Economic volatility, sovereignty and security concerns, and the rapid advance of AI are creating powerful crosscurrents that few enterprises or providers can ignore. IT leaders on both the enterprise and services sides are under pressure to deliver innovation at speed while maintaining control, transparency, and trust.
IDC’s FutureScape: Worldwide Services 2026 research identifies this moment as the agentic pivot: a stage where AI is shifting from experimentation to orchestration. It marks a turning point that is redefining how technology is designed, delivered, and consumed. For IT decision makers, the focus moves from operational efficiency to business impact. For service providers, it demands a redesign of delivery around intelligence, automation, and measurable outcomes.
Early indicators are already visible. Enterprises that have begun integrating automation and orchestration into their IT services stacks are achieving faster innovation cycles and more predictable cost control. These are the first signs of a broader transformation that will redefine how IT services are built, priced, and delivered.
Prediction: Services will become products
By 2029, 30% of global IT services will be delivered as modular, platform-enabled products, driven by demand for speed, transparency, and agentic AI-enabled orchestration.
The traditional project model of IT services—long defined by customization, labor intensity, and phased delivery—is giving way to platform-based, increasingly AI-augmented offerings that can be deployed and scaled more quickly. For enterprises, this opens access to innovation with greater speed and clearer accountability for outcomes. For providers, it requires moving beyond resource-based contracts to productized portfolios that blend human expertise, automation, and data insight.
IDC research indicates that platform enablement is rapidly moving up enterprise sourcing agendas—an early sign that productized delivery is becoming a mainstream expectation.
As IT services evolve into productized, platform-driven offerings, how those services are valued is also transforming. The emphasis on agility and automation naturally shifts attention from inputs and effort to measurable business outcomes. That leads directly to the next major development in services transformation.
Prediction: Outcome-based economics will take hold
By 2029, driven by agentic AI, 30% of all contractual engagements with service providers will be outcome-based.
As automation expands, value is shifting from effort to impact. Many enterprises are beginning to explore payment models tied to performance—reliability, agility, or experience quality—rather than hours or inputs.
For service providers, this trend requires delivery architectures that make outcomes measurable and repeatable. IDC research shows that agentic automation is already reshaping operations and business-process services, enabling tasks to run autonomously while people focus on governance and innovation. These efficiencies pave the way for broader adoption of outcome-based models, where innovation and performance become quantifiable components of value.
As AI-driven orchestration takes hold, IT operations themselves are evolving toward more intelligent, self-managing systems, setting the stage for the next prediction.
Prediction: Intelligent orchestration will redefine operations
By 2028, 60% of organizations will adopt hybrid-cloud orchestration frameworks for multi-agent systems across data, cloud, and applications.
The emerging operating model for enterprises and their service partners is increasingly autonomous by design. Agentic orchestration brings together AI, automation, and human oversight to manage performance, compliance, and cost in real time. Some organizations are already experimenting with digital command centers that provide unified visibility across hybrid environments.
For CIOs, this means IT architectures will need to evolve toward self-optimization within defined policy boundaries. For services vendors, it signals a move toward intelligent ecosystems, where continuous insight replaces manual triage and analytics guide real-time decision-making.
But the agentic future isn’t only about automation and intelligence — it’s also about trust, governance, and human alignment.
Trust, sovereignty, and skills as enablers
Trust remains a central concern in the agentic economy. By 2027, most global enterprises are expected to reassess partners based on their ability to guarantee sovereign operations, data protection, and transparent AI governance. Providers that embed compliance and security into their automation frameworks will be better positioned to serve regulated industries.
At the same time, workforce priorities are shifting toward orchestration, oversight, and innovation, as AI increasingly manages parts of execution. Success will depend on how effectively organizations align human judgment and machine precision, whether within enterprise IT teams or across service-delivery networks.
These shifts are redefining the relationship between enterprise IT and the services industry.
A new alignment between IT buyers and providers
The dynamics of the agentic era are narrowing the distance between enterprise IT and service providers. CIOs now expect partners who can support and deliver against their transformation agendas, while providers are increasingly embedding their own IP and automation into every engagement.
This emerging alignment is built on trust, IP-led orchestration, and shared accountability for outcomes.
The result is a shared mandate:
- Orchestrate talent and technology to deliver continuous innovation.
- Modernize delivery and sourcing around platforms and measurable outcomes.
- Operationalize trust through data governance and sovereign architectures.
Your next move
IDC’s FutureScape: Worldwide Services 2026 provides a data-driven roadmap for navigating this convergence. Begin with the Worldwide FutureScape Overview to understand the macro forces shaping the AI-driven economy, then explore the Worldwide Services FutureScape for deeper guidance on productization, automation, and orchestration strategies.
In the agentic era, the lines between enterprise IT and IT services continue to blur. Those who understand both sides of the equation are best positioned to shape what comes next.
Explore IDC’s 2026 FutureScape predictions.