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Automate 2026: Beyond the Robot Arm — Building the Foundations for Physical AI in Manufacturing

Sarah Lee — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective discusses Automate 2026, which confirmed a shift in where value sits in industrial automation. As standard industrial robot arms converge, competitive advantage is moving to the software, simulation, sensing, orchestration, and data layers around them. Physical AI has moved from demonstration to deployment, but its returns depend on fleet scale and foundations that were the real story of the show: a real-to-sim training and operational twin grounded in site-specific data, a certifiable safety layer that permits cage-free operation, an orchestration layer that avoids lock-in, and hardware-agnostic connectivity that reaches the installed base. Humanoids drew capital but remain a narrow-task bet constrained by reliability and safety, leaving mixed fleets of arms, cobots, mobile manipulators, and autonomous mobile robots as the practical near-term reality. For manufacturers, the advantage will come from building these foundations, protecting ownership of plant data, and treating robots and AI agents as governed enterprise assets.

“The most important automation decisions manufacturers will make over the next few years are not about which arm to buy but about which control plane to trust, whose simulation to build on, and who owns the data their robots generate,” says Sarah Lee, senior research director, Manufacturing IT Strategies at IDC.

Building Enterprise Quantum Competency: Six Strategic Decisions for Technology Buyers

Heather West, PhD — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective presents six strategic decisions that enterprise technology buyers should evaluate today, and revisit over time, to build enterprise quantum competency: the organizational readiness required to evaluate, adopt, operationalize, and scale quantum technologies as commercial capabilities mature. Drawing on IDC PeerScape research, IDC MarketScape vendor assessment, and enterprise survey data, this IDC Perspective helps technology buyers align quantum investments with business priorities, build organizational readiness, and capture computational advantage as the quantum computing market evolves.

"Computational advantage does not automatically become business value. The organizations that lead in the quantum era will be those that build the capability to recognize where quantum creates value, operationalize it effectively, and continuously adapt as technologies, workloads, and business priorities evolve," said Heather West, PhD, senior research manager, Global Quantum Computing Research at IDC.

IDC’s Worldwide Digital Transformation Use Case Taxonomy, 2026: Energy Transition for Buildings and Facilities — Capability Priorities, Programs and Use Cases

Roberta Bigliani — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This taxonomy provides a structured framework for mapping the strategic technology transformation underlying the energy transition for buildings and facilities, with a special consideration to offices, retail, hospitality, healthcare, higher education, and public sector.

It covers 9 strategic priorities, 45 programs, and 187 use cases. Every use case has an investment horizon tag (H1, H2, or H3) based on maturity, evaluated using current adoption evidence from IDC’s recent Energy Transition Survey. Executive voices ground every priority in real-world action.

Technology leaders, sustainability executives, operations heads, and strategy teams in retail and hospitality chains, healthcare systems, higher education, and government building portfolios use this taxonomy to frame their energy transition initiatives, identify capability gaps, prioritize investment, and align timing with industry peers and regulatory milestones.

Technology suppliers use this to frame their product road map and go-to-market.

MacKenzie-Childs: Extending Customer Intelligence Beyond Marketing to Support Growth

Ornella Urso — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective examines how MacKenzie-Childs, a U.S. home and lifestyle brand, has moved from a catalog-led model to a digital-first business that uses customer data across marketing and, increasingly, product development. The document describes the company’s acquisition-led growth strategy, the company’s adoption of Amperity as its customer data platform alongside systems such as NetSuite and Yotpo, and the early benefits of self-service analytics and AI-assisted querying through AmpAI.

“MacKenzie-Childs shows how a heritage retailer can make customer data useful to teams well beyond marketing,” said Ornella Urso, head of IDC Retail Insights Europe. “The value is less about any single tool and more about the combination of self-service analytics, clear business definitions, executive alignment, and modernized operational systems. The next test for the company, and for the wider industry, will be turning that foundation into personalized customer experiences while keeping data handling disciplined as AI-assisted analysis spreads across the organization.”

IBM Advances Trusted Quantum Computation, Introducing a New Framework for Quantum Advantage

Heather West, PhD — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

As enterprises increasingly prepare for quantum computing to deliver business value, confidence in the reliability and reproducibility of quantum results will become just as important as computational performance. IBM Quantum's latest research advances this objective by introducing complementary approaches for trusted quantum computation, representing an important milestone on the path toward fault-tolerant quantum computing and future enterprise applications.

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) 2026 Vendor Assessment

Brandon Butler, Pete Finalle — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study provides a comprehensive evaluation of the leading vendors competing in the rapidly evolving SASE market, assessing the depth of their integrated networking and security capabilities, architectural approaches, and the ability to support enterprise transformation across distributed environments.

