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Cisco XDR Premier: Managed Detection and Response, Investigated End to End

Craig Robinson — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Vendor Profile examines Cisco XDR Premier, Cisco’s managed detection and response service built on the Cisco XDR platform. It covers how the service is delivered and priced, how the technology and SOC operate, and where Cisco says the service is heading, and it closes with guidance for Cisco and for buyers.

IDC FutureScape: AI Factories Rewrite IT 2027 Predictions

Mon, 26 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC FutureScape provides IDC’s top 10 predictions on the future of how AI factories rewrite IT. It offers guidance for tech leaders and their teams on how to anticipate and prepare for major developments that are reshaping the ways they procure, deploy, manage, and secure AI-ready infrastructure over the next five years.

“The combination of AI-driven business disruption and rising IT infrastructure techflation is forcing tech leaders to reexamine AI infrastructure strategies. AI factories are emerging to rewrite IT by providing scalable, standardized AI-ready infrastructure that will allow SMBs, enterprises, and service providers to move faster while better matching workload needs to the most appropriate option available,” explains Mary Johnston Turner, research vice president, AI and Workloads, Enterprise Infrastructure, IDC.

IDC PlanScape: Agentic AI Governance

Dr. Ken Knapton — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC PlanScape argues that mitigating the risk of overscoped agents requires governance, not another layer of detection tooling.

“Agent governance must define what an agent is permitted to access, which actions it may take independently, which duties must remain separated, what content it must treat as untrusted, and who is accountable for approving and reviewing those boundaries. It must also ensure that recovery paths and backup controls are not reachable through the same credentials that let an agent change production systems. That discipline maps directly to ISO/IEC 42001, the international standard for AI management systems, but it also fills a gap in many current AI governance programs: governing not only models and policies but also the operational authority of agents acting inside enterprise workflows,” says Dr. Ken Knapton, adjunct research advisor for IDC’s IT Executive Programs (IEP).

IDC Survey Spotlight: For PC Procurement, How Are Concerns about the Memory Shortage Impacting Demand for Flexible Financing?

Lara Greden — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey Spotlight explores the extent of tech leader concerns about the memory shortage and how it impacts demand for flexible financing and service models. Understanding customer concerns regarding the memory shortage is important for qualifying opportunities: those who are concerned show significantly higher demand for flexible procurement options to address pricing and supply risks.

IDC Survey: Tracing the Supply Chain — Where Sustainability Tools Meet Procurement Reality

Amy Cravens — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey examines how organizations use sustainability software for supply chain and procurement. This survey explores the challenges that organizations face in building a sustainable supply chain and the tools used to address them: from supplier data and risk management to collaboration and emissions tracking.

"Supply chain is on almost every sustainability agenda, but it is not one workflow. Different teams carry different responsibilities, and they need different tools to meet them. Vendors that understand those differences will be best placed to support their customers," says Amy Cravens, research manager, Sustainability and ESG Software, IDC.

NATO Has Scheduled Its Quantum Tests But Not Its Quantum Migration

Alan Webber — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Note examines NATO’s first Quantum Technology Roadmap, published in summary on September 29, 2026, and compares it with the 2023 Quantum Technology Strategy it implements. The document assesses the road map’s dated activities; its gaps on cryptography migration, investment screening, and funding; and its implications for Allied defense and intelligence agencies and for the technology suppliers that serve them. It provides guidance for quantum sensing, cryptography, and computing suppliers.

“NATO has told suppliers when it will test, evaluate, and report. The date for switching its own networks to quantum-safe cryptography is the missing piece, and the 2027 action plan update is the first place it could appear,” says Alan Webber, program vice president for National Security, Defense, and Intelligence at IDC.

Q3 2026 AI Announcements and What They Mean for Edge Operating Models

Olga Yashkova — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Note reviews Q3 2026 AI announcements with implications for edge, including U.S. and EU policy, on-premises AI hardware, storage and security offerings, and Huawei’s device and robotics ecosystem. It draws on IDC’s EdgeView Survey 2026 and shows that edge is now business-critical and increasingly AI-funded, while operating models and governance lag.

“Edge has become business-critical faster than operating models have matured. Organizations that settle ownership and resilience, prove ROI, and plan infrastructure site by site before scaling AI will be best positioned to capture value,” said Olga Yashkova, Research Manager at IDC.

Salesforce Dreamforce 2026: Missionforce Turns One and What the Rest Means for Defense and National Security

Alan Webber — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Note examines Salesforce's Dreamforce 2026 event through a defense and national security lens. Salesforce marked one year of Missionforce, reporting 80% year-over-year growth in defense revenue and new NVIDIA and OpenAI capabilities for classified and air-gapped work. The event's commercial architecture, including post-trained NVIDIA models in trust-boundary design and Salesforce's new governance stack, is what Missionforce is now extending into government. Near-term value for government buyers stays concentrated in rules-based administrative work, not autonomous decisions, and a midevent outage is a reminder that resilience is as important as capability.

"The most important number out of Dreamforce was that defense grew faster than any other part of Salesforce's business this year, which tells you where government AI spending is actually heading," says Alan Webber, program vice president for National Security, Defense, and Intelligence at IDC.

The AI Software Factory: What Application Platforms Must Deliver to Build, Deploy, and Govern AI Applications and Agents

Matthew Flug — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Perspective examines what application platforms must deliver to build, deploy, run, and govern AI applications and agents. It identifies which platform capabilities carry over from conventional applications, which ones AI extends, and which ones are new across the three stages of the application life cycle: build; deploy and run; and manage, operate, and govern. The document positions the AI software factory as the layer that turns AI factory capacity into applications and agents running in production.

"AI has not changed what application platforms are for. They still exist to help teams build better applications faster. AI has changed how much work occurs after code is written, including evaluating nondeterministic outputs and governing what agents can do and on whose behalf. Vendors that compete on how quickly customers can build an agent, rather than how safely they can run one, will struggle to win production AI workloads," said Matthew Flug, research manager, Intelligent Application Modernization and Deployment Platforms, IDC.

Trends in Cloud Messaging and Integration

Rob Tiffany — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective examines how Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Alibaba Cloud, IBM Cloud, and Tencent Cloud are evolving their cloud messaging and integration portfolios, covering message buses, queues, notifications, data streams, data connectors, APIs, and events. It identifies six trends: agents as clients, Kafka convergence, larger and smarter events, elastic economics, cross-boundary security, and open standards. It closes with guidance that helps technology leaders match workloads to services, protect portability, govern agent access, and control costs.

“Messaging used to be part of the architecture nobody discussed until it failed. In 2026, it is where AI agents, real-time data, and hybrid governance meet,” explains Rob Tiffany, research director, Cloud Infrastructure at IDC. “Tech leaders that treat it as a strategic platform will move faster and spend less than those who leave it to chance.”