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IDC PlanScape: Digital Sovereignty for Regional and Local Governments

Alison Brooks, Ph.D., Ruthbea Yesner — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC PlanScape gives regional and local government IT leaders a framework for understanding, evaluating, and operationalizing digital sovereignty. It also gives technology vendors the buyer context they need to engage effectively with government clients. The guidance draws on IDC survey data, industry research, and conversations with government technology leaders globally. Three key findings shape the document. First, sovereignty for regional and local government centers on access control, legal authority, and auditability — enforceable controls matter more than where data is physically hosted. Second, most government IT estates span workloads with different sensitivity, risk, and regulatory profiles, making a multimodel sovereignty strategy the practical norm. Third, AI governance has become part of a sovereignty strategy: across all regulated industries IDC surveyed, increasing control over AI model governance and transparency was the leading driver of sovereign cloud adoption for AI workloads.

“The governments that will get sovereignty right are not the ones that deploy the most restrictive controls everywhere; they are the ones that know exactly which workloads require them and have the contracts, audit infrastructure, and organizational processes to prove it,” said Alison Brooks, research VP, WW Smart Cities and Spaces.

IDC ProductScape: Worldwide Retail Marketplace Platforms Software Providers, 2026

Cristiano Quattrini, Ornella Urso — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

The IDC ProductScape offers a comprehensive guide on the key functionalities of retail marketplace platforms, featuring products from AOE, Flipkart, Izberg, Lengow, LogiCommerce, Marketplacer, Mirakl, Nautical Commerce, Octopia, Rithum, Spryker, Ultra Commerce, and VTEX. The status of each functionality is categorized as fully supported, partially supported, partner provided, road map, or not supported, aiding technology purchasers in quickly identifying vendors that align with their changing requirements.

The Technology Adoption Divide: How Energy Technology Ownership Reshapes the Customer Relationship

Gaia Gallotti — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Tech Buyer Presentation demonstrates that energy technology adoption not only helps customers manage their bills; it also fundamentally reshapes their relationship with their energy provider. To a dramatic extent, customers who have invested in energy technologies are more satisfied, more interested in further investment, and more willing to trust their provider to actively manage their energy. They are, in short, better customers by every metric that matters. Customers without technology are the opposite: dissatisfied, disengaged, and increasingly at risk of being left behind as the transition accelerates around them.

IDC’s 2026 Energy Consumer Affordability & Trust Survey, conducted among 1,507 energy customers in 18 countries, suggests that the prize for doing so is greater than many utilities may realize.

The opportunity for utilities is to recognize this divide as the most actionable segmentation variable in their customer portfolios and to design product bundling, go-to-market strategies, and service models that move customers through the adoption curve deliberately. The technology is affordable. The customer appetite is there. What remains is the strategy to connect the two.

Healthy Organizational Alignment Around Security Risk, Responsibility, and Prioritization

Joel Sandin — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective provides a framework by which organizations can assess their security initiatives against three pillars: risk, responsibility, and prioritization.

What causes IT security efforts to struggle? While organizations can point to the wrong technology choice or deployment issues, many efforts falter even when the technology used is sound. These initiatives suffer from more insidious issues around alignment, and the effects can be more destructive and harder to diagnose without dedicated effort. A failure to align a given effort and establish consensus on risk, responsibility, and priority among all involved parties can impede or kill security efforts long before any solutions are deployed.

Alignment issues manifest in three key areas. Some failures begin with misaligned efforts that focus on the wrong risk, fail to account for the full scope of the problem, or misjudge the business’ risk tolerance. Similarly, poor accounting of the authority and responsibility of the people involved can lead to failures to engage the right parties and effect change. Finally, prioritization errors can miss the mark entirely.

Solid technical execution won’t make up for these insidious issues. What’s worse, these challenges are pervasive: They can manifest strategically, but they are also present in everyday interaction and smaller efforts. Despite the importance of alignment, many IT organizations fail to take a structured approach to assessing the health of these factors. In this report, we identify pillars of successful security alignment, illustrate what can go wrong when they are not consistently in place, and present a simple, tactical assessment framework to identify and correct gaps in security efforts.

“Most security efforts present challenges due to misalignment, and the nature of security work makes these issues more the rule than the exception,” said Joel Sandin, adjunct research advisor for IDC’s IT Executive Programs (IEP). “Building consensus and clarity around the risk being addressed, accounting for key operational responsibilities and approvals needed, and thoughtful prioritization around risk reduction can avoid costly pitfalls and put security efforts of any scale on a path to success.”

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Virtual Events Applications 2026 Vendor Assessment

Wayne Kurtzman — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study highlights a rapidly evolving market, shaped by shifting buyer and attendee expectations, aggressive vendor road maps, and significant industry consolidation. Geopolitical pressures and economic uncertainty are driving a resurgence in virtual events, as is the need to maintain a fresh revenue pipeline. AI-related features, especially those focused on intent and content development, were prioritized over non-AI features, but that pendulum is swinging back toward the middle. Buyers now demand advanced AI capabilities, seamless CRM and application integrations, and, most critically, richer engagement formats with outcome-based metrics. As browser tracking cookies phase out, first-party data from virtual events and community platforms is gaining newfound importance. This study, based on interviews with vendors and customers, evaluates their products, strengths, and challenges, and when to consider them.

