Informatica uses the ‘power of three solutions’ to bolster its ecosystem
An increasing amount of research and analysis time at TBR is focused on ecosystem intelligence, which applies a set of questions and frameworks to extend traditional market intelligence and competitive intelligence approaches in an effort to better understand a market. Recently, TBR analysts spoke with Informatica’s Richard Ganley, Senior Vice President, Global Partners, and his insights into the actions the company is taking to enhance its alliance relationships with nine key partners (Figure 1) stood out to the team. We believe Informatica is doing the following things really well:
Enthusiastically embracing the “power of three solutions,” that is, solutions pulling together resources from a global systems integrator (GSI), a cloud or software vendor, and Informatica. According to Ganley, this approach helps enterprise IT clients “modernize faster … [and] master some of their most critical data with multivendor solutions.”
Consistently evaluating GSIs based on their performance with Informatica, including growth, new solutions and mindshare
Ensuring the company as a whole understands the evolving importance of the ecosystem to Informatica’s success
Informatica’s relationship with GSIs
Ganley cited four reasons why GSIs want closer relationships with Informatica. First, Informatica has a mature data platform, the Intelligence Data Management Cloud (IDMC). According to Ganley, one part of the platform’s appeal is its simplicity: GSIs “don’t need to work with small vendors who we compete with and pick three or four of them and stitch together their technologies to try and make a platform. They can just work with us and everything is there.”
Second, simply scale. Although Ganley did not say it explicitly, every GSI that TBR covers has been working to consistently (and profitably) bridge the gap between AI pilots and limited AI deployments to AI at scale. Informatica’s established scale brings GSI partners reassurance. As Ganley put it, GSIs “can see eventually how they can build a billion-dollar practice with Informatica.”
Third, Informatica partners with the GSI’s partners, including what Ganley described as “very close engineering relationships with the hyperscalers.” Fourth, Ganley described a “huge uptick” in GSI partners’ professionals being trained and certified on Informatica’s solutions, increasing from around 8,000 per year in 2020 to more than 15,000 in 2024. Ganley noted, “one of the reasons we’re seeing so many of our partners wanting to double down with us [is] because they see us as very important foundational work for AI to be possible.”
Ganley also highlighted Informatica’s relationship with LTI Mindtree, specifically within the context of how Informatica evaluates (and invests people and resources in) GSI partners. Of the nine strategic GSIs listed in Figure 1, LTI Mindtree is unquestionably the smallest in terms of revenue, and Ganley noted that LTI and Mindtree, as separate companies, were very appealing as strategic partners. After the merger was completed and LTI Mindtree recruited experienced talent known to Informatica, the two companies reconsidered a strategic partnership. Informatica laid out specific criteria, and LTI Mindtree invested in training and other aspects of the alliance. The CEOs of both companies formally announced the new alliance.
The result has been, according to Ganley, highly successful for both parties: “They’ve been absolutely amazing to work with … and their data and AI practice is quite a good size. They’ve got 12,000 people in the practice, and I think that’s more than 10% of their business. So it’s pretty meaningful for them.” In TBR’s view, this deliberate, strategic approach to alliances has been the exception, not the rule, across the IT services, cloud and software ecosystem. Having an explicit set of criteria for continually evaluating a partnership — beyond simply revenue or sales opportunities — is a critical component, as is CEO-to-CEO buy-in. Informatica clearly has this figured out.
Informatica’s ‘power of three’ approach integrates technology in a unique way
Throughout our coverage of Informatica, we regularly discuss the company’s partner-first approach, and why Informatica continues to position itself as “the Switzerland of data.” Take Informatica’s seven core tech alliance partners: Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Oracle, Google Cloud, Databricks, Snowflake and MongoDB. We cannot identify any company in that list that has a tailored go-to-market approach with all the other six vendors; even if you take the hyperscalers out of the equation, there is simply too much overlap in their capabilities.
Of the vendors TBR covers, Informatica is the only PaaS ISV that has worked across a broad cloud ecosystem in a way that gets the company natively embedded in critical layers of the data stack (i.e., Microsoft Fabric), thus making it easier for customers to adopt more components of IDMC. So, it is not surprising that GSI partners are excited about working with Informatica and unlocking growth via the cross-alliance structure.
The seven core tech alliance partners listed above, as well as other SaaS vendors like SAP and Salesforce, are becoming more integrated with each other by improving data sharing, opening up their APIs and making a comprehensive shift toward more open architectures. Although competitive obstacles will continue to exist, this trend could generate many opportunities for Informatica given its already established role with many of these tech partners. SAP’s new partnership with Databricks — in which Databricks will be sold as a native SAP service — offers a great model for Informatica, particularly if it wants to capture more engagements around SAP modernization, which the GSIs will help support.
