IDC Research Types
Analyst
Analyst Profile
Provides complete background information on an IDC analyst. Each profile provides a biography, a notable quotation, a frequently asked question relevant to the particular analyst's focus, and a list of research authored by that analyst.
Team Profile
Lists the analyst members of a topical team. Outlines general areas of coverage and any specialties.
Briefs
Vendor Profile
Provides a concise, hard-hitting profile of an emerging vendor. A profile will highlight new players and technologies and the potential paradigm shifts or disruptions a vendor represents.
IDC Perspective
The IDC Perspective is a flexible doc that seeks to help business and tech buyers assess their business and IT strategy and/or associated business processes, especially as it relates to the use of technology. The document can be used in areas such as:
- Strategy and planning
- Trends and observations
- IT spending and investment
- Vendor conferences and announcements
IDC TechBrief
The IDC TechBrief helps the technology or business executive get smart about a single technology in the context of the business by answering 6 business critical questions about the technology:
- What is the technology?
- When should I adopt it?
- What can it do for my business?
- What are the critical success factors?
- What are the risks?
- Who are the suppliers?
Market Note
The Market Note is a flexible doc that provides IDC analysis and point of view on an industry event, new product or service, or a company announcement or development or fast breaking news.
Market Perspective
The Market Perspective is a flexible doc that analyzes key changes and developments happening in the market. This flexible research type can be used to analyze areas such as:
- Competitive Environment
- Innovation & Market Opportunity
- New Business Models
- Partner & Channel Strategy
- Enterprise Strategies (targeted to supplier)
- Regulation
- Socioeconomics
Event Proceedings
Event Proceeding
Provides published slides, audio, and other materials from IDC and Insights Web conferences, briefings, forums, or other events.
Events
Conference
Delivers dependable, relevant, and high-impact data and insight to help organizations make sound business and technology decisions. eBusiness executives, IT professionals, IT suppliers, and services suppliers benefit from the strategic insight and networking opportunities IDC conferences offer. Generally, all presentation slides are available online, and for most conferences, streaming audio of key discussions is available as well.
Web Conference
Focuses on significant trends and paradigm shifts. Each Web conference will provide attendees with leading-edge market information that will enable them to make smart business decisions. For those unable to attend in person or those wishing to review the content presented, these synchronized multimedia presentations are available online.
IDC DecisionScapes
IDC FutureScape
Serves as a framework for IT/tech professionals' IT strategy and planning for the next one to three years. It lists IDC's top 10 worldwide technology trends for the coming one to three years in a given research area and includes related drivers, projected IT/business strategy impact, and guidance.
IDC MarketScape
Helps IT/tech professionals develop a short list of suitable suppliers when selecting a vendor. Provides an unbiased assessment of tech suppliers in terms of offerings, strategy, capabilities, and other important factors in a given technology area.
IDC MaturityScape
Describes five stages of "maturity" or capability for a particular technology area, helps IT/tech professionals understand where their organizations fit within those stages, and provides guidance on key components for planning successful improvements to a tech initiative.
IDC MaturityScape Benchmark
Helps IT/tech professionals to benchmark their maturity against peers, develop a business case for a tech initiative, and build consensus about where critical IT investments should be made. Presents quantitative research results that show the market distribution for a given tech initiative across the five stages of maturity presented in the related IDC MaturityScape. Shows the results and components of particularly successful initiatives.
IDC PeerScape
Gives IT/tech professionals insight into best practices (and practices to avoid) by providing specific use case examples implemented by peers. Identifies practices that have the most impact on the success of a tech or business initiative, and provides actionable guidance for each practice.
IDC PlanScape
Helps IT/tech professionals to justify and plan a business and/or technology investment or opportunity by exploring why, what, who, and how (these are also the main section headings). Presents key players, critical success factors, risks, and actions to consider for a designated technology and/or business management area.
IDC TechScape
Helps IT/tech professionals with developing IT strategic plans and evaluating emerging technologies in terms of their risk to the business. Shows the adoption curve and risk levels over time for a specific emerging technology. Sorts technologies into three "adoption model" categories (transformational, incremental, opportunistic) to help tech leaders determine the potential impact for their organization.
