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IDC TechScape: Worldwide Sustainable AI Infrastructure Management, 2026

Bjoern Stengel — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC TechScape evaluates 18 technology markers shaping sustainable AI infrastructure management — covering advanced cooling, power and grid integration, compute efficiency, measurement and accountability, and water and circularity. Global datacenter electricity consumption is forecast to grow from 397TWh in 2024 to 915TWh by 2028 (23.3% CAGR), as AI workload power density outpaces growth in low-carbon supply. IDC's 2026 AI and Sustainability Survey (n = 1,570) finds 83% of organizations rate AI as very or extremely important to their sustainable transformation and 82% plan to increase investment.

This report is designed for infrastructure and platform leaders responsible for the energy, water, and carbon performance of AI deployments, and for sustainability and operations executives whose ESG targets and regulatory disclosures depend on AI infrastructure decisions.

"AI's energy footprint is growing faster than the grid can decarbonize it. We are projecting datacenter electricity demand to nearly double by 2028, and carbon emissions will still rise even as clean energy supply expands — growth in demand is outpacing supply," said Bjoern Stengel, global sustainability research and practice lead at IDC. The good news is that the highest-leverage interventions are already available: the six Transformational markers in this IDC TechScape — power capping, inference optimization, carbon-aware scheduling, and AI-driven cooling — deliver measurable impact today, at the software and silicon layer, without waiting for the infrastructure cycle to catch up. Our data shows advanced organizations are already capturing sustainable AI business value at 26 times the rate of beginners. That gap will widen as regulatory pressure compounds market scrutiny — and the organizations that wait will face both the carbon liability and the competitive cost."

Orange Business' New Trust the Future Strategy, 2026

Masarra Mohamed, Jitesh Bhayani — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Note examines Orange Business' Insights 2026 analyst event, where the company set out its Trust the Future strategy: a convergence of its transformation programs into a single AI-first platform business, anchored by a landmark partnership with Tech Mahindra and an increasingly product-level commitment to sovereignty that now spans cloud, connectivity, edge computing, IoT, and customer experience. IDC assesses the strategy as credible and differentiated, with execution risk concentrated in the Tech Mahindra transition and in converting trust and sovereignty into monetizable, at-scale revenue.

"Orange Business used Insights 2026 to show that Trust the Future is an acceleration of a strategy IDC has tracked since 2023, not a new direction, and one now backed by revenue, reference customers, and a coherent leadership narrative," said Jitesh Bhayani, research vice president, Worldwide Telecommunications Services at IDC.

Edge AI in 1H26: From Pilot to Production Across the Edge

Olga Yashkova — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective examines what changed in edge AI between January and June 2026, the barriers that remain, and the actions technology buyers should take now. Physical AI, memory cost pressures, and mature on-device silicon pushed edge deployments from pilots to production, while agentic AI reached industries from manufacturing to telecom. The main barrier ahead is not hardware; it is orchestration and governance, as regulation moves from theoretical to operational under the EU AI Act and Cyber Resilience Act.

“1H26 marked a shift from isolated edge devices to integrated deployments. Physical AI, memory economics, and agentic orchestration are converging to push intelligence to the device; the hardware is ready. The remaining challenge is ensuring governance and fleet management keep pace with the speed of deployment,” said Olga Yashkova, research manager, Worldwide Telecommunications Services at IDC.

IDC Survey Spotlight: Quantum Risk Has Entered the Identity Road Map — So Why Is Everyone Still Stuck at Pilot?

Emanuel Figueroa, Joel Stradling — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey Spotlight examines results from IDC’s Digital Identity Services Survey showing that post-quantum cryptography (PQC) has moved beyond theoretical discussion and into active planning and implementation for many organizations. Nearly 60% of respondents report piloting or rolling out PQC initiatives, indicating that quantum preparedness is becoming a tangible component of identity security strategy. While awareness of quantum risks is widespread, the research highlights a growing challenge in moving from pilot projects to enterprise-wide deployment. Organizations increasingly view quantum resilience as a strategic security priority alongside AI and zero trust initiatives, reflecting concerns about future cryptographic vulnerabilities and long-term data protection. As a result, the conversation has shifted from raising awareness of quantum threats to establishing practical migration strategies that accelerate adoption at scale.

