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Build a Secure, Portable, and AI-Ready Operating Model for the Federal Government

Alan Webber — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective explains how federal agencies can build a secure, portable, and AI-ready operating model. Federal agencies face a defining modernization challenge: AI adoption, cloud complexity, zero trust mandates, and evolving threats are converging simultaneously. IDC’s Seven-Layer Reference Model for secure AI-enabled cloud provides a framework for addressing these pressures as a unified architecture rather than disconnected workstreams. Paired with a six-phase implementation road map, it offers federal technology leaders a sequenced, actionable path from mission alignment and data governance to responsible AI deployment, continuous compliance, and institutionalized improvement.

“Federal agencies cannot AI their way out of a data governance deficit or security their way out of a fragmented architecture,” said Alan Webber, program vice president, National Security, Defense, and Intelligence at IDC. “The agencies that will successfully deploy AI at mission scale are the ones that treat cloud, data, security, and compliance as a single integrated operating model and invest in the foundations before they invest in the applications.”

Digital Organizational Design for Strategic Value

Alizabeth Calder — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective discusses how today's CIO faces unparalleled pressure to transform not only their organization but how the business of IT operates to bring strategic value. How we organize the digital functions and how our teams work in the ecosystem of the business and the industry can make or break not only our success as a CIO but the success of our organization. The new and critical imperative for the CIO of the future is to deliver strategic value. We must urgently move away from traditional structures that no longer serve our strategy and build a digital function that is responsive and effective.

"The need to be intentional on what needs to be different is a critical touchstone for digital organization design," says Alizabeth Calder, adjunct research advisor for IDC's IT Executive Programs (IEP).

"Gone are the days when we can make modest structure changes or do tweaks. We must bring foresight to the business of IT, to serve for today and where the digital capability and investment need to go. We must be proactive, helping the rest of the C-suite see the next and future risks and opportunities. We owe our peers insight and action to elevate the investment and risk conversations for the next level of strategic value for the business. If we don't provide a clear strategy for future value, we will be stuck responding to what our peers think they know rather than being active participants enabling strategic value."

Enterprise Procurement and Partnership in the Age of AI and Outcome-Based Connectivity — Analysis by Region

Paul Hughes — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective is the first in a series of three documents that examine how businesses expect to procure connectivity services and related transformation projects in the era of AI and outcome-based connectivity. Drawing on IDC's 2025 Enterprise Connectivity Infrastructure and Services Survey and other related IDC data sources, this IDC Perspective identifies regional differences for connectivity provider preferences and procurement methods across North America, Europe, and APAC.

"Regional procurement patterns reveal that geography still shapes how enterprises source and evaluate connectivity," commented Paul Hughes, research director, Future Enterprise Connectivity Strategies at IDC. "This comes even as the underlying provider competition converges globally and as AI leadership from the supplier community differs in depth, perspective, and approach."

Quantum Risk Is Already Here: An Enterprise Buyer's Guide to Assessing Third-Party Cryptographic Readiness Before Q-Day, Part 1 — Situation and Strategic Guidance

Philip D. Harris, CISSP, CCSK — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective discusses the need for third-party post-quantum readiness. The quantum threat to enterprise data security is not a future risk — it is a present liability that is compounding across your third-party vendor portfolio. Harvest now, decrypt later (HNDL) attacks are collecting data that your vendors encrypt today for retroactive decryption once quantum computers mature. Trust now, forge later (TNFL) — introduced by IDC as the authentication-layer counterpart to HNDL — describes adversaries harvesting signed vendor artifacts currently to retroactively forge provenance records that your organization and your regulators cannot distinguish from authentic ones. With NIST finalizing three PQC standards in August 2024, CISA issuing federal procurement guidance in January 2026, and NIST IR 8547 proposing to deprecate quantum-vulnerable asymmetric algorithms after 2030 and disallow them after 2035, the regulatory landscape has converted PQC migration from a planning exercise into a third-party compliance obligation you cannot defer to your vendors.

This document is part 1 of a two-part IDC Perspective series for enterprise buyers. It establishes the strategic and threat context for deploying a PQC readiness assessment program across your third-party vendor portfolio — including the HNDL and TNFL threat dimensions, Mosca's inequality vendor prioritization framework, emerging Quantum Security Posture Management and Quantum TRiSCM operating models, and the five quantum governance dimensions and trust KPIs that mature buyer programs are adopting. Quantum Risk Is Already Here: An Enterprise Buyer's Guide to Assessing Third-Party Cryptographic Readiness Before Q-Day, Part 2 — Assessment Framework and Deployment Guide (IDC #, forthcoming) delivers the complete 48-question Third-Party Quantum Encryption Readiness Assessment Framework. Vendors that cannot demonstrate a credible migration posture across both encryption and authentication represent material, unquantified risk in your third-party portfolio — risk that regulators and boards will increasingly require you to account for before formal mandates arrive.

"Two clocks are running simultaneously across your third-party vendor portfolio. The first is the HNDL clock: Data your vendors encrypt currently under quantum-vulnerable algorithms is potentially readable within a decade, and it cannot be re-encrypted retroactively. The second is the TNFL clock: Every artifact your vendors sign currently under a quantum-vulnerable key extends the attack surface adversaries will exploit once quantum computing reaches cryptographic relevance. Neither clock can be paused, and neither is your vendor's problem alone — because the data at risk is yours, and the regulatory accountability is yours. The only rational response is to treat third-party PQC assessment not as a future program but as the most time-sensitive addition to your vendor risk management framework — and to build the governance, assessment infrastructure, and continuous monitoring foundations before your regulators ask you to explain why you did not," says Philip D. Harris, CISSP, CCSK, research director, Governance, Risk, and Compliance Solutions at IDC.