IDC Links
IDC Link
Provides timely context and insight around important market trends and events in a short opinion piece. IDC Links provide IDC's point of view on:
- Financial announcements
- Product announcements
- Mergers and acquisitions or divestitures
- Events
- Response to news
IDC Blink
IDC Blink
Provides timely context and insight around important market trends and events in a short opinion piece with a 2-minute audio clip. IDC Blinks provide IDC's point of view on:
- Financial announcements
- Product announcements
- Mergers and acquisitions or divestitures
- Events
- Response to news
Pivot Tables
Pivot Table
Presents an interactive spreadsheet tool for analyzing trends and activities in a specific market segment. These tables are available only through an annual subscription service.
Presentations
IDC Survey
Presents a hypothesis about what is happening in the market backed by the results of a demand-side or supply-side survey. The focus is on interpreting and analyzing the survey results and providing a strong point of view along with actionable advice.
IDC Survey Spotlight
Answers a timely question and provides a strong opinion backed by IDC survey data. This is a quick nugget of information that is presented in two concise PowerPoint slides.
Market Presentation
Provides an easy-to-use format to post on the Web presentations that were previously delivered at public forums (such as conferences and events) or for internal client meetings and client presentations. It may not come as part of a consulting/custom engagement.
Market Analysis Perspective
Delivers a concise current state view of a market and insight into the impact of future trends. Business executives, product managers, and MI/AR professionals can use this information when looking to understand buyers' perspectives and market impacts.
Tech Buyer Presentation
Provides an easy-to-use format to post on the Web presentations that were previously delivered at public forums (such as conferences and events) or for internal client meetings and client presentations. It may not come as part of a consulting/custom engagement.
IDC Market Glance
Provides a look at the landscape of a tech market, including competitive positioning, adjacent segments, and potential partner opportunities.
Press Releases
Press Release
Announces significant corporate news, such as key hirings or promotions, performance milestones, event highlights, or speaking engagements.
Product Information
Fact Sheet
Describes a research product. Usually details the major areas of coverage and deliverables, and outlines key questions and competitive market conditions that the research will address. Includes links to all published research for a research product.
Studies
Industry Developments and Models
Provides a detailed assessment of a specific target market's expansion pattern. This analysis helps clients develop and deploy the right mix of value-add products, programs, or services to support their sales and/or partnering efforts.
Market Forecast
Provides the future of a single market or a group of related markets. It presents a new or updated market forecast, including key drivers and assumptions used in the forecast.
Market Share
Provides data on market size, regional allocations, and platform splits as well as a summary of vendor shares for the most recently completed period (year, quarter).
Special Study
Provides a one-time study produced by a research group that is not published as a deliverable under a subscription service.
Taxonomy
Highlights and emphasizes how IDC tracks the market while also making it easier for customers to find and identify IDC Taxonomy documents.
Technology Assessment
Provides an analysis of the intricacies of an emerging or established technology or the technologies contained within a specific product.
IDC Innovators
IDC Innovators is aimed at informing IT buyers about emerging vendors with an innovative new technology or ground-breaking business model. Vendors identified in the document as innovators are linked together within a specific market area and around solving or alleviating a common business problem. Vendors included have annual revenue under $100 million at the time of selection.
Technology Segment
The IDC Technology Segment offers CEMA clients a comprehensive view of a technology segment in one country or subregion and provides a market view and forecast and/or market share and vendor profiles, including performances and strategies. It is specifically intended to serve smaller country markets and subregions.
This IDC Market Note examines the movements of Google's IaaS networking services highlighted at the recently concluded Google Cloud Next 2024, held in Las Vegas. Further analysis of IDC learnings from this event are provided by IDC Links ...
This IDC study delves into the market, technology, applications, and major providers of IaaS service mesh solutions. The study includes demand-side research into service mesh use and approaches, along with profiles of five public cloud providers: ...
This IDC Perspective discusses tool sprawl, which happens when businesses accumulate software over time without keeping track of what is in use, how it is being used, who is using it, and whether it is still a good fit for the business. ...