PC Processor Market Share and Forecast Charts 1Q26

Phil Solis — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Presentation includes select charts of data from the pivot table Worldwide PC Processor Vendor Market Shares and Market Forecast, 1Q26. It includes 1Q25 and full-year 2024 shipment shares and revenue shares. It also includes a bar chart of historical quarterly shipments and shares by vendor with total market sizes and year-over-year changes. Finally, it includes historical and forecast shipments by processor architecture (x86 and Arm).

Quantinuum and Quanta: Borrowing from Classical Compute to Build the Future Quantum

Heather West, PhD — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Quantinuum's partnership with Quanta Computer highlights a growing "build, buy, or borrow" divide in how quantum vendors are addressing the engineering and manufacturing complexity required to move from laboratory-grade processors to deployable enterprise systems. As enterprise adoption moves toward production, IDC expects the ability to integrate quantum computing with existing AI, HPC, cloud, and data infrastructure to become an increasingly important competitive differentiator, making the strength and execution of a vendor's partner ecosystem as important to technology buyers as the performance of the underlying quantum processor.

The New Cloud Edge: Emerging Workloads, Drivers, and Placement Advice for Asia/Pacific Enterprise Decision-Makers

Daphne Chung — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective examines the trends, drivers, and challenges reshaping edge investment across Asia/Pacific and presents a four-tier placement framework — latency, sovereignty, economics, and autonomy — to guide workload placement decisions.

“Edge has stopped being a latency fix and has now become the default architecture,” says Daphne Chung, research director on cloud and datacenter, IDC Asia/Pacific. She adds, “Sovereignty mandates and CFO-grade unit economics are now independent reasons to place a workload at the edge. Enterprises that treat placement as a one-time build rather than a dynamic scoring exercise will be rearchitecting sooner than they expect.”

Worldwide Datacenter Construction Update, 1H26

Mikhail Jaura, Luis Fernandes, Andrew Buss, Dr. William Lee — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Perspective tracks datacenter construction worldwide through the first half of 2026, cataloging major project announcements across the Americas region; Europe, the Middle East and Africa; and Asia/Pacific. It finds that power availability, not land or capital, now sets the pace of delivery, as interconnection queues, regulatory backlash, and rising build costs reshape where and how operators expand. This document helps service providers, investors, and enterprises plan capacity against the widening gap between announced and energized megawatts.

"The binding constraint on datacenter construction has shifted from capital to kilowatts," said Mikhail Jaura, senior research analyst, Cloud and Datacenters, Enterprise Infrastructure, at IDC. "Through 1H26, the projects that moved were the ones that locked in power and grid access early; those chasing land alone stalled. Planning to energize megawatts, rather than announced gigawatts, is now what separates delivery from delay."

Worldwide Hard Disk Drive Component Quarterly Update: 2Q26 Summary and Four-Quarter Outlook

Edward Burns — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Pivot Table provides a summary of worldwide hard disk drive (HDD) component quarterly demand for 2Q26 and a four-quarter demand outlook. This Pivot Table provides insight into the demand for select HDD components by HDD form factor, HDD vendor, and various HDD component technology segments. The HDD components included in this Pivot Table are:

HDD disk media
HDD disk substrates
HDD head gimbal assemblies (HGAs)
HDD read/write recording heads and suspension assemblies

IDC's Worldwide Enterprise Infrastructure Tracker: Buyer and Cloud Deployment Taxonomy, 2026

Sat, 15 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study provides a comprehensive overview and definitions for enterprise infrastructure hardware. The definitions provided in this document represent the scope of IDC's enterprise infrastructure hardware research.

This taxonomy outlines market segmentations and measurement methodologies for the enterprise infrastructure market including classification by technology, vendor, geography, and revenue metrics.

"The buyer and cloud taxonomy and market coverage extend IDC's enterprise infrastructure research by overlaying a cloud and service provider view of which types of customers are purchasing infrastructure," said Natalya Yezhkova, research vice president, Infrastructure Systems, Platforms, and Technologies Group at IDC. "This document will evolve as IDC's analysis and granularity of cloud and buyer research grow over time."