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After Declining 5.4% in 2025, WPP Restructures for Growth in 2028 With a Bold Two-Year Strategy

Douglas Hayward — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Perspective discusses WPP's restructuring for growth with a plan. WPP reported a second successive calendar year of net revenue decline, with a 5.4% fall for 2025. CEO Cindy Rose used the results to unveil Elevate28, a bold two-year plan to simplify WPP's structure, cut running costs, drive greater internal collaboration, make account management more entrepreneurial, and put greater emphasis on professional services. Key initiatives include the creation of WPP Enterprise Solutions, a renewed focus on media and data, and aggressive cost rationalization.

"The plan is ambitious and addresses long-standing structural issues and deserves to succeed," says Douglas Hayward, senior research director for CX strategies and services at IDC. "But WPP is up against the clock, and Elevate28's success will depend on effective execution, cultural-behavioral change, and the consequent ability to create differentiated cross-disciplinary offerings."

Data Modernization Strategies and Programs in National Civilian Government

Massimiliano Claps — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective analyzes how, with data becoming part and parcel of everyday work, governments are investing in data modernization strategies and programs that entail coordinated initiatives that transform legacy data architectures, talent, and governance into scalable, cloud-enabled, and analytics-ready environments.

"Senior government leaders are migrating and consolidating data platforms, adopting modern pipelines, implementing data quality and cataloging, strengthening security and compliance, and enabling self-service access. Effective data modernization aligns technology with business outcomes, establishes effective operating models, and nurtures skills to improve agility, reliability, and time-to-insight while unlocking advanced use cases such as AI and real-time decisioning," said Massimiliano Claps, research director, IDC Government Insights.

RSAC Conference 2026: Trust But Verify — Continuously, Identity at the Forefront of Nondeterministic Security

Emanuel Figueroa, Frank Dickson — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Identity did not suddenly become more important at RSAC 2026; it became impossible to ignore.

As in prior years, AI dominated the conference, but the tone had shifted. The industry moved beyond experimentation and into harder conversations about governance, enforcement, and containment at scale. Agentic AI, in particular, acted as a forcing function, exposing the growing mismatch between modern autonomous systems and identity architectures still optimized for static users and periodic review cycles. The principles of identity are unchanged as a result of agentic AI; however, the ramifications of not granularly executing identity core principles were apparent. Authorization is the word of the day.

Across vendor briefings, practitioner discussions, and executive‑level conversations, a consistent message emerged: identity systems designed for slower, more deterministic environments are under strain. Hybrid infrastructure, SaaS and ERP sprawl, nonhuman identities (NHIs), third‑party access, and autonomous agents are reshaping where risk emerges and how quickly it propagates. RSAC 2026 underscored that identity security is no longer a discrete product category; it is becoming the connective tissue across security, infrastructure, and operations.

SpendHQ Acquires Sligo AI: A Win-Win Deal That Accelerates Agentic Procurement

Patrick Reymann — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT

SpendHQ's April 2026 acquisition of Sligo AI represents a meaningful advance in enterprise procurement technology. The transaction combines SpendHQ's proven, normalized spend data foundation with Sligo's agentic AI infrastructure engineered for secure operation within enterprise constraints. Together, the firms address the persistent divide between analytics-driven insight and autonomous execution in procurement. The integrated platform is positioned to deliver structured outputs — including sourcing strategies, supplier evaluations, and contract analyses — while accommodating stringent data sovereignty requirements across deployment models. Execution risks remain in integration, narrative clarity, and AI governance, yet the strategic fit is compelling. IDC views the acquisition as positioning SpendHQ to evolve beyond performance management toward an autonomous orchestration platform serving mission-critical procurement operations.

Fujitsu Targets Scientific Advantage in Quantum Chemistry with STAR Architecture and Molecular Optimization

Heather West, PhD — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Fujitsu's latest announcement reflects a growing focus on making quantum computing practical in the near term by reducing hardware and computational barriers through architectural and algorithmic innovation. While still early, these developments signal meaningful progress toward enabling real-world quantum applications in areas such as drug discovery and advanced materials.

How AI Changes Digital Access into Accessibility

Melinda-Carol Ballou, Amy Loomis, Ph.D., Erica Spinoni — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective analyzes how AI is redefining digital accessibility from a compliance obligation into a strategic capability that drives inclusion, productivity, and innovation. By embedding accessibility into AI-enabled work, organizations expand participation, reduce risk, and unlock broader talent and creative potential across the enterprise.

"The journey to AI-driven accessibility is an ongoing transformation for organizations, one that requires vision, collaboration, and a commitment to continuous improvement. By embedding AI-supported checks and compliance for accessibility into every phase of technology adoption, organizations can ensure that digital innovation is truly inclusive and sustainable," said Erica Spinoni, IDC's Worldwide and EMEA AI-Enabled Future of Work.

IDC Market Glance: Embedded Finance, 1Q26

Jordan Steele — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT

The IDC Market Glance visually depicts a concise current-state view of the embedded finance ecosystem. It is a taxonomy document that defines the market's major segments and subsegments and highlights representative vendors to help technology suppliers and services providers assess competitive positioning, adjacency, and partnership opportunities.

IDC Survey Spotlight: Is Dynamic Content Optimization a Service, an App, or the Victim of AI Change?

Roger Beharry Lall — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey Spotlight examines the current state and near-term evolution of dynamic creative optimization (DCO) in the context of generative AI (GenAI) adoption among advertising organizations, focusing on whether GenAI is augmenting or displacing existing DCO operating models.

Drawing on survey data from B2B and B2C marketing and advertising leaders, the document assesses how organizations currently deploy DCO — across managed services, standalone platforms, and integrated solutions — and how these models are expected to evolve over the next 12 months.

MCP Dev Summit: Developers Driving the Future of Agentic Systems

Jim Mercer — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT

The MCP Dev Summit North America 2026 marked a pivotal transition in the evolution of agentic AI, moving from experimentation to scaling and making it a production reality. The Model Context Protocol (MCP) has rapidly emerged as a foundational integration layer for connecting AI agents to enterprise systems, data, and workflows. With strong momentum from the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF), the ecosystem is coalescing around open, interoperable standards. The event highlighted how developers are now central to operationalizing agentic systems, moving beyond isolated tools to composable, governed, and scalable architectures. As MCP matures alongside complementary frameworks such as Agent2Agent (A2A) communication and emerging commerce protocols, the industry is entering a phase where reliability, governance, and developer experience will define success.

Project Prometheus Disruption: $100 Billion for Industrial AI

Jeffrey Hojlo, Alessandro Perilli, Alan Webber, Simon Ellis — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective explores the opportunities and implications for the manufacturing and broader industrial market of Jeff Bezos’ new venture Project Prometheus, and the corresponding (prospective) $100 billion fund, an investment platform slated to potentially buy, AI enable, and operate manufacturing organizations.

“Radical transformation and collaboration need to happen to achieve the vision for automated, augmented, and predictive Industry 5.0 manufacturing and operations that meet customer needs more quickly, or speed innovation into new areas like autonomous driving, robotics, or advanced space exploration. Project Prometheus promises to be the enabling platform for this transformation, at least technically and financially. It remains to be seen how this venture will support the organizational enablement, training, and ongoing services necessary to realize the full potential of AI,” said Jeffrey Hojlo, research vice president, Industrial Ecosystems, Business Networks, and Manufacturing Insights, IDC.