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Anthropic Touts Claude Code for COBOL Modernization

Michele Rosen, PhD — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 05:00:00 GMT

Anthropic’s recommendation that enterprises use tools like Claude Code to automate key phases of the COBOL modernization process underscores the growing role of AI in legacy application modernization, with market impact contingent on the tools’ ability to deliver high-quality results for mission-critical enterprise applications.

IDC Tech Buyer Survey Spotlight: How Do Talent Acquisition Priorities Vary Between HR and IT Leaders?

Abhinav Shrivastava — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Tech Buyer Survey Spotlight draws from IDC's Global HCM Survey, 2025. It highlights the differences in talent acquisition (TA) priorities between HR and IT leaders. While HR leaders prioritize recruiting effectiveness, IT leaders focus on seamless operational integrations. Both groups align on the need to accelerate access to skilled talent, as reflected in similar expectations for improved speed to hire. However, widespread misalignment between HR's outcome metrics and IT's architecture priorities can slow talent acquisition transformation, underscoring the need for structured HR-IT collaboration and a shared evaluation framework to enable faster hiring, stronger skills validation, and improved experiences.

Foundations that Compound at Scale: ZohoDay 2026

Jim Mercer, Melinda-Carol Ballou — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 05:00:00 GMT

The ZohoDay 2026 analyst event marked an inflection point in Zoho Corporation’s evolution, moving from a broad SaaS portfolio provider to an architect of a vertically integrated business application operating system, which it named AppOS. Across executive keynotes and breakout sessions, Zoho articulated a clear thesis that fragmentation is the root problem in enterprise software, and durable competitive advantage in the AI era requires owning and integrating the foundational layers, namely data, infrastructure, development, and intelligence.

Recently surpassing one million customers and 150 million users in its 30^th year, Zoho is pairing scale with a long-term strategy centered on unified data, visual accessibility, contextual AI, full-stack data and analytics, modern developer tooling, and observability through its ManageEngine solution.

For developers, DevOps teams, software testers, and observability leaders, the announcements reflect a platform shift with material implications for how Zoho applications are built, operated, secured, and continue to evolve.

2026 Enterprise Connectivity Investment Analysis by Region — Wireless/Mobile

Paul Hughes — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Tech Buyer presentation takes a closer look at the wireless connectivity investment expectations by enterprises worldwide for 2026. Data in this presentation comes from IDC's 2025 Future Enterprise Connectivity Infrastructure and Services Survey, with 758 respondents from 18 countries worldwide across IT and line of business, all with connectivity budget and decision-making capabilities.

AI Infrastructure Software: Three Graphics Processing Unit Management Scenarios and the One Winning Today

Shahin Hashim — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 05:00:00 GMT

Graphics processing unit (GPU) resource management is now a central challenge for AI infrastructure software, with IDC projecting that vertically integrated stacks in which GPU vendors control both hardware and software will dominate through 2026. Although Kubernetes and open source alternatives are maturing, they remain dependent on vendor components. Enterprises should plan for vendor-coupled solutions in the near term, explicitly evaluate resource management capabilities, negotiate for future flexibility, and monitor signals for potential market shifts toward open alternatives.

"Open standards may eventually create real choice in GPU management software, but 'eventually' doesn't help enterprises make infrastructure decisions today. The near-term reality is vendor-driven, and planning should reflect that," said Shahin Hashim, associate research director, Infrastructure Software Platforms, IDC.

Accounting Data Fabrics Across the Office of the CFO: Implementation Pathways with and Without ERP as the Core Platform

Heather Herbst — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective discusses accounting data fabrics across the office of the CFO. As CFOs embrace AI and automation, data integrity becomes critical, driving the adoption of accounting-grade data fabrics to ensure financial truth and trust. Enterprises face three architectural paths — ERP-centric, overlay, and hybrid — each impacting governance, AI enablement, and strategic flexibility. The right approach depends on risk, growth, and innovation priorities, with hybrid models emerging as dominant. Ultimately, accounting data fabrics are a strategic imperative, underpinning control, compliance, and enterprise credibility in an AI-driven finance landscape.

"In the AI era, data integrity isn't just a technical detail, it's the economic backbone of enterprise trust and the CFO's new mandate. After all the CFO's reputation is on the line." — Heather Herbst, research director, CFO Buyer Insights

IDC PeerScape: Smart Manufacturing — Practices to Deploy Agentic AI on the Shop Floor

Lorenzo Veronesi — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC PeerScape provides four practical examples of how industrial companies in Europe, the United States, and Asia/Pacific deploy agentic AI technology in their factory operations.

