rssitbuyer

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide AI-Enabled Customer Data Platforms for B2B Users 2026 Vendor Assessment

Tapan Patel — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study evaluates vendors of customer data platforms (CDPs) focused on B2B users and use cases. The B2B CDP is a multiyear revenue infrastructure decision that crosses marketing, sales, customer success, revenue operations, and partner functions. Buyers are more cross-functional, sales cycles have stretched, and finance leaders are asking sharper questions about what CDP investments actually return. Generative AI and AI agents have added a new dimension to the conversation, used by marketing and sales teams to engage prospects and used by buyers themselves to research and short-list vendors. This study examines the foundational dynamics B2B CDP buyers face, the use cases organizations are most often building, and the practical advice buyers should follow during evaluation and selection.

"For the first time, B2B revenue teams can operate from a single, trusted view of account and buying group and put that same view in the hands of the AI agents now joining their work," said Tapan Patel, research director, AI-Enabled Customer Data and Analytics. "As marketing leaders are increasingly held accountable for pipeline contribution and customer expansion, the CDPs that earn their place are the ones that help marketing measure and defend that contribution alongside sales, customer success, and operations."

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Revenue Management Systems in Hospitality 2026 Vendor Assessment

Dorothy Creamer — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study provides a vendor assessment of the worldwide revenue management systems (RMSs) in hospitality using the IDC MarketScape model. The hospitality revenue management system market is at a genuine inflection point. The convergence of AI maturity, platform consolidation, and expanding commercial scope is redefining what an RMS is expected to do and for whom. For decades, the category was defined by a relatively stable core function: forecast demand, optimize rates, and sell the right room to the right guest at the right time. That mandate has not changed, but the complexity of executing it has grown exponentially, as hoteliers now contend with fragmented data estates, compressed margins, volatile demand patterns, and growing organizational pressure to extract revenue from every corner of the property, not just the room.

The vendors evaluated in this IDC MarketScape reflect a market in active architectural transition, with meaningful divergence emerging across three dimensions: the depth and durability of AI and forecasting science, the degree to which the RMS is embedded within or connected to the broader hospitality technology stack, and the ability to serve an increasingly stratified operator landscape that spans global enterprise chains and single-property independents simultaneously. For technology buyers, navigating this landscape requires moving beyond feature comparisons toward a more foundational set of questions about data readiness, organizational change capacity, and long-term platform alignment.

"As hotel operations grow more complex and data environments more demanding, the RMS is no longer just a system that produces the best rate recommendation; it has to have forecasting science, explainability, and platform architecture to deliver revenue per guest and total property at scale," says Dorothy Creamer, senior research manager, Hospitality and Travel Digital Strategies, IDC. "AI capability without organizational readiness, however, will be a liability waiting to materialize in the form of overrides, mistrust, and unrealized ROI."

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide SIEM 2026 Vendor Assessment

Michelle Abraham — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study evaluates vendors in the security information and event management (SIEM) market. The assessment reflects a market in transition, with AI agents moving from preview to general availability as vendors embed them for alert triage, investigation, threat hunting, detection rule authoring, and playbook generation. Data pipeline management and security data lake architectures are becoming common components of SIEM platforms, addressing the cost and retention constraints that have historically limited the amount of telemetry organizations can bring into their detection environment. The document discusses vendors' strengths and challenges in SIEM. It provides guidance to identify the platform that best aligns with the organization's environment, operational model, and long-term security program requirements.

"The SIEM market is at an inflection point where AI agents are redefining the work of the security analyst. Vendors that embed agents capable of autonomous triage, investigation, and detection engineering are shifting the SIEM from a data platform analysts query to one that actively works alongside them," said Michelle Abraham, senior research director, Security and Trust, IDC.

Microsoft Build 2026: A New Development Platform for the Agent Era

Adam Reeves, Matthew Flug — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

At Microsoft Build 2026, Microsoft announced a coordinated set of platform updates spanning developer tooling, agent runtimes, data infrastructure, and its own model family, framing GitHub, Windows, and Azure Foundry as a unified surface for building and deploying agentic applications. The announcements reflect a broader market shift in which PaaS selection is increasingly shaped by a platform's ability to address security, governance, and production readiness for agentic workloads, not development speed alone.

AI and Cloud Connectivity — Impact on Networking and Connectivity Investments

Paul Hughes — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective examines how the rapid growth of AI workloads is reshaping enterprise network infrastructure requirements and connectivity investment priorities. Drawing on IDC's 2025 Enterprise Connectivity Infrastructure and Services Survey, the report shows that bandwidth demand is accelerating across all industries, AI traffic is on track to overtake traditional network traffic by 2027–2028, and enterprises are already increasing investment in SD-WAN, network-as-a-service (NaaS), edge computing, and cloud interconnect. This document also identifies vertical-specific connectivity requirements across financial services, healthcare, retail, manufacturing, and the public sector, and provides actionable guidance for technology buyers and suppliers navigating the AI connectivity imperative.

"AI does not exist without connectivity. As enterprises accelerate their AI road maps, the network is no longer an infrastructure but is considered a strategic asset. Enterprises that align their connectivity strategy with their AI ambitions today will be the ones that deliver on the promise of AI tomorrow," says Paul Hughes, research director, IDC.

