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2026 IDC FinTech Rankings and Real Results Program

Jerry Silva — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Now in its 23rd year, the IDC FinTech Rankings and Real Results program has not only continued to show the strength of technology investments in the financial services industry but has also demonstrated how AI is delivering real business value in those leading institutions that deploy AI enterprise-wide.

“AI has become a dominant force in technology spend across financial services, as indicated by the revenue growth among top IT providers worldwide,” said Jerry Silva, program vice president, IDC Financial Insights. “The deployment of AI across multiple operational and business environments is already creating value for financial institutions, as demonstrated by the IDC Real Results case studies.”

IDC Market Glance: Worldwide IoT Connectivity Services, 3Q26

John Gole, Jitesh Gera — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Glance provides a concise, taxonomy-based view of the worldwide IoT connectivity services ecosystem, spanning service providers, enabling infrastructure and standards, connectivity management and eSIM orchestration software, and connectivity hardware. IDC’s take highlights the arrival of the GSMA’s SGP.32 eSIM specification, the anticipated adoption of 5G RedCap, satellite as an extension of cellular IoT, and ARPU pressure driving defensive consolidation. Business executives, product managers, and market insights professionals can use it to understand the market structure and identify where their organization fits.

Long-Term Data Retention in IDC’s Global StorageSphere

Adam Wright, Edward Burns — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Perspective analyzes the current state of long-term data retention by enterprise organizations in IDC’s Global StorageSphere. It provides a definition for long-term data retention and explores the reasons why organizations retain data long term, including the growing influence of AI and ML training as a distinct retention driver. It also examines how much data is being retained long term, the type and mix of media on which long-term retained data is being stored, where it is being stored, and the dynamics that might impact long-term data retention policies and practices by organizations in the future.

“No two organizations define long-term data retention quite the same way. Every organization draws that line based on its own mix of regulation, cost, and now, increasingly, what it thinks its data might be worth to an AI model down the road. The organizations that will manage this best are the ones that revisit this line regularly rather than setting it once and forgetting it because the reasons to keep data longer are changing faster than they have in years,” according to Adam Wright, senior research manager, IDC’s Global DataSphere and Global StorageSphere.

NATO Has Scheduled Its Quantum Tests But Not Its Quantum Migration

Alan Webber — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Note examines NATO’s first Quantum Technology Roadmap, published in summary on September 29, 2026, and compares it with the 2023 Quantum Technology Strategy it implements. The document assesses the road map’s dated activities; its gaps on cryptography migration, investment screening, and funding; and its implications for Allied defense and intelligence agencies and for the technology suppliers that serve them. It provides guidance for quantum sensing, cryptography, and computing suppliers.

“NATO has told suppliers when it will test, evaluate, and report. The date for switching its own networks to quantum-safe cryptography is the missing piece, and the 2027 action plan update is the first place it could appear,” says Alan Webber, program vice president for National Security, Defense, and Intelligence at IDC.

Q3 2026 AI Announcements and What They Mean for Edge Operating Models

Olga Yashkova — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Note reviews Q3 2026 AI announcements with implications for edge, including U.S. and EU policy, on-premises AI hardware, storage and security offerings, and Huawei’s device and robotics ecosystem. It draws on IDC’s EdgeView Survey 2026 and shows that edge is now business-critical and increasingly AI-funded, while operating models and governance lag.

“Edge has become business-critical faster than operating models have matured. Organizations that settle ownership and resilience, prove ROI, and plan infrastructure site by site before scaling AI will be best positioned to capture value,” said Olga Yashkova, Research Manager at IDC.

The AI Software Factory: What Application Platforms Must Deliver to Build, Deploy, and Govern AI Applications and Agents

Matthew Flug — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Perspective examines what application platforms must deliver to build, deploy, run, and govern AI applications and agents. It identifies which platform capabilities carry over from conventional applications, which ones AI extends, and which ones are new across the three stages of the application life cycle: build; deploy and run; and manage, operate, and govern. The document positions the AI software factory as the layer that turns AI factory capacity into applications and agents running in production.

"AI has not changed what application platforms are for. They still exist to help teams build better applications faster. AI has changed how much work occurs after code is written, including evaluating nondeterministic outputs and governing what agents can do and on whose behalf. Vendors that compete on how quickly customers can build an agent, rather than how safely they can run one, will struggle to win production AI workloads," said Matthew Flug, research manager, Intelligent Application Modernization and Deployment Platforms, IDC.

Trends in Cloud Messaging and Integration

Rob Tiffany — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective examines how Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Alibaba Cloud, IBM Cloud, and Tencent Cloud are evolving their cloud messaging and integration portfolios, covering message buses, queues, notifications, data streams, data connectors, APIs, and events. It identifies six trends: agents as clients, Kafka convergence, larger and smarter events, elastic economics, cross-boundary security, and open standards. It closes with guidance that helps technology leaders match workloads to services, protect portability, govern agent access, and control costs.

“Messaging used to be part of the architecture nobody discussed until it failed. In 2026, it is where AI agents, real-time data, and hybrid governance meet,” explains Rob Tiffany, research director, Cloud Infrastructure at IDC. “Tech leaders that treat it as a strategic platform will move faster and spend less than those who leave it to chance.”

What We Saw: Trends and Developments in Production and Large-Format Print, 2Q26

Tim Greene — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Presentation highlights the major trends and important industry developments in the production digital and large-format printing markets in North America. These slides include printer shipment data, market share data, and important new products from the second quarter of 2026 that are expected to have an impact in these changing markets.

Worldwide Dedicated Private Cloud Infrastructure Market Overview, 2026

Shahin Hashim, Jevin Jensen, Gary Chen — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Presentation provides IDC's overview and forecast for the worldwide dedicated private cloud infrastructure market for 2025–2030. The market covers single-tenant compute, storage, and network infrastructure, together with the system software that runs it, delivered under a cloud operating model with a cloud control plane. The presentation segments the forecast by hardware and software, by enterprise and service provider buyers, and by region. It examines how the global memory shortage has raised infrastructure prices, how sovereignty and resilience requirements are shaping buying decisions, and how the platform decision has reopened for organizations with large virtualized estates. It also sets out the market's drivers, inhibitors, and outlook, and offers guidance for technology suppliers.

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide AI-Enabled Manufacturing ERP 2026 Vendor Assessment

Sarah Lee, Mickey North Rizza, Bo Lykkegaard — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study presents the IDC MarketScape assessment for worldwide AI-enabled manufacturing ERP applications, evaluating 16 vendors across strategies and capabilities specific to process and discrete manufacturing. The study finds the market separating into enterprise, midmarket, and SMB segments, with environmental health and safety functionality the widest point of differentiation and evidence quality, shipping and customer validated versus road map or aspirational, as important to assess as the AI capability itself. It discusses the most important criteria for manufacturers to consider when selecting a solution.

"Manufacturers should match the market segment: enterprise, midmarket, or SMB of ERP vendors to the complexity of their plant operations, not simply their company size, or risk paying for breadth they don't need or selecting capabilities that haven't been proven in a comparable environment," said Sarah Lee, global senior research director, Manufacturing IT Strategies, IDC Manufacturing Insights.