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IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Digital Forensics Platforms 2026 Vendor Assessment

Alison Brooks, Ph.D. — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study evaluates seven digital forensics platform vendors — Cellebrite, Magnet Forensics, MSAB, OpenText (EnCase), Belkasoft, Exterro (FTK), and ADF Solutions — on the capabilities and strategies that determine how well their solutions address the demands of modern investigations. The assessment evaluates each vendor across the investigative workflow, from acquiring data off increasingly locked-down devices, through to maintaining an unbroken chain of custody, to synthesizing large data volumes and producing findings that hold up in court.

Priorities have shifted considerably since IDC last evaluated this market. Getting data off a device remains hard and is getting harder, but the volume of acquired data now overwhelms the capacity to make sense of it, and AI-assisted analysis has moved from novelty to working tool. That shift raises an important question: whether an AI-surfaced finding can be explained and defended under cross-examination. AI governance maturity varies more across these vendors than almost any other capability assessed.

This IDC MarketScape is intended for forensics unit commanders, digital investigations leads, and law enforcement technology officers evaluating platform investments. It is designed to help buyers match a vendor's demonstrated strengths to the stage of the workflow where their own caseload is most constrained.

"For a forensics unit, the solution is only as good as the evidence it can defend in court, not simply the speed at which it processes a device," said Dr. Alison Brooks, IDC Research VP, Worldwide Public Safety. "The vendors pulling ahead are the ones treating defensibility and AI governance as part of the product, rather than a compliance afterthought. As caseloads grow and AI enters the workflow, agencies are having to re-evaluate their priorities."

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Trade Finance Systems 2026 Vendor Assessment

Maria Adele Di Comite — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study presents the assessment of 12 vendors for 2026 that provide trade finance solutions to the corporate banking sector: Adria B&T, Aurionpro, BT Systems, CGI, China Systems, Finastra, ICSFS, Infosys Finacle, Intellect Design Arena, Newgen, Oracle, and Surecomp. This research is a quantitative and qualitative assessment of the features of different solutions, along with other characteristics that define vendors' ability to support trade finance activities, streamline bank and corporate operations, and facilitate interactions with the ecosystem. The evaluation is based on a standardized, comprehensive framework and a set of parameters identified as most conducive to success in providing trade finance services in the short and long term. This year's assessment places particular emphasis on the extent to which vendors have moved AI, generative AI, and agentic AI capabilities from road map ambition into production use, alongside their readiness to support the accelerating shift toward electronically recognized trade documents. Evaluation also considers features to support risk management and regulatory compliance evaluations, as well as the ability to address emerging needs in a challenging and fast-evolving market, in times of uncertainty.

"In 2026, trade finance vendors are facing three key challenges: proving that their AI claims hold up under customer scrutiny, preparing for a trade ecosystem that is steadily shifting from paper to electronically recognized documents, and proving they have strong governance to meet tightening regulatory requirements and support advanced risk management. Across this assessment, vendors show meaningful progress on each of these fronts, though the pace and depth of progress vary across the vendor landscape," said Maria Adele Di Comite, senior research director, IDC Financial Insights.

Crossing the Agent Economy’s Cost Governance Gap: A Challenge for Tech Leaders

Rick Villars, Jevin Jensen, Shari Lava — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective examines the governance gap opening beneath tech leaders with the rapid rise of agentic AI. It shows that most enterprises already have agent workflows in production, but they are limited in breadth of use and sophistication. This will change dramatically in the next several years, putting greater pressure on agent spending levels and governance requirements. This IDC Perspective maps five structural risks and opportunities now surfacing across non-human identity, production reliability, open agent runtime security, pricing volatility, and workforce trust.

“The agent economy has already crossed the adoption threshold in enterprises, and now it’s testing whether governance can keep pace. Enterprises that treat identity, cost, and reliability as one connected risk, rather than three separate line items, will navigate this transition with the most confidence,” said Rick Villars, group vice president, Market Intelligence and Business Strategies, IDC.

