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Critical External Drivers Shaping Global IT and Business Planning, 2027

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Tech Buyer Presentation describes the critical drivers — important external forces — that will shape the global business ecosystem and influence enterprise IT and business strategies for the next 12–24 months and beyond. The 2026 drivers were identified, developed, and reviewed by a cross-functional international analyst team at IDC. This year’s document reveals 20 interrelated critical drivers that coalesce around four major themes: AI maturity and economics, reestablishing operational foundations, shifts in geopolitical infrastructure, and systemic and emerging risk. These 20 drivers provide the foundation for the development of IDC FutureScape predictions for 2027.

European Tier 1 Service Provider Market Events, 2Q26

Matthew Wilkins — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Presentation summarizes key events in the European tier 1 service provider market in 2Q26.

IDC Survey Spotlight: What Skills Do Global Enterprises Need for Overseeing Agentic AI?

Gina Smith, PhD — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey Spotlight explores the human skills enterprises will need for working with agentic AI across North America, Asia/Pacific, and EMEA. It draws data from IDC’s 2026 Global IT Skills Survey, which examines IT skills and training preferences among global IT leaders.

IT Productivity Data and Metadata Growth, 2026–2030: Operational Data Explosion Faster than Previously Forecast

Archana Venkatraman, Adam Wright — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Perspective examines the accelerating growth of IT productivity data and metadata from now through 2030 and also assesses the impact of agentic AI on the growth forecast. Productivity data is now expected to grow at a 46.7% CAGR through 2030, ahead of last year's 45.0% forecast, as autonomous agents add a continuous, high-volume source of machine-generated data that IT teams must monitor, secure, and govern. This provides technology providers with an opportunity to help enterprises manage IT productivity data at AI scale, cost-effectively.

"A year ago, we said productivity data would define the next phase of digital operations. This shift is now underway faster than we forecast, thanks to agentic AI strategies. AI agents do not just add data but also add a continuous operational trail of decisions, tool calls, and audit records that enterprises cannot afford to leave unmanaged. The organizations investing now in purpose-built, AI-ready data management will be best positioned to capitalize on this strategic data for business outcomes such as resilience, sovereignty, and performance while also managing the data intelligently and cost-efficiently," says Archana Venkatraman, senior research director, Observability and Agentic AI Monitoring and Governance at IDC.

Market Analysis Perspective: Datacenter Facilities Builders Trends and Strategies, 2026

Mikhail Jaura, Dr. William Lee, Andrew Buss, Luis Fernandes — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Analysis Perspective provides insight into the current and future state of the datacenter facilities builders market. It draws on IDC's Semiannual Datacenter Facilities Tracker to size the worldwide facilities power capacity and construction capital spending through 2030, profile the leading owner-operators by scale and investment, and advise operators and their technology partners on where to focus capital as AI workloads reset power, cooling, and density requirements.

"Through 2030, power availability, not demand, will decide the datacenter buildout. The operators that pull ahead are those securing power and engineering for liquid cooling well before the workloads land, leaving the rest to bid for whatever megawatts remain. That advantage compounds with scale. The largest operators lock in power, capital, and land first, and every buildout cycle widens their lead over midmarket providers that cannot commit at the same size or speed," said Mikhail Jaura, senior research analyst, Cloud and Datacenters, Enterprise Infrastructure, IDC.

Market Forecast: Worldwide Artificial Intelligence Services Forecast, 2026–2030

Dina Capelle, Jennifer Hamel — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC presentation provides the five-year forecast for the worldwide artificial intelligence (AI) services market.

“Artificial intelligence has become the primary growth engine of the services market, with worldwide AI services on track to more than triple to $351.7 billion by 2030 and generative AI reaching half of that spend. The providers that win will be the ones that turn agentic ambition into governed, measurable outcomes, because commoditization, ROI scrutiny, and talent gaps will separate the leaders from the rest.” — Jennifer Hamel, research vice president, Enterprise Data and AI Services, IDC.