SAP
SAP is not an Informatica technology partner, but naturally, ingesting, managing and integrating SAP data remains an important use case. We have spoken to enterprise customers that leverage Informatica’s data ingestion capabilities to extract data from SAP systems and make it available in a data lake from Informatica partners such as Databricks, as part of the ERP modernization process. For many ISVs, developing a partnership with SAP can be difficult, but Informatica’s work with the biggest GSIs — including Accenture, Deloitte and Capgemini, which according to TBR’s SAP, Oracle and Workday Ecosystem Report collectively employ more than 144,000 people trained on SAP offerings — will play a huge role in getting Informatica in front of SAP and the related ERP modernization opportunities.
In describing Informatica’s strategies around “power of three solutions,” Ganley noted that the most frequent teaming approach would include a person from the GSI, a person from that GSI’s technology team (for example, a Deloitte SAP practice professional), and a person from Informatica.
In TBR’s view, this approach solidifies Informatica’s relationship with the GSI while helping the GSI solidify its relationship with the cloud or software vendor. As multiparty go-to-market approaches and solutions become more common across the ecosystem, TBR will be watching to see who staffs those teams, which vendor leads, and whether Informatica’s approach is emulated by others.
The value of the ecosystem can be measured: 17%, 47% and 83%
Admittedly, not every player or every professional in the technology space is sold on how ecosystems are changing and how valuable alliances are to long-term growth. Ganley provided perhaps the starkest evidence why ecosystems matter with a few simple numbers: “We looked at basically all the opportunities that we’d had in our system, which we’d either won or we’d lost over the past two years. And we found if we didn’t work with a partner, our win rate was around 17%.
If we worked with one partner, it went up to 47%, which kind of makes sense because we’ve got somebody in there speaking up for us, recommending us. But if we worked with two partners, and by two we mean one from the GSI and one from the ecosystem … the win rate goes up to 83%.” 17%, 47%, 83%. TBR has not seen a more compelling case for alliance management and ecosystem intelligence.
According to TBR’s Summer 2024 Voice of the Partner Ecosystem Report, data management ranked among the top three growth areas for services vendors in the next two years, sending a signal to the ecosystem that they will continue to invest in resources and guide conversations with mature enterprise buyers that are further along with their digital transformation programs and can embark on the next phase: setting up a strong foundation for generative AI. Informatica’s portfolio and alliance strategy is well aligned with the emphasis on data management, which is helping it become an invaluable strategic partner for GSIs and reinforcing the company’s tagline “Everyone is ready for AI except your data.”
https://tbri.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/building-an-alliance_geopaul_getty-images-signature.png10801080Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analysthttps://tbri.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/TBR-Insight-Center-Logo.pngPatrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst2025-03-25 15:34:122025-03-25 15:34:12Informatica’s Alliance Strategy: Powering GSIs, Scaling AI and Strengthening the Data Ecosystem
Hardware vendors are diversifying their portfolios to drive higher software attach rates, while software-centric vendors like Microsoft and Oracle greatly prioritize cloud-native software
Over the past several years, the cloud software components market has shifted. Microsoft and Oracle are no longer dominating the market as they prioritize their native tool sets and encourage customers to migrate to public cloud infrastructure. Driven largely by weaker-than-expected purchasing around Microsoft Windows Server 2025, aggregate revenue growth for these two software-centric vendors was down 3% year-to-year in 3Q24.
Over the same compare, total software components revenue for vendors covered in TBR’s Cloud Components Benchmark was up 14% in 3Q24 and total cloud components revenue was up 8%. In some ways, this dynamic has made room for hardware-centric vendors such as Cisco and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) to move deeper into the software space, particularly as they buy IP associated with better managing orchestration infrastructure in a private and/or hybrid environment.
Though revenue mixes are increasingly shifting in favor of software, driven in part by acquisitions (e.g., Cisco’s purchase of Splunk), hardware continues to dominate the market, accounting for 80% of benchmarked vendor revenue in 3Q24. Industry-standard servers being sold to cloud and GPU “as a Service” providers are overwhelmingly fueling market growth, more than offsetting unfavorable cyclical demand weakness in the storage and networking markets.
This growth is largely driven by the translation of backlog into revenue, but vendors are still bringing new orders into the pipeline, which speaks to ample demand from both AI model builders and cloud providers. However, large enterprises are increasingly adopting AI infrastructure as part of a private cloud environment to control costs and make use of their existing data.
