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AI-Infused GRC Tooling

Erik Werson — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective discusses how artificial intelligence represents the next evolution of governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) platforms. Traditional GRC solutions have long automated workflows, compliance monitoring, and control management through rules-based processes and system integrations. Modern AI builds on these foundations by introducing predictive intelligence, natural language capabilities, and increasingly autonomous decision support.

AI enhances the core GRC functions through capabilities such as regulatory change management, predictive risk analytics, intelligent control mapping, and automated evidence collection. Beyond these functions, AI-powered assistants, workflow automation, and decision-support capabilities improve operational efficiency while allowing GRC professionals to focus on strategic responsibilities.

However, AI should augment rather than replace human judgment, with accountability for governance and compliance decisions remaining firmly under human oversight. As AI capabilities evolve toward predictive, generative, and agentic models, organizations must also ensure explainability, transparency, and responsible AI governance.

When selecting an AI-infused GRC platform, organizations should evaluate alignment with business objectives, AI capabilities, capability maturity, and the trustworthiness of AI-generated outputs to maximize long-term business value and organizational resilience.

"The success of an AI-infused GRC platform is determined by more than the sophistication of its AI capabilities," says Erik Werson, adjunct research advisor for IDC's IT Executive Programs (IEP). "Organizations should evaluate whether the platform aligns with their business objectives, provides mature and trustworthy AI capabilities, and supports transparent, explainable decision-making to maximize long-term business value and organizational resilience."

Avalara CRUSH 2026: Moving Tax Automation Toward Agentic Compliance

Kevin Permenter — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

On September 22–24, Avalara hosted CRUSH 2026 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with agentic AI as the central theme. Avalara introduced Avalara Aviator, an agent hub for tax and compliance, and made Versori by Avalara, an agentic integration fabric, available. IDC views Aviator as a credible step toward governed orchestration of compliance work, but its value will depend on measurable results once generally available and on how it is packaged and priced after the initial no-additional-cost period.

IDC PeerScape: Peer Insights for Small Language Model Deployment

David Weldon — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC PeerScape examines practices that organizations have used and can use to transform SLM usage from experimental deployment to managed infrastructure.

"Like all machine learning (ML) systems, SLMs can degrade over time due to data shifts, new use cases, or changing input distributions. Organizations need to monitor SLMs closely, with periodic evaluation cycles to detect model drift and unintended output patterns. Otherwise, performance issues can easily go unnoticed," says David Weldon, adjunct research advisor for IDC's IT Executive Programs (IEP).

IDC PlanScape: Technology Unit Cost Management

Gerald Johnston — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC PlanScape examines the shift toward treating technology unit cost management as an ongoing operational discipline.

According to Gerald Johnston, adjunct research advisor for IDC's IT Executive Programs (IEP), "CIOs and their teams need to go beyond managing budgets and deliver cost-competitive solutions for their business. Doing this requires financial literacy, understanding, and discipline that is often lacking in IT organizations."

Navigating the New European eSignature Landscape: eIDAS 2.0, the EUDI Wallet, and What It Means for Your Business

Andrew Gens — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective examines the European Digital Identity Framework and its impact on organizations that purchase esignature solutions. It sets out the core requirements of eIDAS 2.0, the role of the EUDI Wallet, and the deadlines governing the transition, and explores the market impacts and practical next steps for organizations operating in the EU.

" eIDAS 2.0 and the EUDI Wallet are primed to remake the identity and trust layer beneath every regulated digital transaction in Europe," said Andrew Gens, research vice president, Document AI and Exchange at IDC. "These changes will reset where value sits in this market. Those that gain the edge will be the ones treating eIDAS 2.0 as infrastructure rather than as a compliance exercise, and the buyers that pilot wallet acceptance in 2027 rather than scrambling at the deadline."

When to Sunset Applications Rather than Re-Architect Them

Dr. Ken Knapton — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective examines how enterprises can identify the point at which continued optimization of legacy systems no longer produces sufficient value and should give way to planned replacement, consolidation, or controlled deferral. It provides a decision framework that links application rationalization to risk, operational resilience, governance discipline, and enterprise leverage.

