IDC Directions 2026 brought together more than 700 technology and business leaders for a single day of focused, analyst-led intelligence on where enterprise AI is heading and what to do about it.
The scale tells part of the story: 82 IDC analysts, 56 speakers, and 29 sessions across marketing, data, emerging technology, and AI-ready infrastructure. The attendee response tells the rest. In IDC’s post-event attendee survey, 98% said the day was worth their time and 96% left with insights they could act on.
Catch up on what you missed at IDC Directions 2026.
IDC built this year’s Directions around a question most technology executives are wrestling with right now: AI ambition is everywhere. How do you turn it into enterprise results? Every session pointed toward an answer.
Three Conversations That Set the Agenda
Chief Product & Research Officer Meredith Whalen opened with her keynote on the AI Supercycle, IDC’s term for the once-in-three-decades technology expansion cycle now underway, driven by AI infrastructure investment and the enterprise adoption wave that follows. The infrastructure buildout is already underway. The enterprise adoption wave is next. Whether your organization captures value as it shifts to new layers of the stack depends on decisions being made right now.
IDC CEO Lorenzo Larini brought the broader context into sharp relief. The volume of information is now growing at 17 petabytes per second. That’s not a backdrop — it’s the challenge. Making confident decisions in that environment requires a different kind of intelligence infrastructure, one built for speed and clarity rather than volume alone.
Vice President of Enterprise AI Strategies Alessandro Perilli put a number on what’s coming: by 2029, IDC forecasts that enterprises will collectively be running more than one billion AI agents. The organizations now designing cross-functional, multi-agent environments for orchestration and resiliency will have a structural edge over those that aren’t.
IDC Quanta: A New Platform for the AI Era
Directions was also where we shared more about IDC Quanta, our AI platform that puts IDC’s research and market intelligence directly into the tools enterprise teams already use. Built on 60+ years of IDC data and developed with input from more than 65 customers, Quanta is contextual, secure, and built to surface the signals that matter to your business before you think to ask.
Early access is now full. The next window is coming. Reserve your spot now to be first in line when it opens, and get exclusive updates as the platform evolves.
Visit our AI platform page to stay in the loop on IDC Quanta.
Everything Is Now Available on Demand
Whether you attended and want to revisit what you saw, or couldn’t make it and want to see what you missed: it’s all there. Sessions available include:
- General sessions and mainstage keynotes
- Breakouts across the Marketing, Data, Emerging Technology, and AI-Ready Infrastructure tracks
- Analyst perspectives from across IDC’s research practice
The sessions were designed to give you something to take back to your team, your planning process, your next conversation about where to invest. They still will.
Don’t wait. See IDC Directions on Demand.
Ryan Smith - Content Marketing Director - IDC
Ryan Smith is the Director of Content Marketing at IDC, where he leads brand-level content and social media strategy, aligning research insights with compelling storytelling to engage technology decision-makers. With a background in both IT and marketing, Ryan brings a unique blend of technical understanding and creative strategy to his work. He’s also a seasoned storyteller, speaker, and podcast host who believes the right message, told the right way, can drive both trust and transformation.