Figure 1: 3Q24 Hardware vs Software Cloud Components Revenue by Vendor
Key takeaways
Average cloud components revenue growth among benchmarked vendors accelerated to 26.2% year-to-year in 3Q24. Hardware leaders like Dell Technologies and Lenovo continued to benefit from strong hardware demand.
Cisco’s acquisition of Splunk is greatly bolstering the company’s top line, though it is not enough to offset challenges the company continues to face in its networking business.
Ongoing strength in AI demand from services providers continues to offset relatively weak demand from enterprises; however, enterprise AI demand is expected to grow materially in 2025
Despite ongoing cyclical weakness in the data center networking market, strong demand for cloud services, including those supporting AI and generative AI (GenAI) workloads, drove 28.1% year-to-year growth in benchmarked cloud components hardware revenue during 3Q24. Many organizations have been hesitant to deploy AI infrastructure on premises as they continue to evaluate the optimal methods and architectures to handle workloads tied to the rapidly developing technology.
As such, many organizations have been leveraging cloud services for their AI and GenAI workloads, but as the technology matures and new applications are developed, TBR expects organizations will increasingly embrace hybrid AI, leveraging public cloud services and AI deployments on premises both in the core data center and at the edge, which will continue to drive robust demand for cloud components hardware.
Dell Technologies continued to lead all benchmarked vendors in terms of cloud hardware revenue scale in 3Q24. While TBR estimates Dell’s cloud revenue expanded across all three hardware segments in 3Q24, Dell’s growth was most robust in the cloud server segment, where the company remains a leader among its OEM peers due to its brand legacy and its strong relationship with key suppliers, such as NVIDIA, and large-scale buyers, including enterprises and services providers.
Lenovo
With manufacturing facilities around the world and ODM-like capabilities unmatched by its infrastructure OEM peers, Lenovo is uniquely positioned to take advantage of demand from cloud services providers. These types of deals often require custom design and engineering components and are high volume but low margin by nature, driving Lenovo’s near triple-digit year-to-year aggregate cloud hardware growth. It is worth noting these deals with cloud services providers center on Lenovo storage and compute servers.
IBM
While IBM’s proprietary servers, such as the Power lineup, continue to be favored by certain industries for specific mission-critical and data-intensive workloads, such as SAP HANA and S/4HANA, organizations are increasingly prioritizing spend on industry standard infrastructure for both accelerated and traditional computing to support next-generation AI workloads. As such, IBM’s benchmarked aggregate infrastructure and cloud hardware revenues have both suffered due to falling sales.
TBR’s cloud research
TBR’s Cloud & Software market and competitive intelligence research gives clients a true understanding of how technology and business strategies are being used by leading vendors to address the growing desire for cloud-enabled solutions. Our unique research in this space includes financial data that goes beyond just reported data, revenue and growth benchmarks, go-to-market analysis, ecosystem and partnership teardowns, and market sizing and forecasting.
Vendor and market coverage in TBR’s cloud research stream includes, but is not limited to, Accenture, Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP as well as cloud and software applications, cloud infrastructure and platforms, cloud data and analytics, and the cloud ecosystem.
https://tbri.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/data-management-cloud_husein-signart.png10801080Catie Merrill, Senior Analysthttps://tbri.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/TBR-Insight-Center-Logo.pngCatie Merrill, Senior Analyst2025-03-25 07:18:432025-03-21 16:28:30Hardware-centric Vendors Continue to Make Their Move Into Software
After a four-year bull market featuring unprecedented spending growth in federal IT, DOGE is creating near-term challenges for FSIs
The newly inaugurated Trump administration and its Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have generated massive upheaval across the board in federal operations, including the federal IT segment. As of March 2025, thousands of contracts described by DOGE as “non-mission critical” have been canceled, including some across the federal IT and professional services landscape.
The initial contract terminations have fallen disproportionately on smaller-scale programs, many of which were held by small service-disabled veteran-owned vendors, though leading federal systems integrators (FSIs) have not been spared as some large-scale programs have also been canceled. For example, federal IT leader Leidos had a $1.5 billion award with the Social Security Administration (SSA) for systems operations and hardware engineering scaled back significantly in February 2025.
There is no question that the federal government must enhance efficiencies and use IT to enable more cost-effective operations, as DOGE promises. TBR estimates that federal agencies are collectively spending over $100 billion every year on systems that are often not interoperable and in desperate need of modernization. The initial weeks of the Trump administration and actions of the DOGE advisory board, however, have thrown the federal sector into chaos. Federal IT vendors are scrambling to adjust their strategies and tactics to align with the market, which is quickly shifting under their feet.
