IDC Defines The Next Era Of Technology Intelligence With The Introduction Of IDC Quanta(TM) At Directions 2026

BOSTON, Apr 8, 2026 - (ACN Newswire) - IDC today opened IDC Directions 2026, its flagship client event, bringing together technology leaders, analysts, and industry experts to examine the forces reshaping the global technology market and to introduce a major evolution in how technology intelligence is delivered.

At the center of this year's event is IDC QuantaTM, a new AI-powered platform that establishes what IDC defines as the technology intelligence layer for the AI economy.

As artificial intelligence accelerates the pace of business and compresses decision cycles, IDC is redefining its role from a destination for research and data to an embedded intelligence capability that delivers trusted insight directly into the workflows where decisions are made.

"AI is compressing time across the entire technology market, and that breaks the traditional research model," said Lorenzo Larini, CEO of IDC. "Leaders don't need more noise. They need intelligence that shows up in the moment, grounded in data they trust, and ready to use. IDC Quanta makes that possible. We believe it will define the next chapter of this industry."

Defining the Technology Intelligence Layer

IDC QuantaTM emerged from collaboration with some of the industry's most forward-leaning technology providers and enterprise buyers, shaping a platform built for how decisions are made today. Demoed at Directions, IDC QuantaTM is built on five differentiated design principles that redefine how technology intelligence is delivered:

EMBEDDED - Intelligence inside your workflows: IDC QuantaTM delivers intelligence directly within the tools professionals already use, starting with email and expanding to collaboration and AI platforms. By removing the need to search, switch contexts, or manually synthesize insights, IDC enables faster, more seamless decision-making. CONTEXTUAL - Your business context, combined with IDC intelligence: Organizations can securely bring their own data, documents, and third-party content into IDC QuantaTM, analyzing it alongside IDC research in a single environment. The platform retains context across interactions, enabling more relevant, personalized, and continuously improving insights. SECURE - Enterprise-grade privacy and control: IDC Quanta is designed with strict data isolation and governance at its core. Customer data remains private, is never used to train models, and is fully protected within a secure workspace, ensuring organizations can confidently apply intelligence to high-stakes decisions. AWARE- The insights you need without asking: IDC Quanta delivers scheduled intelligence automatically, helping decision-makers stay ahead. It uncovers insights faster using trend signals, anonymized peer patterns, and suggested next questions, eliminating the need for repeated prompts for frequently needed information. RIGOROUS - Intelligence you can stand behind: IDC Quanta is grounded in more than 60 years of proprietary data, research, and analyst expertise, delivering sourced, citable answers with full transparency into underlying methodology and inputs. Unlike common AI tools, every output is traceable to trusted IDC intelligence.

Powering AI-Driven Decision Workflows

IDC also announced it is building a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for the technology intelligence layer of the AI economy and is collaborating with Anthropic to bring IDC's intelligence directly into Claude workflows.

Through this collaboration, organizations will gain entitlement-based access to IDC's proprietary research, data, and methodologies natively within Anthropic environments via MCP and plugins. This approach enables IDC intelligence to be accessed not as a separate destination, but as a seamless extension of the AI tools enterprises already use.

The result is a new class of agentic workflows, where AI moves beyond answering questions to executing research tasks on behalf of the user. These workflows can include navigating sources, synthesizing customer and IDC intelligence data, generating structured outputs, and producing actionable deliverables.

By embedding IDC intelligence into AI-native environments, IDC Quanta transforms AI from a capable assistant into a reliable operator for enterprise decision-making.

From Research to Embedded Intelligence

IDC QuantaTM represents a fundamental shift from static research consumption through gated portals to continuous, embedded intelligence that scales across the enterprise.

"In my world, where it used to take human time weeks to draw conclusions, reading hundreds of reports, I can now do that in minutes," said Mark Terranova, director, Worldwide Analyst Relations at Kyndryl. "That means I can service my stakeholders internally much quicker with better insights. AI needs to interact with the human. That's how you get good answers and that's a key differentiator for IDC right now, in my opinion."

IDC QuantaTM is expected to be generally available in summer 2026. Sign up to be notified at launch: idc/jointhewaitlist.

About IDC

International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global provider of trusted technology intelligence, advisory services, and events. With more than 1,000 analysts worldwide, IDC offers global, regional, and local expertise on technology, IT benchmarking and sourcing, and industry opportunities and trends in over 100 countries. IDC's analysis and insights help IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community to make fact-based technology decisions and to achieve their key business objectives. To learn more about IDC, please visit . Follow IDC on X at @IDC and LinkedIn. Subscribe to the IDC Blog for industry news and insights.

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SOURCE: IDC