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IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Laser Production Printers 2026 Vendor Assessment

Mitri Roufka, Tim Greene — Wed, 27 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC MarketScape assesses the capabilities and strategies of 11 global vendors of laser production printers. It also provides guidance to vendors and advice to companies considering the acquisition of such equipment, including the selection criteria they should consider and the vendors that fit their production printing needs best.

"Production printers are mission critical and have long life cycles. These buying decisions involve high CAPEX, which creates extreme inertia. Customers know that, whatever their possible issues are, getting the printers online quickly is the most critical element in deploying them. Because of this, customers' most important selection criteria is 'Which vendor offers the best service and support that we can trust?'. Features and innovative solutions that address efficiency, automation, and changing business needs are also important but clearly come in the second place," said Mitri Roufka, program director, IDC Imaging, Printing, and Document Solutions team.

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Retail Marketplace Platforms Software Providers 2026 Vendor Assessment

Ornella Urso, Cristiano Quattrini — Wed, 27 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study examines the key strategies and capabilities of global technology providers that enable the design, deployment, and scaling of retail marketplace platforms. This assessment evaluates vendors' strengths, including the breadth of marketplace functionality across seller onboarding, catalog aggregation, transaction management, and ecosystem orchestration, as well as the depth of capabilities supporting governance, monetization, and operational execution. It also assesses vendors' understanding of the specific challenges associated with operating multisided retail platforms, including partner management, data quality, fulfillment coordination, and customer experience consistency, ultimately enabling organizations to build and scale marketplace-driven business models.

In addition, this study evaluates vendors' ability to support ecosystem expansion through integrations and partner networks; their commitment to innovation across areas such as artificial intelligence, automation, and data-driven optimization; and their capacity to deliver measurable business outcomes through scalable, secure, and flexible platform architectures. The assessment also considers vendors' customer engagement models, including onboarding, enablement, and ongoing support, as well as their ability to adapt to evolving market dynamics, regional requirements, and emerging marketplace use cases across both B2C and B2B environments.

"Retail marketplaces are rapidly becoming the foundational architecture for next-generation commerce. The ability to orchestrate complex ecosystems of sellers, services, and data is emerging as a critical differentiator. Technology providers that can combine robust operational capabilities with scalable architectures, ecosystem enablement, and AI-driven intelligence will be best positioned to support retailers in transitioning from transactional commerce to platform-based growth models," said Cristiano Quattrini, senior associate advisor, IDC Retail Insights.

Strategic Considerations for Enterprise AI Networking: Datacenter, Cloud, and Interconnect

Paul Nicholson — Wed, 27 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Tech Buyer Presentation examines the strategic networking and interconnect considerations enterprise technology buyers must address when planning and deploying datacenter, cloud, and hybrid AI workloads. Enterprise AI deployments are placing unprecedented demands on datacenter networking infrastructure. Drawing on findings from IDC's 2025 Worldwide AI in Networking Special Report (n = 518), it covers the evolution from traditional datacenter networking to AI-ready architectures, the infrastructure requirements of AI factories, and the key benefits and challenges organizations face. The presentation provides actionable guidance on capacity planning, technology selection, and proactive network design to help enterprise teams ensure their networking infrastructure can scale in lockstep with AI compute demands.

2026 Oracle Restaurant Summit: How Oracle Is Siezing the Assembly Line Moment and Bringing Industrial-Scale AI to Restaurants

Dorothy Creamer — Tue, 26 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective discusses how Oracle is seizing the assembly line moment and bringing industrial-scale AI to restaurants. Oracle used the 2026 Restaurant Summit to reinforce a strategic repositioning that restaurant technology is no longer a standalone domain but a node in a broader consumer industries platform that spans retail, hospitality, supply chain, and enterprise infrastructure. The co-location with Oracle Retail Cross Talk 2026 was a visible expression of the company's commitment to put restaurant operators in the same room as retail leaders to experience the shared platform, shared AI capabilities, and shared partner ecosystem that Oracle is building across all three verticals.

"The gap between technology aspiration and operational reality is closing as brands like Oracle commit to 'make the unbelievable believable,'" says Dorothy Creamer, senior research manager, Hospitality and Travel Digital Strategies at IDC. "The 2026 Oracle Restaurant Summit served as a reminder that as our expectations for AI often outpace benefits, it is important to remain rooted in operational reality. Building solutions and platforms against a foundation of trust, choice, and scale, as Oracle aims to continue to do, will translate that potential into a practical and successful reality with tangible outcomes."

Arqiva: Scaling CRM Toward a Unified Workflow Across Customer Service and Field Operations

Ornella Urso, Alex Holtz — Tue, 26 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective examines Arqiva's strategic consolidation of fragmented operational systems into a unified enterprise workflow platform, partnering with ServiceNow, enabling end-to-end (E2E) visibility across customer service, field operations, and portfolio management. Initially driven by the need to replace multiple disconnected service management systems, the program evolved into a broader digital maturity strategy centered on workflow automation, AI augmentation, and knowledge digitization.