This IDC Perspective discusses IDC's Future of Digital Infrastructure framework, updated for 2024, that provides enterprise decision-makers with an updated view on how emerging innovations and disruptions across the digital infrastructure ...
This IDC Survey Spotlight provides insights into the primary driving forces and anticipated top rewards for enterprises looking to heighten automation across their network infrastructure. The list covers a wide range of both tactical and ...
This IDC Survey presents the worldwide monthly technology investment monitor for November 2023. IT leaders closed out 2023 in a challenging position. They became more concerned about potential economic disruptions in 2024, but they also ...
This IDC study provides IDC's forecast for the enterprise network observability market for the 2023–2027 period.
"Network observability is driven by a host of industry leading technologies and practices. Cloud services, machine learning, ...
This IDC Market Note discusses Cisco's acquisition of Splunk that positions both companies, and their customers, for greater success in this hyper-connected, ever-threatened, and data-intensive digital era. Potential synergies and advancements ...
This IDC Survey presents select results from IDC's 2023 Future Enterprise Resiliency and Spending (FERS) Survey, Wave 10. Contained survey data indicates the current state and future movement of observability technologies, ...
This IDC Market Analysis Perspective (MAP) presents an overarching view into the enterprise network observability and automation market. It includes industry and competitive insights, buyer incentives and intentions, outlook into technology ...
This IDC study provides IDC's 2024 top 10 predictions for future of connectedness.
"The enterprise road map to becoming agile and connected will be one that requires a continued shift toward cloud connectivity, where ubiquitous access ...
This IDC study provides IDC's top 10 predictions for the future of digital infrastructure for 2024.
"The digital infrastructure ecosystem will be heavily impacted by GenAI in the coming years," explains Mary Johnston Turner, research ...
This IDC Survey Spotlight provides a ranked list of desired supplier capabilities and practices when enterprises are looking to heighten observability across their technology infrastructure. The list covers a wide range of requirements — ...
This IDC Survey Spotlight provides a ranking of attributes for observability solutions providing intelligence and insights into conditions and components across an entire end-to-end digital infrastructure. It draws a focus on not only domain-specific ...
This IDC Perspective discusses how network observability solutions represent the next generation of network management and serve as the right match at the right time for the hyper-connected digital business model. Continual and comprehensive ...
This IDC Market Note highlights the top takeaways in network management at Cisco Live US 2023. Overall, Cisco Live US had a strong focus on serving the attendees. Product announcements, coming advancement, and even the "AI everywhere" emphasis ...
This IDC Perspective discusses network observability and the advantages of a cloud-based SaaS delivery model. As network requirements become more complex and critical and experience with cloud-based services (e.g., IaaS, SaaS) builds, the ...
This IDC Perspective discusses the top trends in network observability. Onrushing digital business demands, continual technology advancements, and ever-improving IT practices are all applying more and more pressure on the network infrastructure ...
This IDC Survey presents the results of multiple waves of IDC's 2022 and 2023 Future of Enterprise Resiliency and Spending (FERS) Survey. All contained results highlight pressing requirements, connectivity plans, and expected gains ...
This IDC Survey Spotlight identifies the anticipated IT budget movement for infrastructure, automation, and security management solutions. When compared with 2022 spending levels, most organizations are planning to spend more on these solutions ...
This IDC study presents our taxonomy for the enterprise network infrastructure market as covered in the quarterly Worldwide Network Infrastructure Tracker. It provides the definitions of Ethernet switch, router, WLAN, and IaaS networking. ...
This IDC Survey Spotlight identifies which IT spending areas are least likely to see any budget reduction resulting from continued or even increased economic pressures. In essence, the responses identify those IT initiatives and technologies ...
This IDC Perspective delves into the role of tools, talent, and teamwork in network and networking staff success. IT organizations are under tremendous pressure to deliver on the promise of the digital business model. And at the center of ...
This IDC study offers 2021 vendor market shares and market activity across the worldwide enterprise network performance management (NPM) market. Visibility and control have become vital across all areas of IT — from networking to computing, ...
This IDC Market Perspective highlights the top trends in network observability for 2023. Onrushing digital business demands, continual technology advancements, and ever-improving IT practices are all applying more and more pressure on the ...