However, the lack of clarity from DOGE as to how it is evaluating and will continue to evaluate the merit of federal contracts is making effective strategic planning nearly impossible for federal technology contractors. In this special report, we summarize how the FSIs we track are reacting to the emerging DOGE-driven challenges and how well they are positioned to not only deflect near-term disruptions but also capture future opportunities.
Watch Now: GenAI in Federal IT Services in 2025, featuring TBR analysts John Caucis and James Wichert
Accenture Federal Services (AFS)
Strengths and Opportunities
AFS’ core competencies are well aligned with DOGE’s focus on driving efficiencies: broad-based investments in cloud, generative AI (GenAI), innovation and showcase facilities; tight management of their alliance ecosystem; and prudent acquisitions that have been quickly and effectively integrated. AFS has been using AI simulations over the last couple of years that incorporate economic modeling and statistical analysis of federal budgets to show federal leaders new ways to reimagine public resource allocation based on economic modeling and federal budget analysis.
Weaknesses, Risks and Areas Exposed to Market Turmoil
AFS is one of the 10 or so consulting-led FSIs that will be particularly under close scrutiny by the DOGE advisory board and the Trump administration and could consequently see several of its ongoing strategic engagements scaled back. AFS tends to leverage premium pricing as part of its consulting-led go-to-market approach. The vendor lacks the operational scale and multibillion-dollar engagements of its larger FSI peers, limiting its ability to absorb marketwide disruptions.
How will AFS respond to DOGE?
AFS will emphasize the security of its offerings and the vendor’s ability to generate efficiencies for federal agencies, doubling down on its 2024 go-to-market messaging that stressed cybersecurity as core to its digital transformation strategy. AFS will also emphasize its use of cloud, data and AI to drive enhanced efficiencies, and the company believes there will be an even greater appetite for adopting commercial solutions stemming from DOGE’s recommendations. We expect AFS to leverage its corporate parent more heavily than ever to gain access to expertise, case studies and best practices, and the latest digital technologies that have been refined in commercial environments.
Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH)
Strengths and Opportunities
BAH will draft off the unprecedented success of its three-year strategic growth initiative VoLT (Velocity, Leadership and Technology), which ran from the company’s FY23 through FY25 (ending March 31, 2025). The VoLT program generated three straight years of double-digit growth, including multiyear, 20%-plus growth in the lucrative federal health IT market. VoLT also delivered record profits and profit margins and robust cash flows (potentially $900 million-plus in free cash flow in FY25, up from $192 million in FY24 and $527 million in FY23) that can be plowed back into the business. BAH is also well diversified across the civil, Department of Defense (DOD) and Intelligence Community (IC) markets and has over a century of experience in the federal market. BAH sees DOGE as a shift in priorities, not an across-the-board cost takeout.
Weaknesses, Risks and Areas Exposed to Market Turmoil
Like AFS, BAH will be highly exposed to precipitous cuts in federal budget outlays for consulting services, but BAH’s exposure could be in the billions of dollars, the highest across the FSI landscape. BAH also tends to demand a premium for its advisory services and could face significant price-based competition from smaller advisory-focused peers offering similar but discounted consulting services more tightly aligned with DOGE’s core objectives.
How will BAH respond to DOGE?
BAH will tout its experience and successes enhancing efficiencies while crafting strategies for agencies to reinvest savings from DOGE-driven budget cuts, and the eventual implementation of the most cost-effective IT-based solutions, in next-generation technologies to support future missions. The vendor will focus on its versatility while building an even more opportunity-focused mindset in its workforce. BAH will adjust its messaging to emphasize its capabilities to deliver innovation at speed within outcome-based contracting arrangements. Stay tuned for BAH’s next three-year growth strategy, expected to be unveiled in the early months of the firm’s FY26, for more details on how DOGE will impact federal IT’s most venerable firm.
CACI
Strengths and Opportunities
CACI generates 75% of revenue from the DOD and IC, which could shield the company from contract cancellations or revenue contraction if DOGE’s focus is tilted toward the civilian sector. Civil-focused cuts could generate opportunities for CACI around its extensive suite of AI technologies that enable companies to automate more human-resource-intensive tasks and enhance financial management operations. CACI is already entrenched in DOD- and IC-based modernization efforts and can showcase its success in deploying AI technologies.
Weaknesses, Risks and Areas Exposed to Market Turmoil
While DOD contracts are protested less often than civil awards, that could change with future large-scale DOD contracts in a DOGE-based federal contracting environment. Roughly 60% of CACI’s order book is cost-plus work, which could continue to be the DOD’s preferred price structure for net-new technology, but it appears DOGE could drive a more fixed-price award structure (less than 30% of CACI’s contracts are structured as firm-fixed-price awards). CACI’s footprint in the civil space is limited, and the company could miss out on opportunities if DOGE turns to the civil segment for AI-enhanced automation solutions to replace furloughed government employees.