Navigating the New Sustainability Services Landscape: Five Structural Shifts Reshaping the Sustainability Consulting Market

Bjoern Stengel, Dan Versace — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Perspective identifies five structural shifts in the sustainability services market and provides guidance for professional services firms. IDC's 2026 Sustainability Services Survey (n = 600) reveals a market in structural transition. Budget allocations have moderated from a 2024 peak, but the underlying work is becoming more embedded, more technical, and harder to defer. The CSO has displaced the CEO as the primary buyer at most large enterprises; accounting-led advisory and Big Four firms have pulled decisively ahead of technology-led competitors; and mandatory disclosure frameworks — including CSRD, ISSB S1/S2, and California's SB 253 — have created compliance and assurance obligations that persist regardless of ESG sentiment cycles or political headwinds. Cost has emerged as the dominant client pain point, while AI for Sustainability debuts as a distinct demand category at 30% of buyers. For sustainability services firms, the opportunity is substantial — but it belongs to those that have built deep regulatory expertise, licensed assurance capability, and the discipline to deliver measurable outcomes.

"The sustainability services market has moved past the strategy sprint phase. Buyers are more technical, the mandates are legal rather than voluntary, and the work is increasingly embedded in core business operations rather than handled as a separate initiative. Firms that built their sustainability practices around broad ESG strategy engagements now need to reposition around three nonnegotiable capabilities: regulatory compliance and assurance, AI-enabled data infrastructure, and quantified business impact. The firms making this transition are pulling ahead. The window for the rest to catch up is narrowing faster than most realize." — Bjoern Stengel, global sustainability research and practice lead, Sustainable Strategies and Technologies, IDC

Renaissance Thinking in an AI World: What the Next Generation of Business Consultants Must Be

Bill Latshaw — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective examines how the role of the business consultant changes as AI automates the routine analytical work that once defined the base of the consulting pyramid. IDC argues that AI raises the value of renaissance thinking, the ability to operate with both depth and breadth, continuously testing assumptions and reframing problems, rather than diminishing it. As baseline analysis becomes fast and inexpensive, consultant differentiation shifts to causal diagnosis, cross-domain pattern recognition, contextual judgment, and the human work of trust and change that AI does not perform reliably end to end. The document describes what the renaissance-thinking consultant is like in an AI-centric market, how they produce results within the emerging hybrid operating model of senior value pods. It describes their role in an AI delivery platform and an elastic delivery network that clients increasingly value, and how buyers and providers can deliberately develop renaissance-thinking consultants.

“AI can produce the analysis in seconds, but it cannot decide which problem is worth solving, diagnose why it is happening inside a particular organization, or lead the people who must change. This is the consultant’s work, and it is exactly the work of the renaissance thinker. The firms and buyers that win in an AI world will be the ones that treat AI as an instrument for seeing more and keep human judgment firmly in the lead,” said Bill Latshaw, research director, Worldwide Business Consulting Services at IDC.

IDC Market Glance: CX Services, 3Q26

Douglas Hayward — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Glance maps the worldwide CX services vendor landscape across four segments: consultancies and IT services providers, holding companies, independent agencies, and network agencies. As boundaries between technology consulting, creative services, and CX transformation blur, buyers face increasingly complex sourcing decisions. This document helps technology buyers and CX leaders identify potential providers, while helping vendors benchmark their positioning against segment peers.

IDC Survey: Enterprise IoT Adoption in Canada, 2026 — Insights from IDC’s 4Q25 Canada IT Decision-Makers Survey

Nigel Wallis — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey aims to help Canadian technology vendors and end-user leaders with their strategic planning for enterprise IoT decision-making by outlining the current state of adoption. This presentation:

Examines the adoption status of IoT solutions among Canadian organizations of all sizes, located in all regions and from multiple industries
Encourages Canadian organizations, both private and public sector, to benchmark their maturity against their local industry peer group.
Provides insights to the IoT vendor ecosystem to help enterprises better understand the relative maturity by use case, industry, and organization size, thereby enabling more precise marketing, partnering, communications and sales.

“IoT has moved from pilot to default infrastructure in Canada, with 92% of organizations now running deployments in production and 83% of enterprises planning further investment. However, 31% of completed initiatives still fail to meet expectations,” said Nigel Wallis, research VP, IDC Insights. “Adoption is no longer a competitive differentiator; the dividing line between winners and laggards has shifted to delivery discipline. Suppliers that cannot de-risk implementation and buyers that do not fix governance before scaling will lose ground even as overall demand keeps climbing”.