“By weaving agentic capabilities directly into machines, frontline worker support, shop floor execution, scheduling, and quality workflows, manufacturers are quietly reshaping what ‘normal’ feels like on the shop floor. In the most advanced plants, people, equipment, and software agents operate as one entity, with humans setting the direction, and agents handling the brute-force tasks at the speed demanded by operations,” said Lorenzo Veronesi, associate research director, IDC Manufacturing Insights.

IDC TechBrief: CMDB Discovery

Gerald Johnston — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC TechBrief discusses the importance of CMDB discovery. Organizations increasingly depend on hybrid cloud, SaaS platforms, and third-party services to deliver critical business capabilities, yet they remain fully accountable for understanding and governing the assets that support those services. Third-party services often include authentication, threat and vulnerability management, and finance functions such as procurement and general ledger. This makes accurate and continuous discovery essential for feeding configuration management databases (CMDBs) and providing a unified view of the IT environment for development, operations, and security teams. For decades, the CMDB has been treated as a mission-critical system — often prioritized for restoration during outages — because it underpins change management, incident triage, vulnerability assessment, and compliance reporting. However, maintaining CMDB accuracy has historically been difficult due to inconsistent updates, manual processes, and fragmented ownership.

Modern discovery tools address these challenges by automatically identifying assets, configurations, cloud resources, dependencies, and changes across complex environments. They reduce blind spots and prevent incorrect or outdated data from undermining operational decisions. Operating with inaccurate configuration data is akin to flying with a faulty altimeter: Decisions appear sound, but the assumptions are dangerously flawed. Real-time discovery restores trust in the CMDB and supports reliable change impact analysis, deployment validation, drift detection, and vulnerability management. As cloud adoption accelerates and third-party reliance expands, discovery also becomes critical for meeting regulatory expectations that require complete and accurate asset inventories.

Contemporary discovery platforms extend beyond traditional scan-based approaches, incorporating cloud-native APIs, event-driven telemetry, and AI-assisted normalization to improve accuracy and reduce manual verification. Many organizations begin with discovery tools integrated into their CMDB platform, such as ServiceNow Discovery, while supplementing them with specialized solutions that provide deeper visibility into unmanaged, cloud-native, or third-party assets. This layered approach ensures the CMDB remains a trustworthy system of record across an increasingly decentralized architecture.

As enterprises distribute workloads across internal and external environments, discovery will shift from a supporting toolset to a foundational capability for operational resilience. Organizations that invest in modern discovery, strong governance, and cross-team alignment will gain the accurate configuration data required to manage change, respond to incidents, reduce risk, and meet rising compliance expectations. "A resilient organization begins with knowing exactly what exists in its environment. Modern discovery turns the CMDB into a living source of truth — without it, operations, security, and compliance are flying blind," says Gerald Johnston, adjunct research advisor with IDC's IT Executive Programs (IEP).

NRF 2026 Signals the Rise of Agentic Retail: Five Key Trends Shaping CX, Loyalty, and Commerce

Ornella Urso — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective discusses how NRF 2026 marked a pivotal shift for retail, moving from generative AI experimentation to the operationalization of agentic AI across customer experience, loyalty, and commerce. Intelligent agents are now central to retail operations, mediating discovery, decision-making, and transactions. Key trends include transaction-capable AI interfaces, embedded agentic capabilities, open protocols, and resilient infrastructure. Retailers face both opportunity and risk, as agentic retail promises greater personalization and efficiency but demands new operating models, governance, and data foundations.

"Customer experience in retail is shifting from reactive engagement to agent-led orchestration, where AI not only assists shoppers but actively shapes discovery, search, payments, and post-purchase relationships across digital and store environments," said Ornella Urso, research director, IDC Retail Insights. "Retailers need to align strategic investments in data, inventory visibility, and interoperable platforms with operational changes in merchandising, store operations, and service workflows will convert agentic AI into higher conversion rates, improved margin performance, and deeper lifetime customer value."

Top IDC Retail Takeaways from NRF 2026

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective discusses the top IDC retail takeaways from NRF 2026. NRF 2026 revealed a retail and hospitality landscape on the brink of reinvention, where AI agents orchestrate how customers discover, decide, and buy across every channel. From agent‑ready stores and frontline teams powered by intelligent tools to unified data, supply chains, and B2C commerce standards built for AI‑mediated journeys, this document traces how organizations that attended NRF are moving beyond experimentation toward a future where connected intelligence, real‑time decision‑making, and human‑centered experiences become the true engines of growth.

"As always, NRF provides the retail backdrop for the year in terms of innovation, technology, operations, customer experience, and focus. This year, retail will be about how to harness agentic AI and convert it from aspiration to execution," stated Ananda Chakravarty, research VP, IDC Retail Insights.