How will CACI respond to DOGE?
CACI immediately requested meetings with executive-level IT decision makers and contract managers at DOD and IC agencies, encouraging them to ensure optimum speed-to-decision with any DOGE-related actions. CACI does not foresee delays in contract adjudication in the near term; awards in the decision pipeline are now expected to be finalized by the fourth quarter of FFY2025 (federal fiscal year 2025).
From a solutions standpoint, CACI will promote its AI technologies as key to federal acquisition reform and its counter-UAS (unmanned aerial systems) technologies as critical to homeland defense. CACI will highlight successes on its BEAGLE (Border Enforcement Applications for Government Leading Edge IT) program with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Customs and Border Protection, and on NASA’s NCAPS (NASA Consolidated Applications and Platform Services) program in pursuit of new civil opportunities.
CGI Federal
Strengths and Opportunities
CGI Federal has been gaining strong traction with its core managed services platforms, Momentum (financial management) and Sunflower (asset management). These offerings not only have enabled the company to be a perennial margin leader in TBR’s Federal IT Services Benchmark but also are well aligned to DOGE’s cost takeout objectives with a track record to prove it. CGI Federal’s managed services offerings have also facilitated deep relationships with the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Treasury Department.
Weaknesses, Risks and Areas Exposed to Market Turmoil
CGI Federal generates roughly 90% of its revenue from the civilian sector and could be overexposed to DOGE-related budget reductions that disproportionately impact civilian agencies. The company has made key strategic acquisitions to bolster its advisory capabilities in recent years (e.g., Array in 4Q21, TeraThink in 1Q20, and Sunflower Systems in 3Q19), but its advisory capabilities lack the maturity, breadth and market reputation of similar services offered by consulting leaders like BAH and AFS. Conversely, CGI Federal could undercut its larger consulting-led peers by offering discounted advisory services that emphasize its core capabilities in enhancing agency fiscal and operations management.
How will CGI Federal respond to DOGE?
CGI Federal was one of the 10 consulting-focused FSIs mentioned in the Trump administration’s Feb. 27 memo demanding that agencies review consulting engagements and cut “non-essential consulting contracts.” The company’s reaction to DOGE has been limited compared to its peers, but we anticipate CGI Federal will tout its automation and AI capabilities, along with its flagship financial and asset management platforms, as having the exact capabilities civilian agencies will need to achieve IT-driven cost reductions.
TBR’s Federal IT Services research team will provide additional company-specific analysis of the impact of DOGE and the Trump administration’s proposed budget actions on the FSIs in our upcoming blog series, DOGE Federal IT Vendor Impact, featuring reports and profiles of the contractors mentioned in this special report.
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Demand for General Dynamics Information Technology’s (GDIT) digital accelerators (Comet 5G, Coral Software Factory, Cove AI Operations, Eclipse Defensive Cyber, Ember Digital Engineering, Everest Zero Trust, Hive Hybrid Multi-Cloud, Luna AI and Tidal Post-Quantum Cryptography) has continued to grow, generating nearly $7.5 billion in contract awards in 2024 compared to more than $2 billion in 2023.
Weaknesses, Risks and Areas Exposed to Market Turmoil
While the DOD is still GDT’s largest customer, GDIT’s recent expansion into the federal health market leaves it more vulnerable in the short term as the Trump administration looks to rapidly pull back on spending for agencies like the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Additionally, the General Services Administration (GSA) has indicated that GDIT’s consulting contracts will be closely reviewed going forward.
How will GDT respond to DOGE?
TBR anticipates that GDIT will invest further in its digital accelerator-centric strategy and increasingly collaborate with partners like ServiceNow. This will allow GDIT to expand its capabilities with emerging technologies and support DOGE’s effort to accelerate IT infrastructure modernization.
IBM Consulting
Strengths and Opportunities
IBM Consulting’s federal market group, IBM-Fed*, is two years removed from its strategic acquisition of Octo Consulting and won positions on a handful of large-scale programs with both civilian and defense agencies in 2024, suggesting the company is fully leveraging the added scale and portfolio depth it obtained from Octo.
Weaknesses, Risks and Areas Exposed to Market Turmoil
IBM-Fed, while not entirely a newcomer to the federal IT market, is the smallest of the FSIs tracked in TBR’s Federal IT Services Benchmark. While its smaller scale may limit its exposure to DOGE, the company has ongoing, strategic programs with USAID (United States Agency for International Development) ($95 million, five-year contract for cybersecurity services won in 2023) and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) ($279 million, five-year contract won in 2Q24) that are likely at risk.
