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AEO Tools, Strategies, and Tactics for Large Enterprise

Gerry Murray — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective looks into the impact of AEO tools, strategies, and tactics on enterprises. Answer engine optimization requires extensive redesign of content marketing strategy, tactics, and technology. Success requires continuous prompt auditing, broad content distribution, and leveraging third-party validation. Emerging AEO tools and services support prompt infrastructure, semantic intelligence, and content automation. Optimizing both owned and external sources, including social and influencer content, is essential to ensure brands are cited in AI-generated responses, demanding new content supply chain speed, depth, and breadth.

"LLMs powered answer engines will increasingly disintermediate brand-buyer relationships on the open web and digital marketplaces," said Gerry Murray, research director, Marketing and Sales Technology. "IDC recommends immediate action to implement the new answer engine optimization (AEO) tools and content marketing strategies necessary for prime visibility in this dynamic new channel."

B2B Marketplaces in Manufacturing: Analysis of Marketplace Models, Key Trends, and Success Factors

Mark Casidsid, Stefanie Naujoks — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective examines B2B marketplace models (horizontal, vertical, and branded) for manufacturing, including key capabilities, suitability factors, adoption drivers, examples, and emerging trends. It also offers strategic recommendations for manufacturers evaluating and participating in these platforms.

“B2B marketplaces are evolving from transactional hubs into strategic data ecosystems that redefine how industrial manufacturers manage sourcing, collaboration, and risk. As AI-driven discovery, data standardization, and interoperability mature, these platforms will emerge as core infrastructure for supply chain resilience and ecosystem-based growth. However, success depends on manufacturers’ ability to balance control with openness — aligning marketplace participation, partner engagement, and data governance to turn digital networks into lasting competitive advantage,” said Senior Research Analyst Mark Casidsid, AI-Enabled Business Commerce, Partner Relationship, and Ecosystem Management, IDC.

Best in Future of Customer Experience Winner Award Profile 2025

Abhishek Kumar — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective discusses the nomination details of the Future of Customer Experience winner from the IDC Future Enterprise Awards 2025 in the Asia/Pacific region on how data-driven transformation can impact CX initiatives for organizations moving forward.

"Prior to embarking on their AI journeys, one of the first things businesses need to do is ensure that they have a modern data foundation with a unified and single source of truth for customer data, which allows for real-time decision-making. This will support next-gen CX initiatives, such as hyper-personalization and predictive analytics. The goal has to be in maximizing value for all key stakeholders, both internal and external, going beyond customers to include employees, partners, investors, and more," says Abhishek Kumar, associate research director, IDC Asia/Pacific.

CIO Peer Perspective — 2026 Outlook and Leadership Path

Teodora Snoddy — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective draws on recent IDC research and peer discussion with our CIO Research Advisory Board to provide context, highlight key perspectives, and offer actionable recommendations. The CIO role is undergoing a meaningful transformation as organizations pivot to AI-fueled businesses. In 2026, CIOs are expected to balance operational efficiency with innovation, responding to turbulent geopolitical conditions as well as business pressures to drive growth.

"This year, the CIO is under pressure to deliver on both innovation and efficiency. With an ever-growing mandate, they must embrace their role as a business leader, ask their peers the right questions, and use those answers to shape strategy and decisions to grow and protect the enterprise," says Teodora Snoddy, research manager, CIO and CTO Buyer Insights, at IDC.

Cloud Ecosystem and Marketplace in Asia/Pacific

Daphne Chung — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Cloud adoption and marketplace usage are accelerating across the Asia/Pacific region, with cloud providers and marketplaces becoming central to IT strategy, procurement, and innovation. Organizations are prioritizing providers offering robust infrastructure, AI capabilities, and compliance, whereas hybrid and multicloud strategies are on the rise. "Cloud marketplaces are evolving into intelligent, integrated ecosystems, enabling rapid access to AI, modular solutions, and partner offerings, but governance, integration, and support remain key challenges for tech buyers in the region. Enabling the organization to leverage the capabilities and opportunities to help speed its transformation journey could mean the difference between staying competitive or facing the risk of falling behind in innovation and strategic differentiation in the market," says Daphne Chung, research director, Cloud and Infrastructure Services.

Digital Sovereignty in Back-Office SaaS: A Practical Framework for EMEA Buyers

Bo Lykkegaard — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective presents a practical, risk-based framework to help EMEA organizations evaluate and mitigate digital sovereignty risks in back-office SaaS applications such as ERP, finance, and HR systems. It introduces a four-layer model (covering Jurisdiction, Operations, Architecture, and Dependencies) that translates IDC's broader sovereignty stack into actionable buyer guidance, enabling proportionate risk assessment without excluding global SaaS providers.