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Autonomous Mobile Robots and Ecosystems 2026 Vendor Assessment

Carlos Gonzalez, Rani Ratna — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study highlights the rapid evolution of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) as foundational infrastructure in industrial automation, logistics, and manufacturing. The document evaluates prominent vendors on capabilities, integration, and innovation, with a focus on AI-driven navigation, interoperability, and operational resilience. AMRs are positioned as critical enablers of Industry 5.0, driving productivity, flexibility, and human-machine collaboration. Buyers are advised to prioritize standards alignment, simulation validation, and robust vendor support for long-term success.

"Within the Industry 5.0 framework, AMRs are the intersection of automation, AI, and human workforce collaboration. They represent the next wave of automation and industrial robotic operations," said Carlos M. González, research manager for IDC's Industrial IoT and Intelligence Strategies.

Messaging as the New Commerce and Engagement Layer: What Enterprises Should Watch for as Meta Redefines the Storefront

Roger Beharry Lall, Laurie Buczek, Douglas Hayward, Wayne Kurtzman, Tapan Patel — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

During its fifth annual Conversations conference held in London on June 3, 2026, Meta Platforms, Inc. (Nasdaq: META) announced the worldwide rollout of its Meta Business Agent and Business Agent Platform. This release highlights the company's ongoing commercial thesis that customer engagement is shifting away from traditional websites and moving directly into active chat environments, mirroring the historical transition from physical storefronts to digital web pages.

Meta's momentum is underscored by recent company disclosures, which reveal that its core Business Agent is already active across more than 1 million businesses. By tapping into this extensive global network across WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram, Meta is now positioning itself to centralize the entire consumer journey, moving product discovery, data collection forms, video content, customer service, and transaction processing entirely inside its messaging platform. To support this new paradigm, Meta's newly launched platform introduces an enterprise-grade framework that coordinates "stacked" layers of brand knowledge and behavioral skills. This architecture is backed by more than 200 integrations with vital third-party systems such as Shopee, Gorgias, and Zendesk, allowing enterprises to deeply embed the tool into their existing workflows.

This shift, however, introduces complex, unaddressed operational challenges. Organizations must carefully evaluate the potential loss of direct first-party customer intelligence and long-term relationship ownership that occurs when migrating customer interactions entirely inside Meta's proprietary ecosystem.

Navigating the Specialized Cloud Services (Neocloud) Decision: Strategic Guidance for Enterprise AI Infrastructure

Christopher Tozzi — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective provides guidance on navigating the specialized cloud services (aka neoclouds) decision. Specialized cloud services offer a significant opportunity to deploy AI workloads at a cost that is generally lower than the price of equivalent infrastructure in other types of clouds. But it’s critical for enterprises to weigh more than cost alone when considering specialized cloud services. Other essential factors include the location of specialized cloud services datacenters (which bears implications for compliance and performance), the importance of operating AI and non-AI workloads in the same environment, and uncertainty about the medium- and long-term status of some specialized cloud services platforms. Strategic decisions about whether and how to use neoclouds should reflect all of these considerations.

“There is little disputing that specialized cloud services offer attractive pricing for AI infrastructure,” says Chris Tozzi, adjunct research advisor with IDC’s IT Executive Programs (IEP). “But determining whether they are the best overall fit for enterprise AI deployment requires thinking about the big picture, not just pricing.”

No Time to Patch: Cisco Live 2026 Security Announcements

Frank Dickson, Christopher Rodriguez, Grace Trinidad — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

The window between vulnerability disclosure and active exploitation has collapsed, and Cisco built its entire Cisco Live 2026 security narrative around that fact. The company's answer arrives on two fronts: Live Protect, an eBPF-based runtime shield that blocks specific exploit paths without a reboot or a full patch, and Cisco Cloud Control, a unified operations platform that enables humans and AI agents to manage infrastructure, with governance, visibility, and oversight. Splunk's Agentic SOC, a three-level Quantum Resilience Framework, and a builder-security strategy anchored on AI Defense round out the set. Read against the 2025 vision keynote, this year reads as a delivery checkpoint, with Cisco converting conceptual previews into shipping capabilities. The open question for buyers is speed: how fast Cisco Talos can produce and validate a shield once a vulnerability surfaces, and whether coverage reaches the full portfolio on a timeline that matches the threat it describes.

The 2026 EMEA Digital Leader Playbook: Leading the AI-Fueled Business Transformation

Thu, 11 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Tech Buyer presentation provides a recap of 12 months of work and engagement with the EMEA Digital Leaders Hub — a community of digital leaders who meet quarterly to share experiences, best practices, and challenges throughout their digital adoption journeys.

It combines IDC research frameworks with peer-driven best practices identified during the 2025 and 1Q26 meeting series, focusing on key priorities for EMEA organizations to thrive in AI-driven business transformation. These include compliance and regulation, AI governance and value realization, AI-enabled workforce transformation, and the impact on sustainability and resilience.

This report also incorporates contributions from the EMEA Digital Advisory Board and aims to serve as a practical guide for digital leaders to benchmark and validate their strategies and initiatives against these critical priorities.