"People are not attending in-person events at the same rate as before, yet when virtual events provide ways to engage attendees and allow them to connect with the people they need to, they can energize a brand," according to Wayne Kurtzman, research vice president, Social, Communities and Collaboration, IDC. "People do not want a broadcast; they want a meaningful engagement experience. Many vendors are now providing products that enable client organizations to grow."

Trends in Big Data and Analytics

Rob Tiffany — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective examines the trends reshaping big data and analytics offered by public clouds in 2026 and assesses how seven providers — AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Alibaba Cloud, IBM Cloud, and Tencent Cloud — are responding. It argues that the cloud data platform has become the control plane for enterprise AI, identifies five defining trends (agentic analytics, the open lakehouse, unified governance, multimodal data, and the FinOps discipline), and offers a decision framework for technology buyers.

“The cloud analytics decision is now an AI-readiness decision,” explains Rob Tiffany, research director, Cloud Infrastructure at IDC. “Buyers that standardize on open formats, weight governance as heavily as performance, and prove agents under real guardrails will navigate their next move with confidence.”

Agentic Commerce: B2C Buyer Life-Cycle Opportunity Analysis

Ananda Chakravarty, Heather Hershey — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Tech Buyer Presentation looks at agentic commerce. As AI agents move from novelty to infrastructure, they’re quietly rewriting the rules of consumer retail. In this presentation, IDC analysts deliver the first rigorous, end-to-end map of what happens when shoppers stop browsing and start delegating purchasing decisions and execution to agentic AI.

Drawing on an analysis of 343 distinct factors across 5 journey stages and 4 stakeholder groups, the research cuts through the hype with a clear-eyed verdict: barriers currently outnumber opportunities, and the biggest disruption isn’t where everyone is looking.

The findings challenge conventional wisdom at every turn. Agentic commerce doesn’t just create new opportunities; it reallocates control, shifting competitive advantage upstream from brand influence to algorithmic selection. Merchants and brands emerge as the most exposed stakeholders, at risk of becoming metadata in an algorithmic race to the bottom of pricing. Perhaps most surprising is that the greatest value of agentic commerce isn’t in the dazzling front-end experience at all, but in the unglamorous back-end orchestration of fulfillment, inventory, and service.

For any leader trying to separate signal from noise in the agentic era, this research is essential strategic reading. It moves beyond “what AI can do” to the questions that will actually determine winners and losers of the agentic era of commerce:

What is agentic commerce?
Who absorbs the risk when an AI agent gets things wrong?
Who controls the interface of the experience?
Where does value ultimately consolidate?

The companies that internalize these lessons now will be the ones still visible if and when agents become the default front door to commerce.

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

Paul Hughes — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective is the second 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 Future Enterprise Connectivity Infrastructure and Services Survey and other related IDC data sources, this IDC Perspective identifies vertical market differences for connectivity provider preferences and procurement methods across financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, energy, retail, and education/government.

"Vertical market procurement patterns reveal that industry sector shapes connectivity provider selection more sharply than geography does," commented Paul Hughes, research director, Future Enterprise Connectivity Strategies at IDC. "The same provider can be the dominant trusted partner in one vertical and essentially absent in another — and the criteria for earning this position differ by sector in ways that generic market strategies cannot address."

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide AI-Enabled Spend Orchestration 2026 Vendor Assessment

Patrick Reymann — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study assesses the rapidly maturing worldwide AI-enabled spend orchestration market, highlighting its evolution from early-stage education to mainstream enterprise adoption. The segment is now defined by agentic AI capabilities, robust workflow integration, and expanding platform breadth, with leading providers competing on full life-cycle coverage, embedded intelligence, and differentiated architecture. Venture investment, market convergence, and segmentation are intensifying competition, while buyers are shifting focus from viability to selecting the right platform for their organizational context. The study profiles key vendors, emphasizing strengths, challenges, and unique differentiators, and provides actionable guidance for procurement and finance leaders to evaluate platform depth, AI maturity, and vendor viability in a crowded, innovation-driven landscape.

"The spend orchestration space has proven itself. Now we are transitioning to differentiated offerings and market segmentation. The S2P space is responding, and the convergence of spend orchestration and S2P is inevitable," said Patrick Reymann, research director, Procurement and Enterprise Apps.

Scaling Agentic AI Across the Enterprise: Lessons from McKinsey Clients

Douglas Hayward — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective discusses the analyst summit hosted by McKinsey that featured a selection of its clients, bringing to light a series of valuable lessons for enterprises considering or already implementing transformation projects enabled by agentic AI and GenAI.

"Agentic AI and GenAI offer great opportunities to enterprises — but they come with great risks too. CEOs, COOs, CMOs, and CIOs must ensure that their AI strategies start with enterprisewide business objectives, are grounded in strong governance, and incorporate learnings from their peers and from consultancies such as McKinsey," said Douglas Hayward, senior research director, Worldwide Customer Experience Strategies and Services at IDC.