyen extends enterprise-grade acquiring and international coverage. The result is a flexible checkout architecture where Meta owns the interface and optimization layer, while payment execution is distributed across specialized partners. Beyond this, Shopify is providing a layer of commerce orchestration to the table that makes for a more complete offering for catalog management, checkout, fulfillment, and reporting.

Interestingly, Meta shut down its own native checkout (Facebook/Instagram Shops) as of mid-2025, moving buyers back to merchant sites to complete the transaction. The aforementioned partners are essentially building what Meta stepped away from.

This IDC Link will focus on Meta, Stripe, and Shopify, since those three companies have been the center of the announcements to date.

Digital Advertising Market Review, 2026

Alex Holtz — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

The IDC Perspective on the Digital Advertising Market Review, 2026, highlights the transformative impact of AI, generative AI, and agentic AI on digital advertising strategies, campaign management, and measurement. The report underscores rapid growth in platforms like CTV, mobile in-app, and retail media networks, driven by advanced personalization, automation, and ecosystem partnerships. As the market shifts toward autonomous, data-driven workflows and cross-platform integration, organizations embracing these innovations will gain a competitive edge.

"In 2026, digital advertising is no longer just about reaching audiences it's about AI-driven orchestration, where autonomous agents, predictive analytics, and immersive platforms converge to create hyper-personalized, closed-loop campaigns. As technology and partnerships redefine the rules, the winners will be those who embrace agentic AI and composable ecosystems. Are you ready to compete in a market where machines are your new media strategists?" — Research Director Alex Holtz, IDC Worldwide Media & Entertainment Digital Strategies

European Enterprise Communication Service Provider Profile: AT&T Business

Masarra Mohamed — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Presentation provides an in-depth analysis of AT&T Business’ strategy, operations, and market positioning in the enterprise communications sector. It begins with IDC’s view, highlighting AT&T’s focus on delivering secure, scalable global connectivity and enabling digital transformation for multinational corporations. It first provides an overview of AT&T Business’ organizational structure, leadership team, and strategic priorities, emphasizing its role as a network-enabled technology provider integrating connectivity, edge computing, and cybersecurity. It then examines financial performance, noting the shift toward next-generation connectivity, which now accounts for 60% of AT&T Business Solutions’ revenue, despite overall revenue pressure from legacy declines. The presentation also assesses AT&T Business’ competitive positioning compared with Europe-headquartered telcos. It also details AT&T’s global infrastructure assets, portfolio, partner ecosystem, and go-to-market and messaging strategies, which enable the company to deliver consistent managed services across more than 200 countries. Finally, IDC recommends that AT&T enhance marketing visibility, promote its NetBond platform, and leverage automation and AI to expand beyond traditional large multinational corporations.

European Telco Diversification Beyond Connectivity and Devices in the SMB Market

Daniela Rao — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Perspective focuses on European telcos' digital solutions propositions for SMBs, beyond connectivity and devices. These digital solutions encompass a wide range of services to address SMB customers' digital transformation, efficiency and flexibility needs, to compete successfully in the European digital economy.

"Telcos' success in the SMB market depends on their ability to propose digital solutions in which security, trustability, and resilience are embedded in scalable, user-friendly suites that increase customers' agility," said Daniela Rao, senior research and consulting director, IDC Telecom and UCC Global Team.

Consumer AI and the Replatforming of the Consumer Digital Economy

Greg Ireland, Kelly Brown — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study highlights developments in the consumer AI market. As we look at the ways in which consumer use of AI changes other online behaviors, we see a replatforming of the consumer digital economy in which consumers rely less on traditional search and websites and more on AI assistants. AI assistants are already the starting point for many consumer customer journeys. This represents monetization opportunities for AI platform providers and opportunities for these providers to reshape a growing number of online consumer experiences.

EMEA Wholesale Radar, 2H25

Jan Hein Bakkers, Tolga Yalcin — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Presentation analyzes recent news and events in the wholesale telecoms market in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The EMEA Wholesale Radar identifies major trends and dynamics from these announcements and places them in the context of overall market development and outlook.

AI Isn’t Going to “Eat” Software: Agentic AI Needs the Authoritative Data and Rules Inside Enterprise Apps

Heather Hershey, Mickey North Rizza — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective discusses enterprises’ adoption of AI agents within enterprise applications. Despite headlines suggesting AI will consume enterprise software, the evidence points to a more nuanced shift. As Jensen Huang noted at the Cisco AI Summit, the idea that AI replaces software misconstrues how computing works. IDC research shows enterprises expect agents to become a new intelligence layer across applications, yet alignment and security concerns reinforce continued reliance on established systems of record. The result is a transitional equilibrium in which agents orchestrate and interact, while core applications retain enforcement and accountability authority. IDC forecasts broad enhancement of enterprise applications by 2027 rather than their extinction.

“Stripped of hype, agentic AI is still software,” said Heather Hershey, research director, AI-Enable Digital Commerce at IDC. “Agentic AI is a probabilistic reasoning system that can pursue goals with limited supervision, yet it remains dependent on existing enterprise data foundations and governance frameworks. For executives, the strategic imperative is clear: capture value by embedding agentic AI within trusted application environments that preserve accountability and control.”

