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IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Retail Marketplace Platforms Software Providers 2026 Vendor Assessment

Ornella Urso, Cristiano Quattrini — Wed, 27 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study examines the key strategies and capabilities of global technology providers that enable the design, deployment, and scaling of retail marketplace platforms. This assessment evaluates vendors' strengths, including the breadth of marketplace functionality across seller onboarding, catalog aggregation, transaction management, and ecosystem orchestration, as well as the depth of capabilities supporting governance, monetization, and operational execution. It also assesses vendors' understanding of the specific challenges associated with operating multisided retail platforms, including partner management, data quality, fulfillment coordination, and customer experience consistency, ultimately enabling organizations to build and scale marketplace-driven business models.

In addition, this study evaluates vendors' ability to support ecosystem expansion through integrations and partner networks; their commitment to innovation across areas such as artificial intelligence, automation, and data-driven optimization; and their capacity to deliver measurable business outcomes through scalable, secure, and flexible platform architectures. The assessment also considers vendors' customer engagement models, including onboarding, enablement, and ongoing support, as well as their ability to adapt to evolving market dynamics, regional requirements, and emerging marketplace use cases across both B2C and B2B environments.

"Retail marketplaces are rapidly becoming the foundational architecture for next-generation commerce. The ability to orchestrate complex ecosystems of sellers, services, and data is emerging as a critical differentiator. Technology providers that can combine robust operational capabilities with scalable architectures, ecosystem enablement, and AI-driven intelligence will be best positioned to support retailers in transitioning from transactional commerce to platform-based growth models," said Cristiano Quattrini, senior associate advisor, IDC Retail Insights.

Red Hat Hardened Images Delivers a Supported, Minimized Base Image Catalog Built on Its Open Source Software Factory

Katie Norton — Wed, 27 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Red Hat Hardened Images brings a no-cost catalog of minimized container base images to market, built on the same software supply chain foundation Red Hat uses across its broader portfolio. The new offering gives Red Hat customers a lower-friction path to adopting hardened images and reinforces hardened images as an increasingly mainstream software supply chain control.

2026 Oracle Restaurant Summit: How Oracle Is Siezing the Assembly Line Moment and Bringing Industrial-Scale AI to Restaurants

Dorothy Creamer — Tue, 26 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective discusses how Oracle is seizing the assembly line moment and bringing industrial-scale AI to restaurants. Oracle used the 2026 Restaurant Summit to reinforce a strategic repositioning that restaurant technology is no longer a standalone domain but a node in a broader consumer industries platform that spans retail, hospitality, supply chain, and enterprise infrastructure. The co-location with Oracle Retail Cross Talk 2026 was a visible expression of the company's commitment to put restaurant operators in the same room as retail leaders to experience the shared platform, shared AI capabilities, and shared partner ecosystem that Oracle is building across all three verticals.

"The gap between technology aspiration and operational reality is closing as brands like Oracle commit to 'make the unbelievable believable,'" says Dorothy Creamer, senior research manager, Hospitality and Travel Digital Strategies at IDC. "The 2026 Oracle Restaurant Summit served as a reminder that as our expectations for AI often outpace benefits, it is important to remain rooted in operational reality. Building solutions and platforms against a foundation of trust, choice, and scale, as Oracle aims to continue to do, will translate that potential into a practical and successful reality with tangible outcomes."

Arqiva: Scaling CRM Toward a Unified Workflow Across Customer Service and Field Operations

Ornella Urso, Alex Holtz — Tue, 26 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective examines Arqiva's strategic consolidation of fragmented operational systems into a unified enterprise workflow platform, partnering with ServiceNow, enabling end-to-end (E2E) visibility across customer service, field operations, and portfolio management. Initially driven by the need to replace multiple disconnected service management systems, the program evolved into a broader digital maturity strategy centered on workflow automation, AI augmentation, and knowledge digitization.

"Arqiva's experience underscores the necessity of modernizing core systems as a prerequisite to effective workflow automation," says Ornella Urso, research director, IDC. "Rather than approaching consolidation as a straightforward IT replacement exercise, Arqiva's journey illustrates the value of treating such initiatives as holistic business transformations, where operational processes, governance, and organizational culture are equally addressed."

