Analyst
IDC FutureScape 2025: Identity Spending to Outpace Network by 2027
Key Finding
Budget moves with control surface. As identity becomes the perimeter, identity budget grows; as the network shrinks in relevance, network budget plateaus. CFOs read the same Hype Cycle.
IDC's FutureScape series projects multi-year security-spending shifts. The 2025 cybersecurity FutureScape highlighted the crossover point at which identity-security spend overtakes network-security spend in the enterprise mix — projected to occur by 2027 across regions IDC tracks. The trend follows from a control-surface argument: as the network perimeter shrinks in defensive relevance and the identity perimeter expands, finance flows toward where the controls actually sit.
For identity-architecture practice the IDC projection is less interesting as a number than as a planning signal. Budget cycles that start in 2025-2026 will be allocating against the spend shape that IDC projects through to 2028-2029. The architecture conversation has to happen now if the budget conversation is to land well.
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