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10 Things to Know About Consumer AI

Greg Ireland — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Presentation identifies 10 key things to know about consumer engagement with AI. From how consumers are using AI today to how AI is poised to further disrupt the ways consumers use the internet, engage in online commerce, and plan their lives, these 10 things highlight the major characteristics and opportunities across the consumer AI market. The presentation draws from IDC's 2025 GenAI for Content Creators and Consumers Survey to present a concise list of key takeaways that have implications for B2B and B2B2C companies.

"Consumers continue to use AI apps and services for an increasingly expanding range of tasks," said Greg Ireland, senior director, Consumer Markets and GenAI for Content Creators and Consumer research, IDC. "The door is wide open for AI to transform consumer ecosystems and the consumer digital economy in the years ahead."

AWS re:Invent 2025: Interconnected and Secure by Design

Michelle Abraham, Philip Bues, Frank Dickson, Emanuel Figueroa — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 05:00:00 GMT

AWS re:Invent 2025 underscored the company’s commitment to AI-driven innovation and security. Generative and agentic AI were central, with Amazon Bedrock AgentCore introducing policy enforcement and quality evaluation to help organizations deploy AI agents securely and in compliance with enterprise standards. Security enhancements, such as GuardDuty Extended Threat Detection, Unified and Simplified Security Hub and the preview of AWS Security Agent, reflect AWS’s ongoing investment in proactive, integrated protection.

As Matt Garman, AWS CEO, emphasized, “What drives us every day is giving you all the freedom to invent.” This ethos was evident throughout the conference, with AWS’s focus on agentic AI, embedded security, and intuitive procurement empowering organizations to innovate confidently. IDC notes that AWS’s approach—centered on automation, governance, and ecosystem openness—positions it to support customers’ evolving needs in an increasingly solution-centric cloud landscape.

Market Analysis Perspective: Worldwide Accounts Payable Applications, 2025

Kevin Permenter — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Analysis Perspective provides insight into the current and future state of the worldwide accounts payable (AP) applications market. It includes an overview of the current market landscape, a technology buyer perspective, a market outlook, and IDC's advice for technology suppliers in this market.

Worldwide IT Operations Management Software Market Shares, 2024: A Market in Motion

Shannon Kalvar, Stephen Elliot — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC presentation examines the 2024 market shares of the leading vendors in the IT operations management software market.

"IT operations management software allows enterprises to ensure that the innovations they create can be deployed and used at scale and at an ongoing price the enterprise can afford."— Shannon Kalvar, research director, IDC's Enterprise Systems Management, Enterprise Client Platforms, Observability, and AIOps

AWS Fills in Its Continuum of Container Services

Gary Chen — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 05:00:00 GMT

AWS' evolution of Lambda, ECS, and EKS blurs the lines between serverless and containers, with more customization options for abstractions and managed control and data planes. This creates more overlaps between the services but offers a more robust continuum that can address a broader range of modern workloads.

Accelerating the GEO Era: Adobe's Semrush Play and the Race for Digital Visibility

James McCormick, Roger Beharry Lall, Gerry Murray, Heather Hershey — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Note examines Adobe's announcement of the company's intent to acquire Semrush for $1.9 billion and the implications for the emerging generative engine optimization (GEO) market. The move combines Adobe's strengths in content supply chain, analytics, and experience orchestration with Semrush's extensive web index and visibility intelligence across search, social, and LLM-driven channels. Together, the companies aim to give brands a unified view of how they surface across both owned and earned environments as AI-powered discovery accelerates.

The acquisition reflects Adobe's growing commitment to GEO and the company's recognition that brand visibility is shifting beyond traditional SEO toward machine-mediated experiences. While strategically well aligned, success will depend on clear packaging, thoughtful integration, and maintaining the innovation pace that has made Semrush influential in its category.

Overall, the deal positions Adobe to play a central role in shaping the next phase of digital discoverability and provides an early signal of how the GEO landscape may evolve as vendors converge content, data, and AI-driven visibility capabilities.

Agentforce and Data 360, Salesforce's "Momentum Drivers"

Adam Reeves — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 05:00:00 GMT

Following up on Dreamforce, held in October, which was very focused on Agentforce, on December 3, 2025, Salesforce announced results for its third quarter fiscal 2026 ended October 31, 2025. The company reported $10.3 billion in total revenue ($9.7 billion from subscription and support, excluding professional services and other) and announced it was raising its full-year revenue guidance from $41.45 billion to $41.55 billion. During the call, Marc Benioff, chair and CEO, noted that "Agentforce and Data 360 products are the momentum drivers."

Containers Drive Infrastructure Software Modernization

Gary Chen — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey Spotlight highlights data from IDC's October 2025 Future Enterprise Resiliency and Spending Survey, which shows that containers are the top factor driving infrastructure software modernization strategy for 2026.

ESAT and EX Are Rising Concerns for AI Deployment and Transformation

Zachary Chertok — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey Spotlight highlights the growing concerns regarding employee satisfaction (ESAT) and employee experience EX) related to AI deployment and transformation. Early AI deployments put employees on edge and their employers on the back foot as the new technology operates and drives impact differently than deterministic automation tools. As ESAT falls out of bed amid a push for financial improvement, companies need to slow down and strategize on what AI can deliver apart from the irreplaceable value they get from their workforce at all levels of employment. To manage best practices in resulting business change and transformation, a rising number of business leaders are looking to their tech suppliers and service providers for guidance beyond solution purchase and deployment.

Engineering and Operational Technology Services Buyers — Business Priorities for the Next 12–24 Months

Mukesh Dialani — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey Spotlight highlights business priorities related to current and potential buyers of digital engineering and operational technology services. Engineering services providers must evaluate this insight and apply it uniquely to their new customer outreach and existing partnership actions and focus on those categories that demonstrate the highest opportunity. It is important that engineering services providers communicate their ability to provide related services across the entire life cycle. As can be seen from the data, leading business needs include building better products, increasing productivity and ROI, driving innovation, and modernizing operations.

The data is sourced from IDC's 2025 Services Path Survey, which provides comprehensive data and guidance by analyzing feedback from global services buyers of professional services, outsourcing services, managed services, and engineering services, including a deep dive into 14 services markets: application testing/digital assurance/quality engineering services; business consulting services; customer care business process services; customer experience services; digital business transformation professional services; digital engineering and operational technology (DEOT) services; employee experience management services; enterprise intelligence services; environmental, social, and governance (ESG) business services; HR and talent management outsourcing services; IT consulting and systems integration services; managed cloud services; procurement business process services; and talent acquisition outsourcing services. Coverage includes adoption; budgeting trends; purchasing preferences and attitudes; pricing and contract options; friction points related to selection, contracting, and managing delivery; and detailed customer satisfaction ratings for vendors in the 14 services markets.