Day Zero: Getting the Organization AI-Ready — Agentic Ways of Working Series

Matthew Flug, Douglas Hayward, Bill Latshaw — Tue, 26 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Presentation identifies the organizational and technical preparations that enterprises must address before deploying AI agents at scale. Drawing on IDC survey data, the presentation maps readiness gaps across data management, culture, skills, trust, and workflow design. It provides a structured Day Zero framework across six domains: data readiness, culture and planning, intelligent workflows, AI models and infrastructure, testing and governance, and observability and monitoring. This presentation is part of IDC's Agentic Ways of Working Series.

"Enthusiasm for AI agents is high, but most organizations are not yet prepared in terms of data governance, culture, skills, trust, or workflow readiness to operationalize them effectively. Organizations that align data, culture, processes, and governance before agents are deployed are well-positioned to scale agentic AI with confidence and deliver quantifiable business outcomes," says Matthew Flug, research manager, Intelligent Application Modernization and Deployment Platforms at IDC.

Dell Technologies World 2026: AI Focus Dominates Dell's Storage Roadmap

Natalya Yezhkova, Carol Sliwa, Ashish Nadkarni — Tue, 26 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT

At Dell Technologies World (DTW) 2026, the company made a series of announcements spanning primary storage, object storage, cyber resiliency, and data management for AI workloads, reflecting a broader industry shift toward treating storage as a foundational layer in an AI infrastructure stack. Core announcements included Dell PowerStore Elite, an upgrade to its all-flash storage system; enhancements to the Dell AI Data Platform, including new orchestration and search capabilities; a new high-density ObjectScale X7700 storage appliance; and the completion of the Exascale Storage portfolio with the forthcoming addition of PowerFlex block storage.

Hannover Messe 2026: The Time of Execution Is Now

Gunjan Bassi, Sarah Lee, Lorenzo Veronesi — Tue, 26 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective discusses the collective theme at Hannover Messe 2026 (HM26) and demonstrates tangible examples of industrial AI functioning effectively on the factory floor. HM26 marked a pivotal shift as industrial AI moved from pilot projects to real-world deployment, fundamentally transforming manufacturing operations. AI is now embedded at the core of industrial systems, with unified data platforms, agentic AI, digital twins, and robotics driving operational efficiency. The event highlighted the urgency of data integration, governance, and workforce readiness, emphasizing that execution speed, rather than technology access, will define future industrial competitiveness.

"Industrial AI is transforming the manufacturing industry, changing the way companies think about innovation and productivity. Instead of just playing a supporting role, industrial AI is now at the heart of driving efficiency, operational excellence, and helping manufacturers stay competitive," says Gunjan Bassi, research manager, Worldwide Industrial Internet of Things and Intelligence Strategies at IDC.

"Industrial AI is no longer a future ambition; it is here and now. But what many manufacturers fail to realize is that it's the operating core. It is the differentiator between going from a successful POC to full wide-scale deployment," says Sarah Lee, research director, IDC Manufacturing Insights.

"Manufacturers that treat execution platforms modernization and industrial AI deployment as separate programs, to be sequenced one after the other, will find that by the time they get to the MES, the AI deployment has already locked them into an architectural pattern that the new MES cannot support. These are one program, and they need to be designed together," says Lorenzo Veronesi, associate research director, Worldwide Smart Manufacturing Strategies at IDC.

IDC Market Glance: EMEA Enterprise Resource Planning, 2Q26

Ashok Patel, Bo Lykkegaard — Tue, 26 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Glance provides a snapshot of the Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications ecosystem as of March 2026. It helps technology suppliers, services providers, and buyers understand the competitive landscape across ERP platforms and adjacent enterprise applications supporting finance, procurement, and workforce operations, as well as the systems integrators enabling ERP deployments.

NVIDIA FY 1Q27 Results: Scaling the Intelligence Economy

Matthew Eastwood, Ashish Nadkarni — Tue, 26 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Red Hat Summit 2026: From Orbit to the Factory Floor-Edge Computing as Enterprise Strategy

Olga Yashkova — Tue, 26 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Red Hat Summit 2026 was held in Atlanta from May 11 to 13, 2026, during which Red Hat highlighted the growing importance of edge computing as a core enterprise infrastructure strategy. The company made several announcements to showcase the evolution of its open source platforms across highly distributed and demanding environments, ranging from low-Earth orbit and industrial edge deployments to sovereign AI cloud infrastructures.