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AI-Driven Evolution of Salesforce Services Ecosystem in 2026

Jason Bremner — Fri, 15 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Perspective discusses how Salesforce's services partner ecosystem is changing as the company shifts its strategic direction from a product-centric business applications focus to a platform-led enterprise solution focus with Agentforce 360. The document leverages in-depth analysis of 43 services vendors operating in the Salesforce space, selected from the 124 companies with more than 200 certified experts.

"Salesforce is revamping the consulting track within its partner program in 2026 to better align with its agentic and consumption-led strategy. The changes will impact the growing Salesforce economy that fuels the revenue opportunity for GSIs, RSIs, digital agencies, boutiques, business consultants, and MSPs in the ecosystem. Services firms must realign to Salesforce's strategic pivot to remain relevant to the company and its clients and maximize their revenue opportunity," says Jason Bremner, research vice president, IT Consulting and Systems Integration services, IDC.

Agentic AI's Impact on Services

Fri, 15 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Presentation examines how agentic AI is transforming the IT services industry, covering the shift from generative AI (GenAI) to agentic AI platforms, how leading services providers are building proprietary platforms to differentiate, and what this means for delivery models (from labor-based to platform-driven) across support, managed, and project services. This document maps the emerging platform archetypes, walks through AI-powered delivery scenarios, lays out new business-model and metric frameworks for providers to defend outcome ownership, and closes with an infrastructure and security roadmap for deploying agentic services at scale.

"The winners of the agentic era won't be the firms with the most people; they'll be the ones whose platforms do the most thinking with unique domain knowledge. Providers that redesign their business around agentic AI, not alongside it, will own the next decade of enterprise value." — Group Vice President Linus Lai, Services, IDC

IDC Mailroom Survey: Print Versus Digital Mail Trends

Robert Palmer — Fri, 15 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey examines selected results from specific data from IDC's 2025 U.S. Mailroom Management and Customer Communications Strategies Survey.

IDC conducted a United States–based survey of organizations to assess how business communications are shifting from printed mail to digital channels and what this transition means for operational strategy.

The goal of the survey was to understand the current and expected mix of printed versus digital communications; perceptions of channel performance, including customer preference, response rate, and ROI; the influence of remote and hybrid work on communications execution; tactics used to improve response; and differences in channel preference across age cohorts. This survey examines respondent perspectives regarding the shift from printed mail to digital communications, the rise of digital-first approaches, and the continued role of hybrid print and digital strategies.

IDC Survey Spotlight: How Are European Print Providers Guiding Customers Through the Windows Protected Print Transition?

Jacqui Hendriks — Fri, 15 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey Spotlight highlights an extract from IDC's European Imaging, Printing, and Document Solutions (IPDS) B2B Print Opportunity Survey, conducted in April 2026 among 2,057 respondents from Czechia, France, Germany, Italy, the Nordics, Poland, Spain, and the U.K. This document highlights how aware European print decision-makers are of Windows Protected Print (WPP) and how print providers are supporting customers through the transition.

This survey also covered topics such as contractual print behaviors, print security, print/device management adoption and benefits, the pace of digitization, and AI-related print and document management investments.

中国AI助学主流产品评测，2026

Hongyu Cheng — Fri, 15 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT

本IDC研究严格依托IDC对AI助学产品的权威定义搭建科学评估框架，对市面主流AI助学产品开展深度评测。研究旨在全面梳理当前AI助学产品的技术落地成果与产品发展特征，沉淀行业优质实践经验，为AI助学产业规范化、高质量发展提供研究支撑，同时为行业参与者与用户全面认知产品价值、匹配应用需求提供专业参考。

IDC’s Top 100 Worldwide Outsourcing-Managed Services Deals of 2023–2025 Update

David Tapper — Thu, 14 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Perspective provides an overview analysis of the top 100 worldwide outsourcing-managed services deals in 2025, as well as a trending analysis of these deals for 2023–2025.