“‘Agents as apps’ is the new software model that will quicky enhance the software journey for organizations in the AI digital world,” said Mickey North Rizza, group vice president, Enterprise Software. “Invest in the future and do it now, but don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Your enterprise application software is a major foundation into the AI world — use it, mold it, and grow it.”

European Plans for Direct Smartphone-to-Satellite D2C Service Become Clear

Simon Baker, Peter Chahal, Ahmad Latif Ali — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Firm commitments are being made in smartphone-to-satellite D2C service with significant announcements at the Mobile World Congress (MWC). Orange and Telefónica are to work with the Vodafone AST SpaceMobile joint venture, which is due to start service later this year. Deutsche Telekom (DT)/T-Mobile in contrast will work with SpaceX Starlink in Europe as it does in the United States.

There was concrete news on smartphone-to-satellite D2C service across Europe at the Mobile World Congress:

Shortly before the show, Vodafone announced a new name for its SatCo joint venture with AST SpaceMobile, now to be called Satellite Connect Europe (SCE). The Luxembourg-based venture will be led by Meredith Sharples, who most recently has worked at Digicel in the Caribbean as regional CEO.
Orange and Telefónica signed up for SCE during the show. Vodafone plans trials in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Romania. Orange will also be carrying out initial testing in Romania.
Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile's parent company), on the other hand, opted in Europe for SpaceX Starlink. This DT service is expected to launch in Europe in 2028.

All three MNOs intend to offer service across their multiple operations in the European markets.

Also at the show, SpaceX renamed its service Starlink Mobile and was at pains to underline that it does not intend to compete with MNOs with D2C services. SpaceX said that the first-generation Starlink Mobile system reaches 16 million unique users, with 25 million expected by the end of this year. Currently there are 10 million active users on a monthly basis. Partner carriers include T-Mobile in the United States, Rogers in Canada, and KDDI in Japan.

AST Satellite Connect's Europe service is due to start before the end of this year. However, that is dependent on an ambitious launch schedule — AST SpaceMobile said at MWC that it aims to have 45–60 satellites in the orbit by the end of the year but that may not be achieved. Only one of AST's larger BlueBird satellites is currently in orbit, and while a Blue Origin New Glenn launch is due to take place later in March, it will carry only one more Bluebird satellite, even though New Glenn can carry three to eight per launch. A full payload New Glenn launch is planned later in the year. Otherwise, AST will be relying on SpaceX, whose Falcon 9 can carry three or four BlueBirds per launch. AST says it needs 45 satellites in the orbit for initial service across the United States, Europe, and Japan.

The aim of AST has been to go for broadband satellite service from the outset, and its BlueBird satellites have the largest antennas ever used on commercial LEO spacecraft. AST aims for a throughput rate of 120Mbps.

While AST service will utilize cellular operator frequency, in Europe, Deutsche Telekom/T-Mobile has taken the decision with Starlink not to use its own cellular frequency but to use the AWS-3 and AWS-4 frequency blocks being purchased by Echostar. These are adjacent to current frequencies for cellular 5G in the United States and elsewhere. However, most smartphones are currently not equipped to operate on them. Deutsche Telekom therefore needs to work with SpaceX to persuade chipmakers, notably Qualcomm and Mediatek, and smartphone manufacturers to expand the reception range of their modems to the AWS-3 and AWS-4 bands. The most likely smartphone maker targets are Apple and Samsung, the dominant smartphone brands in Germany as they are in the United States.

This will delay the launch of service. At MWC, a DT executive told IDC that the company was confident that it would achieve this in time to have compatible phones available for the 2028 launch in the 10 countries in the DT European mobile footprint.

Potential users will need to obtain one of these compatible phones to use the Starlink service. DT has an extensive retail presence in the phone market in its operating countries through which to achieve such distribution. The Deutsche Telekom executive explained that the decision to use the Echostar frequency was in part driven by a wish not to allocate away DT terrestrial frequency to satellite use.

This schedule seems slow for SpaceX but may have been forced on the company by expected delays in clearance for use of the Echostar frequencies. There will also be a delay related to the space segment. The additional Echostar frequencies will be incorporated onto the planned v3 Starlink satellites, which are due to be launched from the middle of next year. These will also have large antennas and require launch by SpaceX's Starship/Super Heavy Booster (SHB), which is yet to enter operational service. An updated version of this, the Starship v3, is due to be test launched in March.

As might be expected of SpaceX, however, it has big plans for its second-generation Starlink Mobile service. From the second half of 2027, SpaceX is aiming for rapid turnarounds on Starship SHB and the schedule for rollout of Starlink v3 spacecraft returns to the company's usual impatience to get on with things, with 1,200 due to be in operation within six months. The Super Heavy Booster, which is much larger than the current SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, will be capable of carrying 60 or so Starlink v3s satellites per launch.

The Starlink v3 service is designed to compete head-on with AST. Whereas the current SpaceX Starlink Mobile system works from 650 smaller v2 satellites and provides a throughput of around 4Mbps and is limited basically to text service, the v3 system is aimed to achieve a much higher up to 150Mbps for 5G phones, enough to stream video.

From the consumer point of view, 2026 will not be the year of direct smartphone-to-satellite service in Europe. But following testing this year, broadband service should roll out from AST SpaceMobile and its partners, and by 2028, healthy competition will emerge between two providers of broadband D2C service involving many of Europe's cellular providers.