The Doyle Report: IDC Says Two-Thirds of Enterprise IT Spending Will Be Cloud-based by 2020 November 2016

With the 2016 election behind us—soon, God willing—it’s time to start thinking about predictions for 2017 and beyond.

In case you missed it, tech analyst IDC released its annual FutureScape predictions last week, calling for more investments into cloud infrastructure and software, digital products and services, and augmented-and-virtual reality technology.

“It’s pretty obvious we are at a pivotal time in the IT industry and in every industry,” says IDC Chief Analyst Frank Gens. Driving the significant change in business, he adds, is the rise of the digital transformation or “DX” economy, which is producing new smart-connected products, services and capabilities. They have the potential to transform every market sector, IDC says.

The result of this wave of innovation will be measured in greater economic growth, better business outcomes and improved customer engagement, just to name a few things. It will also result in significant changes in market share, valuation and customer reach for literally thousands upon thousands of tech companies.

Gens says the rise of the DX economy, which he outlines in this video here, will raise several important questions, including the following:

While the rise of the DX economy will challenge partners in new ways, it offers them unprecedented opportunity to up their game and help their customers develop innovation. One thing to note, according to IDC, is that the strength an organization will be determined by the power of its ecosystem as much as the competitiveness of its intellectual property.

Without further ado, here are some of the top IDC predictions—verbatim—for 2017 and beyond:

And finally and perhaps most interesting,

In addition to this channel trend, IDC also expects that major distributors will look to cloud services sales and brokering for as much as one-third of their revenue by 2018, and cloud brokers who serve SMB customers to develop highly verticalized and niche offerings.