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Amazon Business Reshape 2026: Amazon Business Aims to Shape Agentic B2B Buying

Patrick Reymann — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 05:00:00 GMT

Amazon Business’s Reshape 2026 announcements position it as the commerce and data layer for agentic procurement. Embedded purchasing, a proposed B2B Universal Commerce Protocol domain, and a unified AWS Marketplace–Amazon Business storefront could reshape discovery, transactions, and software sourcing while challenging traditional source-to-pay platforms. This IDC analysis examines the strategic implications and urges buyers to assess availability, interoperability, data sharing, policy enforcement, ecosystem governance, and ownership of the buyer relationship.

IDC Link: ServiceNow Puts a Meter on Tokens: AI Cost Management Joins ITAM and the Super Intelligence Control Tower

Jevin Jensen — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 05:00:00 GMT

ServiceNow’s AI Cost Management is planned as part of IT Asset Management Portfolio and previewed recently at its ServiceNow Nexus for Asset Management event. ServiceNow treats AI as the fifth asset class. AI joins software, hardware, cloud, and industry operational technology (OT) in the class of enterprise assets to be managed and optimized. It would consolidate cloud and API-based services, embedded SaaS AI, subscription-based tokenomics, and on-premises AI like GPUs into a single view. Today, AI costs behave less like a budget line and more like a utility meter that never stops running. IDC believes the real test will be whether that single view, combined with enforceable guardrails, will lead to improved business outcomes. AI agent sprawl is a looming problem, so addressing it early through IT asset management is essential.

Advice for IT Leaders

End Users at Druid AI's Symbiosis 5 Conference Point to an AI-Native Future

Douglas Hayward — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 05:00:00 GMT

IDC attended Druid AI's Symbiosis 5 conference in London on October 20, 2026, where the vendor's executives, customers, and partners discussed deploying AI agents in customer-facing operations. The central lesson was that the debate has moved from whether agents work to how organizations should design, govern, measure, and scale them. One recurring insight that's timeless is that stalled pilots are rarely a technology problem: They reflect weak mandates, missing governance, vague metrics, and unprepared and worried people at ground level.

Nokia 3Q26 Earnings: AI Demand Drives Growth and Margin Gains While Cash Flow Remains Under Pressure

Ahmad Latif Ali, Alejandro Cadenas — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 05:00:00 GMT

Nokia reported its 3Q26 results on October 22, 2026, with net sales of €5,154 million, up 9% year over year (YoY) in constant currency. Comparable operating profit grew 35% to €605 million, and the comparable operating margin reached 11.7%, up 220 basis points. Comparable figures leave out onetime items such as restructuring. AI and Cloud customers now represent 12% of Nokia's revenue and are becoming an increasingly important driver of growth, investment priorities, and product development across the company. Net sales to AI and Cloud customers grew 123% to €631 million, lifting Network Infrastructure. Free cash flow was -€99 million as Nokia spent more on working capital and restructuring. Nokia kept its 2026 outlook for comparable operating profit at €2.1 billion to €2.6 billion and expects to finish above the midpoint of this range.

Reported results were less favorable than comparable metrics suggest. Operating profit declined to €196 million from €252 million a year earlier, reducing the operating margin to 3.8%. The primary driver was €357 million in restructuring charges associated with site closures and workforce reductions. Comparable gross margin declined modestly by 20 basis points to 44.6%, indicating that underlying profitability remained relatively stable. However, cash performance deteriorated, with free cash flow turning negative compared with the positive free cash flow of €429 million in 3Q25. Approximately €560 million in cash was used for working-capital increases and restructuring payments, contributing to a decline in net cash to €2,584 million from €2,776 million in 2Q26.

Comcast 3Q26 Earnings: Convergence and Cost Transformation Aim to Ease Broadband Pressure as Business Services Growth Slows

Harsheeta Arora — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 05:00:00 GMT

Comcast announced its 3Q26 financial results on October 22, 2026, reporting revenue of $29.3 billion, down 6.1% year over year (YoY) from $31.2 billion. On a pro forma basis, which adjusts for the separation of Versant (completed on January 2, 2026) and the sale of Sky operations in Germany (completed on May 31, 2026), revenue increased 0.5%. Connectivity & Platforms revenue declined 2.7% to $19.7 billion, while Content & Experiences revenue increased 6.5% to $10.5 billion.

