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 Perspective highlights the transformative impact of generative AI (GenAI) in retail operations, focusing on the top 10 use cases available now for use in stores. This document covers the benefits of GenAI in enhancing employee productivity, ...
This IDC Tech Buyer Presentation provides a generative AI (GenAI) use case taxonomy for the media and entertainment (M&E) industry.
Many organizations are testing and exploring the impact of GenAI on the art and science of practicing ...
This IDC Tech Buyer Presentation highlights generative AI (GenAI) use case examples for the retail industry. The presentation focuses on five key aspects of retail business including experiential operations; merchandising and planning; omni-channel ...
This IDC Perspective highlights the urgent need for technology strategies that attract and retain employees and that automate routine tasks to free up associates to provide better customer service. Retailers face challenges from uncertain ...
These event proceedings were presented at the IDC Directions conferences in San Jose in April 2024.
Generative AI (GenAI) is having a profound impact across all industries. Nearly two out of five technology buyers report that generative ...
This IDC Market Perspective highlights major advances and announcements made at Google Cloud Next 2024, held in Las Vegas, April 9–11, emphasizing Google's strides in AI and GenAI across various industries. With a focus on industry-specific ...
These event proceedings were presented at the IDC Directions conferences in Boston in March 2024.
Generative AI (GenAI) is having a profound impact across all industries. Nearly two out of five technology buyers report that generative ...
This IDC Tech Buyer Presentation provides a view into IDC Retail Insights' store "super platform" concept, a modernized technology platform for the omni-channel store that allows retailers to become more agile and able to innovate faster ...
This IDC Market Presentation aims to provide technology suppliers with an overview of the key business trends shaping the Americas Food, Grocery, and Convenience Stores/Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) retail industry in 2024.
The ...
This IDC Perspective discusses the key trends and advancements in retail technology identified at NRF's Big Show 2024. It highlights the increasing approachability of store digitization; the importance of real-time inventory awareness; the ...
This IDC Perspective discusses the National Retail Federation's (NRF's) Big Show and Expo 2024, emphasizing the significant role of technology in digitizing and automating retail business to keep pace with consumers' omni-channel shopping ...
This IDC Tech Buyer Survey Spotlight assesses how retailers plan to invest in computer vision AI and RFID solutions to solve a wide array of store and supply chain challenges, the most urgent being shrink and loss of goods due to theft or ...
This IDC Market Perspective describes the leading impressions of IDC analysts who participated in the Infosys Analyst Days event held in San Diego on September 14–15, 2023, where the company presented a breadth of topics meant to update ...
This IDC PeerScape looks at how leading retail brands have been successfully using frontline workforce engagement technology to retain, train, and empower their employees and solve operational problems. Retailers should use this document ...
This IDC Market Presentation serves as our regional Industry Buyers Handbook, which helps technology vendors understand what drives buyers within the North American retail industry during their technology purchasing decisions. Vendors can ...
This IDC Tech Buyer Presentation is a primer on the adoption of generative AI (GenAI) and the leading GenAI use cases for six key industry segments: finance, energy, manufacturing, health and life sciences, government, and retail. Priorities, ...
This IDC Perspective defines a framework for a modern technology "super platform" for the store that allows retailers to become more agile and able to innovate faster in their never-ending quest to improve business performance by better ...
This IDC Survey Spotlight looks at data from IDC's 2023 Global Retail Operations Survey to determine which technology strategies retailers are using, by subvertical, to mitigate their most pressing pain points and store operations ...
This IDC study provides IDC's top 10 predictions for future of industry ecosystems.
"The move to more open, extended, pan-industry ecosystems is the next phase of digital transformation. Organizations continue to recognize that innovation ...
This IDC study provides IDC's top 10 predictions for the retail industry in 2024.
Leslie Hand, group vice president, IDC Retail and Financial Insights, emphasized, "Retailers are not investing in small step changes to their portfolios ...
This IDC Tech Buyer Presentation presented at the October 18, 2023, Retail Leadership Conference offers IDC Retail Insights Group Vice President Leslie Hand's current (October 2023) take on how retailers should think about their strategic ...
This IDC Market Perspective highlights major announcements made at Google Cloud Next held in San Francisco on August 29–31, 2023, with a focus on how they will impact the following industries — education, financial services, government, ...
This IDC Innovators document profiles five emerging vendors that offer computer vision AI solutions for automated checkout and self-checkout in stores. Computer vision at checkout can take many forms, including automated checkout with no ...
This IDC TechBrief examines the benefits, risks, success factors, adoption rate, and required investment for retailers considering implementing a workforce engagement platform for their frontline staff as part of their strategy to digitize ...
This IDC Market Presentation summarizes key findings gathered from IDC's 2023 Global Retail Survey on digital or technology-enabled initiatives across all retail business functions, products, and services. This survey polled 840 retailers ...