"Arqiva's experience underscores the necessity of modernizing core systems as a prerequisite to effective workflow automation," says Ornella Urso, research director, IDC. "Rather than approaching consolidation as a straightforward IT replacement exercise, Arqiva's journey illustrates the value of treating such initiatives as holistic business transformations, where operational processes, governance, and organizational culture are equally addressed."

CMO's Guide to Agentic Identity: Capturing Agentic Identifiable Information

Gerry Murray — Tue, 26 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective, the second in the four-part CMO guide to agentic identifiable information (AII), examines the capture architecture required to recognize, validate, and record agent-mediated customer interactions. It specifies a seven-layer logical architecture, maps AII capture across seven journey stages, and defines versioning, structured-intent, and machine-readable content disciplines for enterprise marketing organizations in 2026.

"The expected scale and complexity of agentic identity data requires significant re-architecting of data infrastructure, schema, and decisioning systems. CMOs must coordinate with IT, security/ID, legal, and data teams to ensure a low-latency capability to verify and engage with agentic buyers in real time" according to Gerry Murray, research director, Enterprise Marketing Apps and Agents, IDC.

Cisco CX Summit 2026: Building the World's Best AI-Native Services Organization

Chris Barnard, Rob Brothers, Leslie Rosenberg, Elaina Stergiades — Tue, 26 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Cisco held its annual customer experience (CX) analyst event at the Cisco Paris offices on May 6-7, 2026, bringing together analysts and customer experience leaders to share CX innovations across its asset lifecycle (Support, Professional, and Advisory) services portfolio.

Day Zero: Getting the Organization AI-Ready — Agentic Ways of Working Series

Matthew Flug, Douglas Hayward, Bill Latshaw — Tue, 26 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Presentation identifies the organizational and technical preparations that enterprises must address before deploying AI agents at scale. Drawing on IDC survey data, the presentation maps readiness gaps across data management, culture, skills, trust, and workflow design. It provides a structured Day Zero framework across six domains: data readiness, culture and planning, intelligent workflows, AI models and infrastructure, testing and governance, and observability and monitoring. This presentation is part of IDC's Agentic Ways of Working Series.

"Enthusiasm for AI agents is high, but most organizations are not yet prepared in terms of data governance, culture, skills, trust, or workflow readiness to operationalize them effectively. Organizations that align data, culture, processes, and governance before agents are deployed are well-positioned to scale agentic AI with confidence and deliver quantifiable business outcomes," says Matthew Flug, research manager, Intelligent Application Modernization and Deployment Platforms at IDC.

Dell Technologies World 2026: Operationalizing AI at Enterprise Scale

Matthew Eastwood, Tom Mainelli, Ashish Nadkarni, Leslie Rosenberg — Tue, 26 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT

At Dell Technologies World 2026, Dell advanced its “full stack” AI-ready IT portfolio by announcing developments in compute, data management, storage, networking, cyber recovery, AI-enabled automation, end-user devices, and IT services. Dell positioned AI infrastructure as the foundation for data lifecycle management, emphasizing “AI for infrastructure and infrastructure for AI.” A highlight was the enhanced AI Factory narrative, marking a shift from reference architecture to production-scale systems. The event underscored that enterprise AI is progressing from pilots to operational deployment, where data access, GPU utilization, sovereignty, and hybrid placement decisions are increasingly important. Dell conveyed that success in AI now hinges on the design, deployment, and operation of integrated AI systems at scale—requiring the right hardware across hybrid, multicloud, on-premises data centers, and desktops. Enterprises must manage token economics, enabling customers to use their own data for AI model development while controlling bandwidth and token costs.

Hannover Messe 2026: The Time of Execution Is Now

Gunjan Bassi, Sarah Lee, Lorenzo Veronesi — Tue, 26 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective discusses the collective theme at Hannover Messe 2026 (HM26) and demonstrates tangible examples of industrial AI functioning effectively on the factory floor. HM26 marked a pivotal shift as industrial AI moved from pilot projects to real-world deployment, fundamentally transforming manufacturing operations. AI is now embedded at the core of industrial systems, with unified data platforms, agentic AI, digital twins, and robotics driving operational efficiency. The event highlighted the urgency of data integration, governance, and workforce readiness, emphasizing that execution speed, rather than technology access, will define future industrial competitiveness.

"Industrial AI is transforming the manufacturing industry, changing the way companies think about innovation and productivity. Instead of just playing a supporting role, industrial AI is now at the heart of driving efficiency, operational excellence, and helping manufacturers stay competitive," says Gunjan Bassi, research manager, Worldwide Industrial Internet of Things and Intelligence Strategies at IDC.

"Industrial AI is no longer a future ambition; it is here and now. But what many manufacturers fail to realize is that it's the operating core. It is the differentiator between going from a successful POC to full wide-scale deployment," says Sarah Lee, research director, IDC Manufacturing Insights.

"Manufacturers that treat execution platforms modernization and industrial AI deployment as separate programs, to be sequenced one after the other, will find that by the time they get to the MES, the AI deployment has already locked them into an architectural pattern that the new MES cannot support. These are one program, and they need to be designed together," says Lorenzo Veronesi, associate research director, Worldwide Smart Manufacturing Strategies at IDC.