IDC MarketScape: U.S. Private and Secure Cloud Infrastructure for Defense and Intelligence 2026 Vendor Assessment

Alan Webber — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study assesses providers of private and secure cloud infrastructure to U.S. defense and intelligence agencies. These platforms give the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Intelligence Community the classified, air-gapped, and tactical edge computing capacity needed to run mission systems, from intelligence processing to AI-enabled decision support, across every classification level. The market centers on two contract vehicles, the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability for DoD and the Commercial Cloud Enterprise for the Intelligence Community, both of which fix the competitive field by vehicle rather than by open market share.

"Cloud infrastructure in this market has moved past cost and agility arguments and become a warfighting and intelligence capability in its own right. Getting a workload into a classified environment now depends less on which provider has the broadest commercial footprint and more on which one can get a given classification level authorized fastest, keep it running when the network drops, and put generative AI inside that same accredited boundary. Holding a seat on JWCC or C2E is table stakes; the real competition happens task order by task order." — Alan Webber, program vice president, IDC Government Insights

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Innovation Management Software 2026 Vendor Assessment

Jeffrey Hojlo — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study analyzes vendors in the innovation management software segment and discusses what criteria are most important for companies to consider when selecting a vendor.

"Yes, AI can help you come up with new ideas for new or extended products, assets, processes, and operations, but cannot (unless embedded within your innovation workflow) structure new initiatives that are aligned with your business strategy, resources, and processes as innovation management platforms can. Human involvement in this process — from inside and outside the company — to verify and validate that any innovation, whether new or expanding on existing products, services, or processes, remains essential," said Jeff Hojlo, research vice president, Engineering and Product Innovation Strategies.

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Life Sciences R&D Lab of the Future Technology Solutions and Consulting Services 2026 Vendor Assessment

Nimita Limaye — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study has a specific focus on LotF solutions and consulting services in the life sciences R&D space. This document seeks to compare major service providers with each other based on criteria that should be important to life sciences companies when considering the selection of a technology solutions and consulting services partner to help implement a LotF strategy, transformation, and modernizing labs, across the value chain, from design of experiment (DoE) to manufacturing, and back. This is the second time that an IDC MarketScape assessment on this topic in life sciences has been performed.

“The ‘lab of the future’ is no longer a pipe dream — it’s an enterprise-level imperative grounded in clear strategic vision, phased execution, and measurable governance. Organizations that move beyond pilots to architecting scalable, end-to-end LotF road maps, building a cloud-native API-first platform, scaling deep scientist engagement, and driving business outcomes aligned with C-suite priorities will build sustainable competitive advantage. These organizations will be the ones leading the market in 2026,” said Dr. Nimita Limaye, research VP, Life Sciences R&D Strategy and Technology at IDC.

The AI-Enabled Health Consumer: How AI Is Reshaping Health Behaviors, Expectations, and Trust

Silvia Piai — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Tech Buyer presentation examines how AI is becoming embedded in the consumer health journey — from how consumers use it today to the trust, comfort, and concerns shaping its expanding role. It explores how authority and accountability influence acceptance and translates these findings into strategic implications for providers, payers, and medtech and digital health organizations.

This analysis draws on the AI module of IDC’s 2026 Connected Health Consumer Survey, conducted online in April 2026 among 1,048 adults in eight countries. The survey findings are complemented by desk research that draws on peer-reviewed literature, regulatory guidance, and other authoritative sources.

“Consumers do not experience AI as a technology decision: They experience it as part of their health journey, and increasingly as a question of whom they can trust with their health. As consumers bring AI into that journey themselves, every organization in the healthcare ecosystem will be judged not only on what AI can do, but on how well it preserves trust, human judgment, and accountability as its role expands,” says Silvia Piai, Research Director, WW Connected Health and Medical Device Digital Strategies at IDC.

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.

Global Retail Trends 2026 Across APAC, EMEA, LATAM, NATAM: Key Findings from the Global Retail Survey 2026

Ornella Urso, Ananda Chakravarty, Margot Juros, Filippo Battaini — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study presents key findings from IDC’s 2026 Global Retail Survey, examining retailer priorities, challenges, and technology investment across APAC, EMEA, LATAM, and NATAM. It finds that AI has moved past the pilot stage: in every region surveyed, more than half of retailers report they have already deployed AI and agentic AI rather than merely planning to do so.

The study identifies talent and data readiness as the main constraints on execution and points to inventory management as the leading operational challenge worldwide.

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.