“Although managed SPs continue to win large-scale outsourcing-managed services deals, IDC believes that the adoption of agentic AI as part of managed services will only continue the disruption of these markets first driven by global sourcing (offshore) and then by the public cloud providers, but will likely drive the need to make much more fundamental changes to the business models of managed SPs to ensure competitiveness,” says David Tapper, VP, Outsourcing and Managed Cloud Services, IDC. He also adds, “Success for managed SPs will require that they reassess the business model of managed services, implement robust governance, build an AI inventory management capability, define roles and responsibilities of partnerships continually, differentiate managed services with IP and proprietary platforms, and provide value-add capabilities.”

U.S. Federal Civilian Government Agencies' Aggressive Value Realization Goals for AI

Massimiliano Claps — Thu, 14 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC presentation analyzes the United States federal government's evolving AI adoption from pilot to production. The study combines the results of an IDC survey of 152 senior IT and non-IT leaders from U.S. federal government departments and agencies, with an in-depth analysis of the U.S. 2025 Federal Agency Artificial Intelligence Use Case Inventory, published on GitHub by the United States Office of Management and Budget.

Both the IDC survey and the 2025 Federal Agency AI Use Case Inventory show that AI adoption is progressing fast in the U.S. federal civilian government market, with use cases spanning IT, cybersecurity, back-office administration, and mission-specific areas. With increased budget dedicated to AI, federal government IT leaders are demanding more aggressive time to value and ROI.

EPAM Investor Day 2026: From "AI Made Real" to "AI-Native Scale"

Wed, 13 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT

The March 2026 meeting showed a company moving from proof points about responsible AI scaling toward a fuller AI-native transformation based on agentic engineering, industrialized AI/Run playbooks, capability-led go-to-market change, talent-system redesign, a more flexible global delivery engine, and clearer monetization and financial goals.

"EPAM's March 2026 message was not simply that AI must be made real; it was that enterprise AI now needs a codified delivery system, a new talent profile, and commercial discipline, and EPAM is showing it has built all three," said Bill Latshaw, research director, Worldwide Business Services.

Business Consulting Services Trend Report — Business Consulting Services Shift Operating Stance

Bill Latshaw — Tue, 12 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT

For business consultingservicesproviders, this IDC Presentation serves as a scenario-imagining framework for evaluating operating model choices in an agentic AI-driven market. Rather than prescribing a single best approach, it maps the spectrum of structural options from traditional headcount pyramids to AI-platform-centered models and introduces a flexible "Pyramid 2.0" hybrid concept built around three layers:

senior value pods for judgment and client relationships
a centralized AI delivery platform embedding reusable IP and governance
and an elastic delivery network that scales capacity up or down with demand

Providers can use this framework to pressure-test their own model against emerging market expectations, including the rise of proprietary AI orchestration platforms, new pricing structures (outcome-based, subscription, platform), evolving software partnerships, and the fundamental redesign of consultant roles at every level.

For business consultingservicesbuyers, the report clarifies how and why their providers' delivery approaches are likely to shift and what that means for sourcing, governance, and organizational readiness. As providers move toward AI-enabled delivery, productized offerings, and elastic staffing, buyers gain greater flexibility in how strategic work gets executed, with more subscription and outcome-based options alongside traditional project engagements.

However, fully capturing this value requires buyers to strengthen their own AI governance, data management, and workforce transformation capabilities. The report gives buyers a vocabulary and mental model to evaluate whether a provider's operating stance, its talent structure, platform investments, and delivery philosophy aligns with the buyer’s strategic needs in an increasingly AI-infused consulting landscape.

IDC Survey Spotlight: Where Are CFOs Demanding Modernization in Their Plan-to-Perform Process?

Heather Herbst — Tue, 12 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey Spotlight discusses the results of IDC's CFO Buyer Insights 2026 on which plan-to-perform–related areas most need process improvement in corporate finance. Modernizing these areas is key to strengthening real-time financial decision-making and performance.