"Networking is a foundational element of any SASE architecture, and today's leading vendors are delivering a compelling and diverse range of approaches to integrated networking functionality. Whether organizations prioritize global POP-based architectures with impressive performance, standalone SD-WAN depth, or campus and branch integration, the market offers strong options that balance optimal connectivity and enhanced end-user experience with the robust security capabilities that define modern SASE platforms." — Brandon Butler, senior research manager, Network Infrastructure and Services, IDC

"The SASE network security stack has matured greatly over the past 24 months, and few vendors struggle with providing the basics (ZTNA, SWG, inline CASB, and API CASB). However, in the face of increasingly fragmented ecosystems, AI usage and AI-powered threats, quantum computing development, and data/security sovereignty concerns, the basics are no longer good enough. For competing vendor products in this research, keeping one step ahead of the game/buyer requirements has never been more imperative or more difficult." — Pete Finalle, research manager, Trusted Access and Network Security, IDC

CIO Peer Perspective — Engineering Sustainable AI Economics in the Agentic Era

Heather Herbst, Jevin Jensen, Martina Longo, Robert Parker — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study highlights the growing complexity of AI cost structures, the impact of agentic AI on resource consumption, and the need for robust cost governance. As AI becomes integral to enterprise operations, CIOs are shifting focus from rapid deployment to engineering sustainable AI economics. Best practices include early FinOps integration, architectural optimization, and disciplined vendor management to ensure measurable business value and cost efficiency as AI adoption scales.

“The future of AI leadership isn’t about deploying the fastest—it’s about engineering the most sustainable economics in an era where every token counts,” says Heather Herbst, research director, CFO Buyer Insights at IDC.

IDC TechBrief: AI-Enabled Kubernetes Optimization and Security

Stanley B. Gibson, Jevin Jensen, George Mironescu — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC TechBrief examines how vendors are augmenting Kubernetes with AI and explains how organizations can gain from investing in these technologies.

The quest to optimize Kubernetes predates the current wave of AI. The surge in AI innovation, applied to Kubernetes environments, aims to deliver highly efficient configurations that yield significant savings to organizations.

But not all AI optimization tools are alike: some are essentially chatbots that suggest configuration improvements, some are standalone, and others are embedded in SRE suites. Which is best depends on the scope of a Kubernetes implementation; whether AIOps, SRE, FinOps, or DevOps/SecOps is involved; and what level of Kubernetes expertise the organization currently employs.

"Since the downsides of a suboptimal Kubernetes implementation are significant — money wasted, lackluster service levels, and security holes — IT leaders should explore the benefits of AI in the quest for an optimal Kubernetes environment while exercising caution in implementing technologies that might be new and unproven," said Stanley B. Gibson, adjunct research advisor with IDC's IT Executive Programs (IEP).

IDC TechScape: Worldwide Frictionless Experience-Enabling Innovation in Air Travel, 2026

Dorothy Creamer — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC TechScape maps 24 technologies shaping the frictionless airline traveler experience in 2026, organized across transformational, incremental, and opportunistic adoption phases. The study covers the full passenger journey, from booking and pre-trip planning through security, in-flight experience, luggage handling, and post-trip engagement, as well as the crew- and operations-facing technologies that directly determine whether travelers encounter a friction-free journey or a frustrating one.

“Passenger and traveler demands are at an all-time high and the opportunities for disruption and frustration lurk at every digital touch point. The airlines and travel providers that are working to support travelers with proactive and predictive engagement and operational strategies will win with contextualized and frictionless experiences every time,” says Dorothy Creamer, senior research manager, Hospitality and Travel Digital Strategies, IDC. “The constraint separating leaders from laggards in air travel is no longer which vendor relationships they hold; it is whether their data estate is mature enough to let these technologies work together and deliver on their promise.”

Medidata NEXT London 2026: AI Moves from Pilot Purgatory to Platform Scale

Silvia Piai — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Medidata Solutions’ (Medidata) NEXT London 2026 marked the shift from AI experimentation to enterprisewide agentic deployment, anchored by the commercial launch of Medidata Plus and the full rollout of Dot. Key innovations include AI-driven simulation workspaces for protocol and enrollment planning, a proprietary Patient Burden Index, GenAI-powered site selection, and an expanded patient engagement platform that integrates continuous sensor data. Customer evidence, including a 37% enrollment uplift in atopic dermatitis trials and up to 70% reduction in budget build times, confirmed operational impact. Medidata also presented its “orchestrated intelligence” vision, extending clinical research intelligence across the life sciences value chain through partnerships with Anthropic, NVIDIA, and Mistral.

Clinical organizations should prioritize data standardization, adopt simulation and site selection tools early in protocol design, and evaluate contract research organization (CRO) partners on AI readiness. Medical device companies navigating the evolving regulatory environment in 2026 should treat early platform engagement as a strategic opportunity.

“Medidata NEXT London 2026 showed an industry moving from AI ambition to AI accountability. The evidence is real. Enrollment gains, faster builds, smarter site selection, and platform models such as Medidata’s offer one indication of how these capabilities can move from pilots to enterprise scale. For medical device companies, the moment to start engaging is now while both the underlying platforms and regulatory landscape are still being defined,” says Silvia Piai, research director, IDC.