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AI Agents in IT Service Management: Trends to Know

Snow Tempest — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective discusses trends in recent vendors' announcements related to AI agents in IT service management, including specialized AI agents for employee service and incident management, as well as AI frameworks and data fabrics from vendors in IT service management and related fields.

"As applications shift to agents, both the practice of IT service management and IT itself are transforming," said Snow Tempest, research manager, IT Service Management, IDC.

Agentic Leap: Coforge’s Strategic Acquisition of Encora Redefines AI-Native Software Product Engineering

Abhishek Mukherjee, Mukesh Dialani — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Note examines Coforge’s acquisition of Encora for $2.35 billion, which represents a strategic acceleration of its transition toward AI-led and agentic software engineering services. While the premium valuation and integration complexity increase execution risk, IDC believes that the acquisition positions Coforge to compete more effectively in a services market increasingly shaped by generative AI, agentic architectures, and outcome-driven delivery models.

According to Mukesh Dialani, research VP, Digital Engineering and Operational Technology Services, “Coforge’s acquisition of Encora is less about adding scale and more about accelerating its shift toward AI-native and agentic engineering services. By bringing together Encora’s platform-led, AI-first engineering capabilities and Coforge’s execution discipline and industry focus, the company is positioning itself to compete more effectively in a market where buyers increasingly expect measurable business outcomes from AI and not just productivity gains.”

IT for Circularity: Vendor Offerings and Best Practices (Part One)

Katharina Grimme, Melvie Espejo — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective evaluates six leading technology vendors in the IT for Circularity space, highlighting their solution portfolios, capabilities, and best practice examples. It provides guidance for tech buyers navigating regulatory requirements who seek to leverage traceability, data management, and AI-powered tools to accelerate circularity initiatives, achieve compliance, and unlock business value. This is the first of two reports analyzing key tech vendor offerings and real-world applications.

"In the race toward circularity, technology is not just an enabler but the catalyst redefining value, resilience, and innovation across tomorrow's supply chains," says Katharina Grimme, AVP and EMEA sustainability research lead, IDC.

Tech Buyer Survey Spotlight: How Do Contact Centers Plan to Leverage GenAI Technology in Their Operations?

Raymond Pucci — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Tech Buyer Survey Spotlight provides insights from IDC's 2025 Worldwide Business Process Services Survey, where enterprises report how they plan to use GenAI solutions for customer support services.

Unlocking Deeper Insights: How Modern Financial Accounting Software Fuels Strategic Decision-Making

Kevin Permenter, Heather Herbst — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Perspective examines the transformation of financial accounting software from traditional systems of record to platforms that actively shape business decisions. It analyzes how evolving buyer expectations, regulatory pressures, and the proliferation of AI are redefining competitive differentiation. This document highlights the critical importance of explainable intelligence, robust data foundations, and embedded governance for product leaders seeking to deliver trusted, actionable insights at scale. Strategic guidance is provided for technology suppliers and investors navigating the shift toward insight-driven finance platforms.

"Product leaders face a difficult balancing act. Pushing too quickly into autonomous intelligence risks credibility. Moving too slowly risks commoditization. The winners will be those that invest in data foundations, embed explainable intelligence where it meaningfully reduces decision friction, and align road maps with how finance teams actually operate under pressure." — Kevin Permenter, senior research director, Financial Applications and Agents, IDC

"Trust in finance is built on traceable truth. Data integrity and lineage give the CFO the confidence to stand behind every figure, every forecast, and every story told to the market and the board." — Heather Herbst, research director, CFO Buyer Insights (previously CFO Tech Agenda), IDC

Esri Vendor Profile: A Foundational Enterprise Platform for State and Local Governments

Ruthbea Yesner — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Vendor Profile examines Esri's strategy, capabilities, and outlook in the state and local government market. It assesses how Esri supports core government missions such as urban planning, infrastructure management, public safety, environmental sustainability, equity analysis, and community engagement and how emerging investments in geospatial AI (GeoAI), digital twins, and cloud partnerships may shape Esri's future role in government transformation.

IDC Survey Spotlight: Which Obstacles Limit Developer Productivity?

Adam Resnick — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey Spotlight examines obstacles that hinder software developer productivity. Survey respondents identified barriers from a list including meetings, context switching, insufficient talent, technical debt, and unclear requirements. The key finding is that 77% of developers face substantial productivity friction, with collaboration overhead and talent challenges representing the largest opportunities for AI-powered tooling to reduce friction and accelerate development cycles. The first slide displays survey results while the second slide provides analysis and strategic implications for software development tool users and vendors.

OpenAI Frontier Foregrounds Context and Governance for Enterprise Agents

Arnal Dayaratna — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 05:00:00 GMT

OpenAI has introduced Frontier as a platform for building, deploying, and managing enterprise agents that operate across business systems. Unlike ChatGPT, which targets consumer and individual productivity use cases, Frontier addresses enterprise workflows that span multiple systems, extend over hours or days, and require continuity as work progresses. The platform positions OpenAI as both a vendor for agent deployment and management and a model provider. Frontier foregrounds business context, operational evaluation, and governance as first-class requirements for production use, which suggests OpenAI expects enterprises to treat agents as operational systems that can be supervised, measured, and refined over time rather than as one-off builds.

Automation, AI, and Agentic AI for FoW: Worldwide Tech Buyer Perspective

Erica Spinoni, Amy Loomis, Ph.D. — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey explores the state of AI and agentic AI adoption in the workplace, highlighting global and regional differences in maturity, investment priorities, and organizational readiness. Our 2025 Future of Work Survey among 1,440 business leaders worldwide finds that organizations have implemented AI‑enabled work models, but most continue to evaluate AI investments through a short‑term efficiency lens rather than long‑term innovation.

"As organizations race to embed AI into the Future of Work, we see a widening gap between aspiration and execution. Most companies still evaluate AI through short‑term productivity gains, overlooking the transformative potential of innovation‑led outcomes. The companies that will lead in 2026 are those that invest not only in AI solutions, but also in the operating models, centers of excellence, and cross‑functional alignment needed to turn AI from isolated pilots into having enterprisewide impact," said Erica Spinoni, senior research analyst, IDC's Worldwide and EMEA AI-Enabled Future of Work.

EMEA C-Suite AI Outlook and Perception on Technology Providers, 2026

Martina Longo — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey investigates how EMEA C-suite executives think AI impacts operations and decision-making and identifies key stakeholders in AI funding decisions, including AI centers of excellence (COEs). It also provides insights into the strategic role of technology partners for AI and digital initiatives.

This analysis is based on responses from the EMEA sample (300 respondents) of IDC's Worldwide C-Suite Tech Survey, conducted from August to September 2025.