Retail IT Infrastructure Strategies

IDC Retail Insights' Retail IT Infrastructure Strategies service provides market analysis and intelligence on retailer actions toward architectural and platform-oriented technology and process investments. Through an integrated set of deliverables, subscribers receive the latest intelligence on retail IT infrastructure trends, allowing them to make better-informed IT decisions that enable more flexible retail business processes.

Approach

This service collects relevant market data through in-depth interviews with industry experts, retail staff, and technology vendors, complemented by secondary research from conferences, publications, and third-party news sources. IDC Retail Insights' analysts develop unique and comprehensive analyses of this data, focused on providing actionable recommendations. To ensure relevance, our analysts work with subscribers to identify and prioritize specific topics to be covered in research reports.

Topics Addressed

Throughout the year, this service will address the following topics:

  • Industry-centric capabilities from traditional ERP technologies
  • Cloud-based retail software capabilities including infrastructure, platform, and application deployments
  • Strategies for successful deployment of enterprise and store-based service-oriented architectures (SOAs)
  • Mobile device policies for back-office and store associates
  • Leveraging social networking technologies to share best practices and improve decision making
  • Assuring a scalable infrastructure to support higher levels of consumer interaction via mobile devices and social networks

Key Questions Answered

Our research addresses the following issues that are critical to your success:

  • What are the strategic options for using cloud computing in retail?
  • Is the retail software market moving entirely toward a single enterprise vendor model?
  • What is the right approach to networking given higher levels of wired traffic between stores and wireless traffic within stores?
  • Does a "bring your own device" or a corporate standard work best for deploying mobile applications internally?
  • How can social business platforms be used to share expertise and magnify the benefits of business intelligence?
  • What are the best practices for deploying SOA capabilities for application integration between stores and the home office?

Who Should Subscribe

The Retail IT Infrastructure Strategies service is ideally suited to support the needs of retail IT executives and architects who focus on ensuring the stability, scalability, and flexibility of their retail enterprise technology model. Retail suppliers focused on SOA, business intelligence, enterprise software, and managed networking will also benefit from this service.

Return on Research Investment

Core Benefits:

  • Detailed recommendations on evaluation criteria and metrics for selection and deployment of infrastructure-oriented applications and platforms
  • Consistently updated vendor assessments based on case studies, roadmaps, and market momentum
  • Insight on strategy planning and investment decision-making for foundational technologies
  • Rapid reviews of integration and data-driven intelligence technologies designed for different segments and retailer IT models

Standard Subscription Deliverables

IDC Retail Insights values building client relationships and strives to foster a partnership with each client through continuous analyst interaction; timely delivery of current, concise, and relevant research; as well as custom research when needed. Each advisory service delivers strategic research covering business and technology issues. A summary of the basic service deliverables available to subscribers includes the following:

  • Analyst inquiry time specific to the advisory service area
  • 24 x 7 research access via www.idc-ri.com
  • Discounted admission to specific IDC Retail Insights or IDC conferences
  • Complimentary forum invitations (Web conferences, industry briefings)

Join Our Community

Our IDC Insights Community is designed to enable technology buyers to engage with our industry analysts, share knowledge and best practices, and connect with colleagues. To participate in our community, members create a profile to:

  • Participate in our discussions in our blogs, forums, and polls
  • Learn about and share best practices, tips, tricks, and tools related to business/technology alignment
  • Network with colleagues and join groups within each industry
  • Provide feedback to IDC's industry analysts and hear what we're up to

Visit us at: http://idc-insights-community.com and join our conversations.

Related Offerings

Related offerings to our industry-specific research practices include IT Spending Guides — segmented regional and country-level analysis by solution area; Go-to-Market Services (GMS) — a modular set of deliverables to assist clients in extending their market reach, validating their market strategy, and producing more responsive customer-centric marketing campaigns; and IDC Advisory Tools — a growing set of solutions designed to ensure clients that technology purchasing and deployment decisions are optimized. In addition, IDC Retail Insights experts are available for individualized consulting engagements to address specific challenges or to customize the results of our syndicated research offerings.