Adjusted EBITDA was $9.1 billion, down 5.8% YoY and up 0.8% on a pro forma basis. Connectivity & Platforms adjusted EBITDA declined 4.4% to $7.6 billion, with a margin of 38.6% compared with 39.3%.

IDC Market Glance: Worldwide Quantum Computing, 4Q26

Heather West, PhD — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Glance maps the worldwide quantum computing market across five market segments: quantum computing systems, quantum computing software, quantum computing systems enabling technologies, quantum and quantum-inspired services, and quantum-related systems, platforms, and technologies.

It also includes subcategories of vendors with offerings for each quantum computing modality, cloud offering (private or public), and quantum cryptography type, as well as a breakdown of select quantum vendors with offerings related to quantum sensing and atomic clocks and precision timing.

Practices to Successfully Modernize Hybrid IT Infrastructure Leveraging Consulting and Integration Services

Leslie Rosenberg — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC PeerScape examines five practices technology leaders use to modernize hybrid IT infrastructure in partnership with consulting and integration partners. It is written for CIOs, IT directors, architects, and infrastructure managers who plan, fund, or govern these programs. After reading, you can sequence your own program and avoid the pitfalls peers reported. Vendors are anonymized. For IDC's evaluation of providers, see IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Hybrid IT Infrastructure Consulting and Integration Services 2025 Vendor Assessment (IDC #US53312825, April 2025, with an updated version to come in April 2027).

"Leaders who succeed with hybrid IT treat the partner, either a global systems integrator or infrastructure equipment manufacturer, as an accelerator, not a substitute for ownership. They assess first, place each workload deliberately, measure cost from day 1, and invest as much in people and cadence as in platforms to ensure outcomes are achieved successfully," says Leslie Rosenberg, research vice president, Network Life Cycle and Infrastructure Services, IDC.

Why Are Retailers Shifting from Cloud-Only to Hybrid Cloud-Edge Models?

Margot Juros — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This Survey Spotlight examines retailers' significant shift from prioritizing cloud-first strategies to now embracing the benefits of hybrid cloud-edge models to meet AI's real-time data demands, protect data sovereignty, and control costs. The percentage of retailers prioritizing cloud-only IT architecture strategies declined from 47% in 2023 to just 19% in 2026, reflecting the new data needs and demands in today's retail environment.

BrainChip's Sequora Extends Edge AI from Sensing to On-Device Generative AI

Olga Yashkova — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

BrainChip Holdings Ltd. unveiled its new Sequora product to extend the company's ultra-low-power Akida platform from recognizing sensor signals to running generative AI, including language models of up to 3 billion parameters, directly on battery-powered devices. For chip vendors and device makers, the significance is that a fixed-memory design lets one product pair always-on sensing with on-device language and voice interaction, a combination that has typically depended on cloud connectivity or a much larger power budget.

Environmental, Social, And Governance (ESG) Business Services Banner Book

Nadia Ballard, Mukesh Dialani, Lars Goransson, Eric Newmark — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Pivot Table banner book includes data for the ESG services category from IDC's Services Path 2026 program.

The Services Path program provides comprehensive data and guidance on the mind and journey of services buyers. The global markets in these documents cover business-oriented and technology-oriented professional services and outsourcing, managed, and engineering services, including:

Application testing/digital assurance/quality engineering services
Business consulting services
Customer care business process services
Customer experience services
Digital business transformation professional services
Digital engineering and operational technology services (DEOT)
Employee experience management services
Enterprise intelligence services
Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) business services
HR and talent management outsourcing services
IT consulting and systems integration services
Managed cloud services
Procurement business process services
Talent acquisition outsourcing services

Coverage includes adoption; budgeting trends; purchasing preferences and attitudes; pricing and contract options; friction points related to selection, contracting, and managing delivery; and detailed customer satisfaction ratings for vendors. The program also examines what buyers are seeking from the "service company of the future" and where and how service providers must change to meet customers' future needs.