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

Sarah Lee — Tue, 25 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.

IDC TechBrief: Stablecoins as Payment Rails — Reserve Risk, Transparency, and Integration Patterns

Michael Sek Pheng Yeo — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC TechBrief examines stablecoins as enterprise payment rails, focusing on reserve risk, transparency requirements, and integration architecture. Stablecoin transaction volumes exceeded $27 trillion in 2024, surpassing Visa's annual settlement volume and signaling a structural shift in global payment infrastructure. IDC projects enterprise B2B stablecoin adoption to grow at a 41% CAGR through 2028, driven by regulatory clarity in the EU, Singapore, and the US, and by treasury teams seeking 60–80% cost reductions.

"Stablecoins are moving from the edge of enterprise payment conversations to the center of treasury strategy. Organizations that master reserve governance and integration architecture in the next 24 months will capture real cost and speed advantages in cross-border payments as well as lay the foundations for platformization of digital assets," says Michael Sek Pheng Yeo, associate research director, IDC Financial Insights Asia/Pacific.

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Data Intelligence Platform Software 2026 Vendor Assessment

Stewart Bond, Marlanna Harrington — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study evaluates the data intelligence platform software market as it moves from adjacent governance tooling to a first-order AI readiness decision, driven by the demands of generative AI and agentic AI and the need for trusted, AI-ready data. It assesses 15 vendors, Actian, Alation, Ataccama, AWS, BigID, Cloudera, Collibra, Experian, IBM, Informatica, OvalEdge, Precisely, Qlik, Quest Software, and Snowflake, evaluating their strengths, challenges, and suitability for a range of data management and AI initiatives. This document underscores the role of data cataloging, governance, quality, and lineage in delivering the context that both people and AI agents need and the growing convergence around embedded, increasingly agentic automation and open standards such as the Model Context Protocol, OpenLineage, and Apache Iceberg.

"Data intelligence platform software is the control plane for delivering AI-ready data and trusted context to both people and AI agents," says Stewart Bond, vice president, Data Intelligence and Integration Software research at IDC. "Every vendor in this evaluation is embedding increasingly agentic automation into cataloging, quality, and governance to close the skills and capacity gaps that hold AI back at scale, which is why buyers should now treat platform selection as an AI readiness decision measured by outcomes rather than a governance checkbox."

The Last Line Isn’t Defense. It’s Operational Discipline: IDC’s Framework for Cyber-Resilience

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective introduces IDC’s Cyber-Resilience Framework and argues that cyber-resilience is a board-level operational continuity discipline, not a security program. Critically, it defines cyber-resilience as the capability to maintain operations through any disruptive event, whether a cyberattack, a provider outage, or a kinetic event in a conflict zone, not merely a response to adversarial threats. The document defines cyber-resilience, describes the six activities that cyber-resilient organizations perform continuously, and presents the nine domains of IDC’s Cyber-Resilience Framework. It provides guidance for CEOs, boards, CIOs, and CISOs on governing cyber-resilience as a business risk.

“The last line isn’t defense; it’s operations. Whether the threat is a ransomware actor, a failed provider, or a conflict that takes regional infrastructure offline, the organization’s ability to keep running is the only metric that ultimately matters. That is the domain of cyber-resilience, and it belongs on the board agenda.” — Frank Dickson, research group vice president, Security and Trust at IDC

Trends in Managed Databases

Rob Tiffany — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective examines how Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, and IBM Cloud are redesigning their managed database portfolios around AI. Native vector search, autonomous operations, serverless and distributed SQL architectures, and multimodel convergence are reshaping how these platforms compete, whereas sovereignty and governance requirements continue to differentiate vendors by geography and regulatory fit. For technology leaders, the practical challenge is no longer whether a database can support AI workloads, since nearly all of them now can in some form, but on how mature, portable, and governable each vendor’s AI layer actually is.

“The database has quietly become the newest front line in the AI platform war,” explains Rob Tiffany, research director, cloud infrastructure, IDC. Tiffany adds, “Buyers that evaluate only the engine and miss the AI tooling wrapped around it are going to be surprised by where the real lock-in and the real cost end up.”

Verizon Deepens Its Partnership with Google Cloud to Further Automate Network Operations and Service Delivery to the Enterprise

Paul Hughes — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

On August 24, 2026, Verizon and Google Cloud announced a partnership to embed Google's Gemini Enterprise platform across Verizon's customer service, network operations, and marketing platform. With a previous $1-billion-plus contract already in place for Verizon dark fiber connecting Google's datacenters, coopetition between hyperscalers and carriers evolves quickly to partnership as Google becomes invested in Verizon's network functions, delivery, and future capabilities.

Cisco Q4 FY26: AI Infrastructure and Campus Networking Drive Record FY26 Performance

Chris Barnard, Brandon Butler — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide AI-Driven Digital Strategy and Consulting Services for Oil and Gas Companies 2026 Vendor Assessment

Gaurav Verma — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study represents a vendor assessment of the worldwide AI-driven digital strategy and consulting services market for oil and gas companies through the IDC MarketScape model. The assessment discusses both quantitative and qualitative characteristics that explain success in this market. It covers 17 vendors participating in the AI-driven digital strategy consulting space for oil and gas. The evaluation is based on a comprehensive and rigorous framework that assesses vendors relative to the criteria and to one another and highlights the factors expected to be most influential for success in both the short term and the long term.

“In oil and gas, the winners in AI strategy and consulting are the firms that turn subvertical-level business and operational complexities and bottlenecks into board-level value and a workable operating model that actually holds, not the ones with the longest use case list. Domain fluency across the value chain, a data-ready foundation, and disciplined change leadership now matter more than AI novelty,” says Gaurav Verma, research director, IDC Energy Insights.

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Telecom Autonomous Network Operations Solutions 2026 Vendor Assessment

Chris Silberberg, Ajeet Das — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

The IDC MarketScape assesses the worldwide telecom autonomous network operations capabilities for the telecommunications sector and discusses what criteria are the most important for companies to consider when selecting a vendor. It reviews the critical operational support systems (OSS) capabilities of key suppliers across orchestration, assurance, and network inventory, which are foundational for autonomous network operation strategies. It also considers the long-term road map for these vendors and how they are supporting customers to leverage agentic AI to unlock higher levels of network autonomy.

“Telecom operators have been striving for increasingly autonomous networks for a long term. Backed up by a foundational vision provided by the TM Forum Autonomous Network (AN) framework, operators are now making strides to achieve AN Level 4 (highly autonomous networks) by 2030. To do this, they need a mix of strategic partners that can deliver autonomy horizontally across network domains, with the depth expertise necessary to ensure reliability and efficiency when executing at a domain level,” says Chris Silberberg, research manager, IDC.

Aligning Agentic AI Governance Across the Enterprise: Optimizing and Operationalizing Accountability and Alignment

Tue, 18 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective outlines how agentic AI governance must serve as the connective framework across enterprise disciplines — cybersecurity, compliance, risk, data, and more — by translating strategic and ethical intent into enforceable, agent-level controls. It highlights the necessity of operational alignment, accountability, and visibility for autonomous AI, while addressing governance gaps and ensuring sustainable, resilient, and auditable AI deployments.

“Agentic AI governance is the linchpin for responsible and resilient enterprise AI, ensuring that autonomy is matched with accountability and that strategic intent is operationalized across every discipline,” said Duncan Brown, Group VP, IDC.