IDC brings its market research into Claude through a customer connector

IDC customers can now ask Claude to put the research firm’s forecasts, market data and reports to work on a business question. Announced October 28, 2026, the IDC Quanta connector brings that material into Claude, promising finished analysis with citations rather than leaving customers to assemble answers from individual research documents.

From reading reports to requesting an answer

The integration addresses a familiar step in IDC’s research workflow: turning published intelligence into something a business can use. A customer preparing a vendor shortlist or competitive brief would traditionally read long reports and pull together the relevant findings. The new route starts with a description of the market, strategy or purchase the customer is working on.

IDC worked with Anthropic to connect Quanta, its technology intelligence platform, to Claude. The connector supplies IDC’s proprietary research and data to support the response. Customers can use it to benchmark performance, estimate the size of markets, evaluate vendors and develop strategy—the same broad decisions IDC positions Quanta to support.

Three questions, three different deliverables

The announcement describes outputs that vary with the customer’s role, rather than a single research-summary format. A strategy lead gets a competitive brief; a procurement decision can produce a spreadsheet; a finance question can compare an uploaded budget with an external forecast. These are company-described examples, not independently verified results or measured guarantees for every task.

• Competitive research: A corporate strategy lead can request a competitor brief covering positioning, market share, product capabilities and recent acquisitions. Claude draws on IDC research and cites it in the result. Anthropic’s announcement says research that previously occupied a day can be completed in minutes, but that is a claimed workflow improvement, not an independent benchmark.
• Vendor selection: A CIO evaluating procurement software can describe the organization’s existing architecture and specific business requirements. The example response identifies three vendors using IDC’s procurement database and MarketScape research, then presents them in an Excel scorecard for the evaluation team. The requested output is therefore a structured shortlist, rather than just a written overview of the software market.
• Budget analysis: A CFO can upload the following year’s IT budget and ask how it compares with IDC’s forecast. Claude identifies where the figures differ and by how much. This example combines the customer’s own numbers with IDC’s external market view; the announcement says the customer’s uploaded data stays private to that customer.

IDC says the connector gives Claude the data and definitions its own analysts use, so reported market shares and growth rates match IDC’s published figures. Each answer cites the IDC document or dataset behind it. That makes the underlying source identifiable alongside the generated brief, scorecard or comparison.

We brought IDC Quanta into Claude because that’s where many of our customers already work, giving them a faster, more intuitive way to put IDC’s trusted data and research to work.

Lorenzo Larini, CEO of IDC

The connection extends beyond desktop chat

The integration is not limited to one Claude interface. IDC says Quanta works in the Claude app on desktop and mobile, in Cowork and through the Microsoft Office add-ins. Those access points place the research connection in both conversational and office-work settings, rather than requiring customers to begin every request inside the Quanta platform.

For existing IDC Quanta customers who use Claude, the next step is to add the connector from within Claude. The announcement directs other interested users to contact IDC or book a demonstration. Availability is framed around IDC customers: this is a new way to use their research access, not an announcement opening IDC’s proprietary material to every Claude user.