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IDC Intranet Delivery Service Help
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What is the IDC Intranet Delivery Service?

The IDC Intranet Service provides IDC subscribers with access to their subscription research content in an easily downloaded format. The service has special terms and conditions of use.

To find out more about the service and how you may set it up for your own account, please contact your sales representative. If you are not currently a subscriber of IDC Continuous Intelligence Services, please contact IDC Sales at (508) 988-7988.


Getting Help

If you are having trouble connecting to your directory, or need an FTP client, please contact your local network support for help. If you have any questions about the content in your FTP directory, you may contact the IDC technical support line at:

In the U.S.: (800) 343-4952 ext. 4323
Outside the U.S.: (508) 935-4323
Via email: idc_support@idc.com

IDC technical support is available 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. U.S. Eastern Standard Time. These lines are dedicated to supporting both idc.com and the IDC Intranet Delivery Service.

For assistance in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time, telephone +44-208-987-7153. You may also contact EMEA support via email at emeasupport@idc.com.


Getting Started

You will need:

  • An FTP client to use for downloading the files.
  • A software utility program to unzip files
  • Internet access
  • The computer used to download the files must have reliable access to the Internet, and the access must be configured to initiate passive mode FTP downloads. Please consult with your local network administrators in advance of signing up for the service if you are unsure about your network configuration.
  • Storage space from 100MB to 3GB

Please Note: Using an FTP client to download files day by day is meant for testing and familiarizing only. We strongly recommend that the file download process be automated to avoid missing content.


Connecting

Once you have agreed to the terms of the IDC Intranet Service, your Customer Service Representative sends the order to our Account Fulfillment group to set up an FTP Account for you on our FTP server.

You will be provided with a unique directory name as well as a username/password for access to your directory.

The server address toward which you may direct your FTP client is

ftp.idc.com

Upon login, you will be presented with two folders, " public " and " private ". All Intranet accounts are stored under \public, in a folder structure matching the ftp username you have been given. So the user " ftpabc " would find his/her files under: \\public\ftpabc\. You will be able to see other account folders, but you will not have access to them.


Administrator

Every IDC Intranet Delivery Service account is managed by the Administrator of the account. To gain access to your Intranet management page, click on the link that appears in the right hand corner of your account management page.

On your Intranet group management page, a list of the subscription services included in your delivery service will display. You can use this to verify your subscription selections are accurate.

You can also click on a check box to choose whether you want your content to include live links to our web site or not.

Click on the menu to select whether you want to receive either Quarterly segments or one large all.zip file of data.


Content

The following forms of IDC content are currently packaged for the Intranet Delivery Service. You must use the idc.com site to access other forms of IDC content.

Report
Bulletin
Flash
Newsletter
Special Report
IDC Flash
Update
Insight
Study
Pivot Table
Current Event
Insights Flash
Insights Insight
Perspective
Case Study
Executive Brief
Insights Update
Prediction
IDC Link
Presentation
Audio
Event Proceeding


Schedule

IDC research is packaged on a regular schedule so you have access to the most up to date research on your intranet as well. The content is archived into appropriately named files:

Day.zip: generated Tuesday through Saturday, available for download after 12pm EST.

Research published to idc.com M-F at 5pm EST is collected into IDC Intranet Delivery archives every night beginning at 2am EST the morning after it is published. So Monday research is available in the day.zip file on Tuesday, Tuesday`s research is available on Wednesday, etc. The day.zip file is not generated on Sunday or Monday.

wk.zip: generated Tuesday through Saturday. The weekly contents, generated on a rolling 7-day collection, available for download after 12pm EST.

Research published into the day.zip file is rolled into the wk.zip file every day, as the day.zip file is replaced. So Monday research is available in the wk.zip file on Tuesday, Monday AND Tuesdays research is available on Wednesday, etc. IDC recommends downloading the wk.zip file every week ( between Saturday starting at 12pm through Monday evening )to ensure all content is collected.

mth.zip: generated Tuesday through Saturday. A rolling 30-day archive, which collects all research published during the previous 30 days into one file, available for download after 12pm EST.

All or Quarterly zip files : Every Sunday, a comprehensive archive called all.zip is generated (or slightly smaller archives segmented into quarterly segments; which are named for the quarters they represent, such as 2007Q4.zip). All research dating back 18 months for each service you subscribe to, is collected, beginning at 2am EST. Files are available for download by 10am EST every Monday morning. You must download this comprehensive archive at the beginning of your service to ensure you have all back content for your subscriptions. Also, if you purchase new IDC services, you must download the comprehensive all.zip or quarterly files again to obtain all the previous research contained within the new service.