The cancellation of these programs would severely impact IBM-Fed’s smaller revenue base relative to its FSI peers. The overarching goal of the Octo acquisition was to expand IBM-Fed’s advisory chops; DOGE could derail IBM-Fed’s still nascent efforts to gain ground in the federal IT market as a consulting-focused professional services competitor.
How will IBM Consulting respond to DOGE?
TBR expects IBM-Fed will double down on hybrid cloud and cybersecurity, capabilities at the heart of the company’s burgeoning federal IT growth effort, as DOGE continues upending the federal IT market. IBM-Fed can also leverage hybrid and multicloud capabilities obtained from the now-finalized acquisition of HashiCorp. IBM was one of the companies mentioned in the Trump administration’s Feb. 27 memo regarding federal consulting contracts and the federal government’s use of consultancies.
An IBM spokesperson responded in a Nextgov interview the same day the memo was released, saying, “Today, IBM supports the modernization and delivery of mission critical federal services and systems, from processing veteran health claims more quickly to enabling a more efficient digital taxpayer experience. We are … committed to helping agencies become more efficient and deliver better results for the American public.” IBM’s response was necessary, but still rather boilerplate in its tone and lack of detail. (*TBR refers to IBM Consulting’s federal IT operations as IBM-Fed. IBM-Fed is not an official business line title used by IBM or IBM Consulting. The business defined by TBR as IBM-Fed resides within IBM Consulting’s U.S. Public and Federal Market group.)
Leidos
Strengths and Opportunities
Leidos has the largest scale across federal IT, and the number of multiyear, multibillion-dollar engagements on its books is a testament to not only the company’s ability to deliver agencywide IT transformation but also its strong contract delivery on prior-year engagements. The vendor is well diversified across the federal IT market with large civil, defense and IC practices. Leidos is also diversified geographically, generating between 10% and 15% of its business from international markets, where the company is gaining traction. Its’ international operations could enable the company to withstand short-term turbulence in the federal IT market, at least in terms of its profit and loss statement.
Weaknesses, Risks and Areas Exposed to Market Turmoil
Dynetics, Leidos’ robust and differentiating R&D subsidiary, could be negatively impacted if the Trump administration deemphasizes R&D investments or if DOGE reduces R&D budgets. Leidos also has a large federal health IT business, which could be vulnerable if DOGE targets the health IT market for cost cuts after robust spending under the previous administration. Further, Leidos could face increased protests around its large strategic awards by unsuccessful competitors trying to undercut Leidos on price.
How will Leidos respond to DOGE?
Leidos executives stated during the company’s 4Q24 earnings call that they believe DOGE gives the company “increased confidence in our strategy,” but the details remain scarce. Those details are likely forthcoming, as Leidos will unveil North Star 2030, the company’s growth strategies for the next five years, this summer. We anticipate Leidos will emphasize guiding clients through the elimination of regulations, efforts to streamline procurement, and the shift to more outcome-based contracting.
Leidos will also increasingly emphasize its ability to accelerate ongoing digital transformation programs and tout its strong record of past performance (e.g., its ongoing, $11.5 billion Defense Enclave Services engagement). Leidos will also focus on developing innovative IT-enhanced military capabilities and will likely plow robust cash flows from FY24 into R&D to accelerate the development of market-ready solutions for next-generation warfighting in areas like hypersonics, unmanned systems and ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) systems.
ICF International
Strengths and Opportunities
After spending over $600 million on M&A to rapidly develop its digital modernization business from 2020 through 2022 (ICF’s digitalization business’ annual revenue more than quintupled over this time frame to reach $500 million), ICF started securing more high-profile federal IT contracts worth over $100 million in 2024 while letting low-margin engagements roll off its books.
Weaknesses, Risks and Areas Exposed to Market Turmoil
During ICF’s earnings call, executives warned that the company’s 2025 total revenue could contract by up to 10% compared to 2024. While ICF’s environmental work is particularly vulnerable, its digital modernization business will face disruptions. For example, ICF already was struggling with delays tied to lucrative contracts with USAID before the Trump administration placed the agency in its crosshairs. Additionally, a concentrated push to outcome-based contracting, along with a sharp reduction in agencies’ headcounts, could lead to demand pulling back for ICF’s low-code/no-code platforms.
How will ICF International respond to DOGE?
ICF may shift its focus from supporting the Energy, Environment, Infrastructure and Disaster Recovery client market back to developing its digital modernization business, including building upon its fraud detection capabilities.