"Digital sovereignty is not about isolation. It is about business resilience — that is, ensuring control, predictability, and trust in your most critical SaaS systems," said Bo Lykkegaard, associate VP, European Software Research at IDC.

IDC MarketScape: Asia/Pacific (Including Japan) Public Cloud IaaS 2026 Vendor Channel Ecosystem Assessment

Cindy Xin, Vinay Gupta, Daniel-Zoe Jimenez — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study analyzes how cloud vendors are evolving their partner ecosystems amid rapid digital transformation, AI adoption, and shifting customer needs. The study benchmarks nine major vendors on ecosystem strategy, partner enablement, and market execution, highlighting the growing importance of specialization, co-innovation, and outcome-based models for sustainable growth and competitive differentiation in the region's dynamic cloud market.

"In Asia/Pacific's cloud IaaS race, only ecosystems built on joint value creation and measurable outcomes will define the next era of digital transformation," said Cindy Xin, research director, Channels and Partner Ecosystems Research Practice, IDC China.

"AI is not just accelerating IaaS adoption — it's raising the bar for partner specialization, automation, and security across a fragmented, high-growth region," said Vinay Gupta, senior research director, Channels and Partner Ecosystem Research.

"Cloud vendors that fail to anchor their ecosystems around shared accountability and outcome-based models risk losing long-term relevance and growth," said Daniel-Zoe Jimenez, vice president, CX and Software, DNB/Start-Ups, SMBs, Consumer and Channels Research.

IDC TechBrief: AI-Enabled Partner Relationship Management

Mark Casidsid — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC TechBrief examines AI-enabled partner relationship management (PRM) platforms that support the full partner life cycle, from recruitment to renewal, while integrating machine learning, generative AI, and agentic capabilities for predictive insights, personalization, and workflow orchestration in complex channel ecosystems.

"Partner relationship management applications serve as the operational foundation for organizations managing complex channel ecosystems, with contemporary PRM incorporating AI to deliver contextual enablement and real-time coordination," said Mark Casidsid, senior research analyst for AI-Enabled Business Commerce, Partner Relationship, and Ecosystem Management at IDC. "However, realizing the full potential of AI will require overcoming data governance challenges, investing in robust integration frameworks, and driving holistic change management across the organization and partner networks."

The Pathways to Unlock the Potential of Agentic Commerce in Hospitality and Travel

Dorothy Creamer, Greg Ireland — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective discusses the pathways to unlock the potential of agentic commerce in hospitality and travel. By 2030, agent-to-agent commerce will be operational across segments of hospitality and travel. The shift from generative AI assistance to agentic execution is forcing organizations to rethink core systems architecture, particularly as it relates to distribution and loyalty. As LLM surfaces emerge as booking channels, competitive advantage will move from traffic acquisition to structured offer clarity, policy governance, and real-time entitlement calculation. Organizations that modernize APIs, embed loyalty as infrastructure, and implement disciplined channel governance will shape the next era of travel and hospitality commerce. Agentic AI must not be considered merely a feature enhancement, but as a fundamental reordering of how commerce capabilities are exposed, evaluated, and executed.

"As AI surfaces become legitimate distribution channels, organizations must re-architect technology, data, and governance models to compete in an environment where agents evaluate structured capabilities rather than human-facing experiences," says Dorothy Creamer, senior research manager, Hospitality and Travel Digital Strategies at IDC. "Agentic AI will redefine how demand is captured and fulfilled in hospitality and travel. The organizations that win will not be those with the most conversational polish, but those that expose structured, policy-governed capabilities that AI agents can trust and transact with at scale."

Trends in Cloud IoT

Rob Tiffany — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective explores trends in cloud-based IoT through the lens of four platforms that exhibit different strengths ranging from enterprise integrations to geography. Technology buyers will anchor their platform decision to their existing cloud investment, rigorously evaluate edge computing capabilities, and model total cost of ownership well beyond basic messaging and compute pricing. The three core takeaways are that platform maturity has diverged significantly, edge capabilities have replaced cloud-side messaging as the key competitive battleground, and multinational organizations increasingly need multiplatform strategies to navigate data sovereignty regulations across geographies.

"With most organizations storing data and running workloads across multiple public clouds, simplifying this inherently complex architecture with a single, cloud-based IoT platform is more difficult than ever," explains Rob Tiffany, research director, Cloud Infrastructure at IDC. "Data and API interoperability across clouds and geographies is now a minimum requirement to bring a global system together, otherwise a single system strategy is impractical."