Sovereignty by Design: How Data Sovereignty Is Reshaping Connectivity and Enterprise Architecture

Ghassan Abdo, Jitesh Bhayani — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective examines the forces driving this shift and offers concrete guidance for technology buyers navigating the transition. Data sovereignty has moved from a compliance checkbox to a foundational design principle. Across regulated industries and geopolitically sensitive markets, enterprises are re-architecting their digital operating models — shifting from a global-by-default posture to a deliberately sovereign-by-design approach.

"Sovereignty is no longer a compliance checkbox — it's a board-level design decision that touches every layer of the enterprise technology stack. Organizations that define clear sovereignty tiers and embed governance into their operating model now will be better positioned to adapt as regulations tighten and geopolitical conditions shift. The question is no longer whether to build sovereign by design — it's whether you can afford not to," says Ghassan Abdo, research VP, Worldwide Telecom, IDC.

Supply Chain Planning Challenges and Remediation in 2026

Simon Ellis — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective examines the current state of supply chain planning through the lens of persistent challenges and opportunities for remediation.

"As agentic AI is poised to change everything, supply chain planning sits in the crosshairs. Although traditionally performed by analog (aka human) planners, it is inherently a decision-making process that can, and often is, fully digitized," says Simon Ellis, Group VP, Manufacturing and Supply Chain, IDC. "It is also crucially important to the supply chain, and at IDC we have often noted that if you don't get planning right, you don't get the supply chain right."

The Emergence of Personal AI Agents

Neil Ward-Dutton, Tim Law, Shari Lava — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective examines the rapid emergence of personal AI agents: multipurpose, always-on assistants that automate individuals’ administrative and knowledge work within their digital workspace. It defines the category, distinguishes personal AI agents from the specialized, single-role agents that have dominated early enterprise adoption, and highlights the wave of offerings that has appeared since OpenClaw’s open source release in late 2025. It also assesses the immaturity of the technology and the cybersecurity, data security, and governance gaps that accompany it and sets out the actions technology leaders should take to capture the productivity upside while containing the risks.

“The emergence of personal AI agents has been swift, and they bring intriguing potential, but enterprise technology leaders should proceed with caution,” said Neil Ward-Dutton, research VP, Agentic Automation and AI Technologies at IDC.

Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Harness and AWS Context: Managed Agentic AI Platform Services for Enterprise Developer Enablement

Adam Reeves — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Announced at AWS Summit, Amazon Bedrock AgentCore's managed harness and the preview of AWS Context extend AWS' agentic AI platform services with managed agent orchestration and organizational knowledge graph capabilities for enterprise developers. AWS asserts that the harness reduces the engineering cost of deploying production agents, and as PaaS continues its evolution toward agentic AI platforms, production deployments at scale will determine whether AgentCore emerges as the platform of record for enterprise agent development.

Emerging Forces in China’s AI Chip Market: Development of Key Start-Ups

Helen Chiang — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective explores the continuous expansion of AI and its market, as AI chips have become a key part of enterprise IT architecture. Under the influence of geopolitics and digital sovereignty, Chinese vendors are active in the development of independently-developed AI chips. Given this scenario, coupled with strong domestic demand, numerous local AI chip companies and start-ups have emerged, leading to a wave of IPOs that surged from 2025 to 2026, including Moore Threads, MetaX, Biren Technology, and Iluvatar CoreX. The China AI chip market is not a monolithic entity; it is composed of a diverse and competitive ecosystem of suppliers, each with distinct strengths, development strategies, and customer profiles. These AI chip vendors are not only striving for breakthroughs in computing power, but also focusing on software development, support for large models, and the establishment of stable operation and maintenance mechanisms, forming an important emerging force in the development of AI chips in China.

“Chinese AI chip start-ups are proactively building their technological strengths. Beyond leveraging chiplet-based architectures to circumvent advanced process constraints, they are stepping up investments in software platforms, interconnect technologies, and system-level solutions to address supply chain bottlenecks. Although the Chinese AI chip market remains constrained by a range of challenges and external restrictions, these pressures have also driven start-ups to accelerate the development of differentiated technologies and platform capabilities, thereby enhancing the resilience of China’s domestic semiconductor supply chain and ecosystem,” said Helen Chiang, research vice president, Semiconductors and Enabling Technologies, IDC.

From Connected to Intelligent: Industrial IoT in the Age of AI and Edge Intelligence

Gunjan Bassi — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective examines where industrial IoT scaling efforts are succeeding and where they are constrained. Industrial IoT has moved beyond connected operations. Most industrial organizations are already running AI-enabled applications in production, yet the ability to scale them consistently across sites, systems, and operational domains remains limited. Architecture, data contextualization, OT security, and talent readiness are now the factors separating organizations that scale from those that do not.

The most successful adopters share a common foundation: deliberate architectural choices made early, governance established ahead of need, and a clear understanding of how AI-driven insights connect to operational decisions.

"Most industrial organizations already have the data. What separates leaders is their ability to act on it at scale," says Gunjan Bassi, research manager, Worldwide Industrial IoT and Intelligence Strategies, IDC. "The organizations pulling ahead have aligned architecture, data contextualization, governance, and talent early. These are the factors separating the organizations that scale from the ones that stay stuck in pilot."