Maximus
Strengths and Opportunities
Since acquiring Veterans Evaluation Services for $1.4 billion in 2Q21, Maximus has been capitalizing on the surge in opportunities created by the Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act while supporting the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) on a plethora of medical disability examination (MDE) contracts. Business process outsourcing (BPO) remains at the core of Maximus’ go-to-market strategy as the company parlays these initial engagements where it provides more traditional services into more lucrative opportunities with clients like the IRS.
Weaknesses, Risks and Areas Exposed to Market Turmoil
Maximus has been deepening its relationship with the IRS over the years and in 2023 was named a prime contractor on the $2.6 billion Enterprise Development, Operations Services (EDOS) contract. With the IRS’s 90,000-person workforce expected to be reduced by up to 50% under the Trump administration, future funding could be disrupted and upend Maximus’ efforts to branch out. Similarly, Maximus’ exposure to the VA may become a weakness as the agency’s headcount is expected to be reduced by more than 15% (approximately 80,000 workers) as it comes under greater scrutiny by the Trump administration.
How will Maximus respond to DOGE?
While bipartisan support for the PACT Act should persist and provide Maximus’ federal business with steady income, the company will leverage its IT systems, network infrastructure and software development capabilities in the long term to increase clients’ efficiency.
ManTech
Strengths and Opportunities
Being a private company gives ManTech a competitive advantage compared to its FSI peers as consultancies race against the quarterly earnings clock during this chaotic period. With the financial backing of The Carlyle Group, ManTech is one of the best positioned vendors in TBR’s Federal IT Services Benchmark to make an acquisition. ManTech can take its time refining its digital consulting practice, aligning it with the Trump administration’s long-term priorities and scooping up displaced consultants from players like AFS while building upon the fundamentals of consulting: people and permission.
Weaknesses, Risks and Areas Exposed to Market Turmoil
ManTech has historically been a margin laggard compared to its peers in TBR’s Federal IT Services Benchmark, with the vendor last disclosing an operating margin of 5.2% in 2Q22. While ManTech’s restructuring efforts could bring its operating margin more in line with the competition over time, a prolonged return of the lowest price technically acceptable (LPTA) environment would cause significant harm as ManTech lacks the scale to consistently vie for must-win engagements against Tier 1 peers.
How will ManTech respond to DOGE?
TBR anticipates that ManTech will lean further into opportunities with its core defense and intelligence clients, given DOGE’s crackdown on non-mission-critical spending seems to be concentrated more in the federal civilian sphere. As DOGE hopes to accelerate the modernization of IT infrastructure and apply AI across the agencies, ManTech will continue to identify new ways to weave the emerging technology into their workflows.
Peraton
Strengths and Opportunities
The three-way megamerger with Perspecta and three Northrop Grumman business units expanded Peraton’s sales sevenfold from roughly $1.0 billion in 2020 to between $7.0 billion and $7.2 billion in 2021, according to TBR estimates. Peraton quickly fused these assets into one homogeneous entity and has been using its newfound scale to reliably compete against established leaders in the federal IT industry, such as GDT, across the civilian and defense markets.
Weaknesses, Risks and Areas Exposed to Market Turmoil
While Peraton has been further penetrating the federal civilian and health spaces by leveraging its newfound digital transformation, analytics and lifecycle management capabilities, the years of robust health IT budget growth are unlikely to continue under the Trump administration. Peraton is a prime contractor on the Social Security Administration’s IT Support Service Contract II vehicle, which DOGE recently targeted for cuts.
How will Peraton respond to DOGE?
Veritas Capital is no longer expected to take Peraton public as federal IT vendors’ valuations have cratered from their November 2024 highs. Under CEO Steve Schorer’s guidance, Peraton will accelerate its efforts to harness emerging technologies to better compete for enterprise IT awards in the $500 million to $2 billion range. As agencies appear to be increasingly open to adopting an “as a Service” model, Peraton will continue to position itself as a cloud services broker to win deals like the Cloud Hosting Solutions III contract and shore up its relationships with partners like SoftIron.
SAIC
Strengths and Opportunities
SAIC has scale, a growing suite of partner-enhanced cloud solutions, and a vendor-agnostic approach to migrating federal IT workloads to cloud environments that have enabled the company to improve its fiscal performance and land strategic engagements. The vendor also derives nearly three-quarters of its revenue from the DOD and IC, potentially sheltering the company from DOGE-related budget cuts in the civil space. SAIC is perhaps the foremost prime contractor with the U.S. Air Force (USAF) leading the service branch’s multiyear cloud migration initiatives.
