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A Year After Tariffs. How Agile Are We Now?

Eric Thompson — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective provides summarized views of 10 key lessons or developments in the “year of tariffs.” Over the past year, tariffs and geopolitical tensions have reinforced an important reality for supply chain leaders: Volatility is becoming a persistent feature of the global operating environment and no longer an exception. Organizations are responding by diversifying suppliers, investing in network flexibility, strengthening procurement capabilities, and adopting more advanced planning technologies. Ultimately, the strongest supply chains appear to be those that are not simply reacting to disruption, but actively designing operating models capable of adapting to it.

“Considering the fact that we are near a full decade of persistent disruptions, acceptance of this as a pattern, and not an exception, seems prudent. Supply chain leaders are increasingly aware of the need to implement steps toward the resilient supply chain, whether through organizational or technical changes.” — Eric Thompson, research director, Worldwide Supply Chain Planning, IDC

Building an AI-Ready Data Architecture Series: The Data Control Plane

Marlanna Harrington, Stewart Bond — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC presentation is part of a four-part series, with each installment examining one of the four critical planes of the enterprise intelligence architecture that work together to enable AI-ready data and drive business outcomes. These planes support continuous learning, delivery of insights at scale, and a strong data culture across your organization.

This report will provide a deep dive into the Data Control Plane, detailing how to take control of data through data intelligence, governance policies, and engineering practices. It addresses data cataloging, lineage tracking, quality management, and stewardship frameworks that ensure data products are trustworthy, accessible, and compliant.

IDC PeerScape: Lessons Learned from Salesforce Implementation Services

Jason Bremner, Sreenivas Duvvuri Venkata — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC PeerScape highlights the importance of Salesforce implementation services.

"Successful Salesforce transformation is not just about technology; it's about empowering people, fostering agility, and institutionalizing best practices across the enterprise," said Jason Bremner, research vice president, IT Consulting and System Integration Strategies, IDC. "The most effective Salesforce implementations are driven by cross-functional teams, robust governance, industry centricity, and well-considered change management."

IDC ProductScape: Worldwide Cloud Deployment–Centric Application Platforms, 2026

Matthew Flug — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC ProductScape offers a comprehensive guide on the key functionalities of cloud application deployment platforms, featuring products from Akamai, AWS, Broadcom, Cloudflare, F5, Google, Microsoft, Mirantis, Nutanix, Oracle, Red Hat, Salesforce, Upsun, and Vercel. 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 which vendors align with their changing requirements.

Beyond Customer Data: The Context Foundation AI Agents in CX Are Missing

Tapan Patel — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective examines why AI agents deployed across customer experience (CX) functions like marketing, sales, advertising, digital commerce, customer support, and field service systems require dedicated context foundation beyond unified customer data. It defines the three architectural foundations — knowledge graphs, semantic definitions, and context management — that enable agents to reason over shared context, coordinate actions across functions, and make autonomous decisions. The document provides guidance for both business and technology buyers evaluating context readiness for AI agents in CX.

“Customer data platforms gave us unified profiles, but that foundation alone is not sufficient for AI agents to make autonomous decisions,” said Tapan Patel, research director, AI-Enabled Customer Data and Analytics, IDC. “AI agents need a next layer — one that provides detailed understanding into CX relationships, shared business logic across functions, and runtime context that reflects customer intent, life-cycle stage, and prior actions to deliver real value.”

Building an AI-Ready Data Architecture Series: The Data Plane

Marlanna Harrington, Stewart Bond — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC presentation is part of a four-part series, with each installment examining one of the four critical planes of the enterprise intelligence architecture that work together to enable AI-ready data and drive business outcomes. These planes support continuous learning, the delivery of insights at scale, and a strong data culture across your organization.

This report will provide a deep dive into the data plane, exploring how to organize and manage distributed, diverse, dynamic, and dark data across structured, semistructured, and unstructured sources. It also covers strategies for implementing event streaming, vector databases, and emerging data technologies to build a flexible foundation for real-time AI workloads.

F5 GTC 2026 and AppWorld 2026 Announcements — F5 Delivers Solutions for Improved "Tokenomics," AI Infrastructure, and Application Delivery

Paul Nicholson — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

F5's recent announcements at NVIDIA GTC 2026 and F5 AppWorld 2026 advance the company's capabilities across networking for AI and AI for networking, delivering both platform and advanced modular features. The integration of BIG-IP Next for Kubernetes with NVIDIA BlueField-3 DPUs enables enterprises and cloud providers to optimize token economics, maximize GPU utilization, and scale AI workloads efficiently — enhancing token throughput and time to first token. F5's new AI-driven and oriented solutions, including F5 Insight for ADSP and certified Red Hat OpenShift Operators, empower organizations with deep observability, actionable intelligence, and streamlined security controls. This approach can reduce AI infrastructure costs, accelerate productivity, and support rapid innovation, positioning F5 to offer secure, scalable, and responsive AI-powered digital experiences across distributed environments.

Building an AI-Ready Data Architecture Series: The Data Synthesis Plane

Marlanna Harrington, Stewart Bond — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Tech Buyer Presentation is part of a four-part series, with each installment examining one of the four critical planes of the enterprise intelligence architecture that work together to enable AI-ready data and drive business outcomes. These planes support continuous learning, delivery of insights at scale, and a strong data culture across your organization.

This document provides a deep dive into the data synthesis plane, analyzing how to synthesize domain-specific data products with analytics and AI models to create actionable business outcomes. It covers model training, tuning, RAG (retrieval-augmented generation), and techniques for transforming raw data into valuable insights.

Cell and Gene Therapy Orchestration Solutions

Nimita Limaye — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective frames CGT’s “batch size of one” reality and positions orchestration as the workflow integration/control layer needed to scale autologous patient-product-patient operations. It spotlights the critical challenges, ensuring a secure COI/COC across a multi-enterprise network, constraint-heavy scheduling, interoperability across MES/LIMS/QMS/ERP and partner systems, and GxP-ready governance/auditability. It identifies specific use cases where AI can add value, along with the challenges. It provides practical buyer guidance and KPIs for CGT orchestration solutions.

“The future of precision medicine runs on CGT orchestration solutions: smart execution layers that connect manufacturing, QC, and cryologistics. They digitize COI/COC across the patient-product life cycle, compress vein-to-vein timelines, and optimize clinical outcomes,” said Dr. Nimita Limaye, research vice president, Life Sciences R&D Strategy and Technology, IDC.

Foundational AI Training: Six Best Practices

Gina Smith, PhD — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Tech Buyer Presentation examines the latest IDC research and enterprise case examples to outline six best practices for building effective foundational AI training programs. It provides a situation overview and actionable guidance for HR, learning, and IT leaders seeking to scale AI skills responsibly and sustainably across their organizations.