*Please note that, due to the file size, you may receive either the quarterly zip files, or the all.zip file, but not both.


Content Descriptions

When you connect with our FTP server, you will see a directory structure similar to this:

1 owner group 109437 Jan 23 0:15 all.htm
1 owner group 71618 Jan 23 0:15 all.txt
1 owner group 124662311 Jan 23 0:15 all.zip
1 owner group 70143 Jan 23 0:15 allauto.txt
1 owner group 80677 Jan 23 0:15 allbs.htm
1 owner group 578 Jan 23 0:14 day.htm
1 owner group 331 Jan 23 0:14 day.txt
1 owner group 1142491 Jan 23 0:14 day.zip
1 owner group 322 Jan 23 0:14 dayauto.txt
1 owner group 417 Jan 23 0:14 daybs.htm
1 owner group 94845 Jan 23 0:13 intra1.htm
1 owner group 94666 Jan 23 0:13 intra2.htm
1 owner group 94873 Jan 23 0:13 intra3.htm
1 owner group 95679 Jan 23 0:13 intra4.htm
1 owner group 47566 Jan 23 0:13 intra5.htm
1 owner group 8060 Jan 23 0:12 mth.htm
1 owner group 5296 Jan 23 0:12 mth.txt
1 owner group 16918056 Jan 23 0:12 mth.zip
1 owner group 5201 Jan 23 0:12 mthauto.txt
1 owner group 9456 Jan 23 0:12 mthbs.htm
1 owner group 577 Jan 23 0:11 wk.htm
1 owner group 332 Jan 23 0:11 wk.txt
1 owner group 1142491 Jan 23 0:11 wk.zip
1 owner group 322 Jan 23 0:11 wkauto.txt
1 owner group 619 Jan 23 0:11 wkbs.htm

 

There are several files in addition to the zip archives in your directory that provide information about the contents of your directory. Some of these files are helpful in automating procedures to check for download errors if your FTP is scripted. Following is a list of files in your IDC Intranet directory and some descriptions of their purpose.

*.txt the all.txt, day.txt, wk.txt and mth.txt files provide a text formatted listing of the research documents contained in the corresponding zip file. Each "line" in the file contains one document. The publication date, document type, title, and author are also provided.
xxauto.txt

provides a list of all the document numbers in the zip file only. This is to allow our customers a listing that can easily be used to automate their intranet update process.

dayauto.txt, wkauto.txt, mthauto.txt, are examples of the auto text listing.
intra.htm intra1.htm, intra2.htm, intra3.htm, intra4.htm, intra5.htm and intra6.htm provide listings of the research documents contained in the corresponding zip file in an html-format for your web browser or Intranet page. Each intra.htm document offers a different sort of the documents: by service name, by document number, by title, by pub date, by recent research and by author.
xx.htm day.htm, mth.htm, wk.htm, all.htm and/or quarterly.htm all provide a list of all the documents in the zip file sorted by document id. Additional information such as the document title and the author is also available.
xxbs.htm daybs.htm, mthbs.htm, wkbs.htm, allbs.htm and/or quarterly bs.htm provide a list of all the documents in the zip file sorted by the service name.

In addition, you will find the default images for the IDC logo and the PDF logo (idclogo.gif and pdficon.gif) included in all of the zip files.

You can download any or all of the files in one session. Once you have the files on your local machine, use your password to unzip them and place them in the proper directories used by the HTTP server to serve them up on your Intranet. Please remember that your IDC subscription agreement prohibits distribution of these files via email or via posting to any web site where they are publicly accessible. If you wish to purchase IDC content for your web site, please contact your sales representative. If you have questions about your local Intranet, please contact your local network administrator

Please Note: Although it is not required, it is highly recommended that if you pick up your day.zip file, you also pick up either your week.zip or your month.zip on a regular (i.e. weekly or monthly) basis to guarantee that you get 100% of your content.


Republished Content

IDC reserves the right to republish documents at will. Republished documents will be included in your feeds along with any new documents.

Every year, IDC updates a number of their subscription program names. On January 1, any active (i.e. within 18 months of their pub date) documents that are published under the updated subscriptions will be republished to reflect the new names. Content within the documents will not change. The republished documents will appear in all feeds beginning the first week in January.

If you have any questions about this process or require assistance, please contact IDC Support via email at idc_support@idc.com or at 1-800-343-4952 ext. 4323 in the US, or outside the US at 1-508-872-8200 ext. 4323.