"A legacy system does not need to fail before it becomes the wrong platform for the business," says Dr. Ken Knapton, adjunct research advisor for IDC's IT Executive Programs (IEP). "When continued optimization consumes capacity, compounds risk, and delays strategic capability, retirement becomes a leadership decision — not a technical preference."

AMD validates the importance of world models for physical AI with the acquisition of World Labs

Dan Everett — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

AMD's $8.2B all-stock acquisition of World Labs, about 64% above the $5B valuation reported for the company's February funding round, is a bet that physical AI is the next growth cycle and that spatial intelligence and world models are what make it work. Physical AI systems have to predict how physical objects move and what their actions will cause, and AMD is paying a premium to get a leading world model company and research team to address this need.

Acumatica 2026 R2: Intelligence for the Mid-market with Embedded AI

Mickey North Rizza — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Acumatica released R2 2026 today. The new GA product release brings Acumatica to the AI levels of many of their peers. While these AI updates may appear late, Acumatica clients find this new AI journey well timed, as told to IDC earlier this year. Many organizations, while trying AI, are leery of it and would prefer to walk before they run. With this next release, Acumatica is enabling their clients to do more at their own pace and with greater confidence.

The R2 2026 updates bring mid-market businesses embedded AI, modern analytics, a streamlined user experience and industry specific enhancements that are designed to help organizations improve productivity, make faster decisions, and scale more efficiently. The R2 2026 release brings forward new capabilities:

AI Assistant and AI Automation: Mid-size businesses will find a huge uplift with quicker and faster business answers, anomaly detection, the automation of repetitive tasks, and trigger prompt-driven workflows within Acumatica.

Modern user interface: As organizations move to R2 they will automatically transition to Acumatica’s modern user interface which provides a more consistent and intuitive experience across the Acumatica platform.

Modern Analytics for Faster Decision-Making: Acumatica R2 2026 lays the foundation for a unified, always-current view of the business with a high-performance governed data source that surfaces everywhere teams need it — in dashboards, financial statements, and now in the AI tools they already use. There are two advances anchoring this shift:

Native Data Warehouse: Reporting and analytics now run against a dedicated, performance-optimized copy of ERP data instead of the live transactional database, so reports don’t compete for system resources with day-to-day order entry, invoicing, and approvals. This foundational layer of centralized ERP data and performance optimization will be enhanced in future updates.

Model Context Protocol (MCP) Connection: Organizations can securely connect Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and other MCP-compatible AI tools directly to their Acumatica data without exporting, uploading, or duplicating information in a separate AI workspace. Role-based permissions, inherited security, and field level data masking automatically carry over, allowing teams to use the AI tools they already rely on while IT retains centralized governance and auditability for every query. Together with existing capabilities such as InsightXL, which connects live Acumatica data directly to Excel, these advances extend Acumatica's analytics so the same governed data reaches finance and operations teams through whichever surface the moment calls for — a dashboard, spreadsheet, AI assistant, or AI tool of their choice.

Navigating the Agentic Shift: AI Strategies for Wealth Management

Dr. Chris Marshall, Michael Sek Pheng Yeo — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective examines the agentic AI moving from pilot to production in wealth management in 2026, productivity and ROI evidence supporting it, and governance practices technology buyers need to scale autonomy safely.

"The wealth managers winning with agentic AI are not the ones moving fastest; they are the ones who built the strongest foundations in platforms and governance before building the autonomy functions as well as those who are constantly evolving their budgets and decision-making based on the rapid cadence of development in the industry," says Michael Yeo, associate research director, IDC Financial Insights.

What Dreamforce 2026 Signals for the Agentic Enterprise

Inci Kaya — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective looks past Salesforce's Dreamforce 2026 announcements to identify the market-wide shifts — in trust infrastructure, agent governance, interface control, consumption pricing, and organizational accountability — that IDC believes every enterprise, regardless of vendor, needs to plan for as it scales agentic AI. "Vendor road maps are converging on trust, governance, and new economics. This document presents IDC's independent take on what that means for every enterprise, regardless of which platform they run." — Inci Kaya, senior research manager, Digital Strategies, Insurance Worldwide, at IDC