Weaknesses, Risks and Areas Exposed to Market Turmoil
SAIC’s marquee engagements are with civilian agencies, including the seven-year, $1.3 billion T-Cloud program won in 1Q23 with the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the $8 billion blanket purchase agreement with the FBI won in 2Q24, potentially overexposing the company to DOGE-based efforts in the civil sector. The company is also in the middle of an operational and organizational restructuring effort that, while gaining traction, could be undermined by DOGE-related market disruption.
Recent unsuccessful contract renewals and business-line divestitures have generated lingering organic growth headwinds that have caused SAIC’s top-line growth to lag its peers’, and may limit the company’s ability to buffer the impact of DOGE-related contract reductions or terminations on its top line. SAIC’s margin performance is improving but also trails that of larger federal IT peers; DOGE may jeopardize the company’s continued profit elevation.
How will SAIC respond to DOGE?
SAIC will tout its integration expertise and ability to fuse cloud-based products, platforms and solutions from its partners and joint ventures together to create cloud environments for its customers that will generate DOGE-mandated savings. SAIC will repurpose its experience delivering cloud-enhanced, mission-critical solutions for the DOD to accelerate cloud-based growth in the civilian sector in 2025 and 2026, emphasizing cloud infrastructures as the optimal way for civil and defense agencies to drive down operating costs.
CEO Toni Townes-Whitley appeared on Bloomberg TV in early December, saying, “We think we are well positioned” and “Looking forward to that engagement” with DOGE and the Trump administration. She was the first CEO of the FSIs tracked by TBR to respond to the potential impact of the then-incoming Trump administration, smartly getting out in front of the emerging market disruption. Townes-Whitley also noted that SAIC will look at “where are the levers in an environment where technology will be the enabler of efficiencies,” but also said she expects SAIC will have to “adapt to an environment where spending is more circumspect.”
TBR’s Federal IT Services research team will provide additional company-specific analysis of the impact of DOGE and the Trump administration’s proposed budget actions on the FSIs in our upcoming blog series, DOGE Federal IT Vendor Impact, featuring reports and profiles of the contractors mentioned in this special report.
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https://tbri.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/civil-reform_doughlas-rissing_getty-images-signature.png10801080John Caucis, Senior Analysthttps://tbri.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/TBR-Insight-Center-Logo.pngJohn Caucis, Senior Analyst2025-03-24 11:34:482025-03-21 17:41:28Leading Federal Systems Integrators React to U.S. Department of Government Efficiency
On March 18, PwC Middle East hosted its monthly “Transforming Our Region” webcast, featuring company leaders Richard Boxshall, chief economist; Rand Shuqair, director of Corporate Finance; and Zubin Chiba, head of Corporate Finance.
Boxshall once again provided a positive economic outlook for the region, albeit after a long cautionary excursion through the tempests created by the recent on-off-on-maybe tariffs introduced by the Trump administration. In Boxshall’s view, even with the irregularities around announcements and uncertainties around enforcement (or sustained applicability), the tariffs imposed by the U.S. and by other countries in response have gained enough momentum to significantly alter the global trade landscape. Inflation rate rises and supply chain disruptions, both caused or exacerbated by tariffs, have dampened global economic outlooks. Saudi Arabia’s economy grew in 2024 relative to 2023, even as the oil sector contracted, reinforcing the fundamental regional shift that TBR explored recently.
In the second half of the webcast, Shuqair and Chiba reviewed transaction activity in the region, comparing 2024 to the previous two years and noting an overall slowdown in volume concurrent with an increase in value from 2023 to 2024, with most of the transactions executed by corporate actors, not private equity (PE). As Chiba noted, both the sovereign wealth funds and the region’s corporate giants have been using transactions to “support the transformation agenda at home.”
Chiba also highlighted the importance of technology and artificial intelligence in driving deals, the sustained appeal of green energy and climate tech, and the growing interest among global private equity firms in the size and scale of opportunities in the region. In Chiba’s view, global PE firms are “deploying, not just raising” capital in the region. As an aside, Boxshall noted that PE activity is yet another non-oil contributor to the region’s economies, helping with diversification.
Big Four firms expand regional footprint with innovation hubs and green initiatives
PwC Middle East’s webcast provides excellent monthly insights into the region’s economies, but it is not the only active Big Four firm. As TBR reported in our Fall 2024 Management Consulting Benchmark, KPMG “announced the opening of Risk Hub in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in collaboration with Microsoft and IBM, paving the way for more in-person, tech-enabled GRC [governance, risk and compliance] discussions with regional clients embarking on their digital transformation programs.” TBR also learned in February that KPMG intends to open a new Ignition Center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in 2025, building on the firm’s global network of innovation and transformation centers.
Echoing Chiba’s comment that green energy remains an attractive area, Deloitte announced a green skills and green economy training program in January, in coordination with UAE universities. As TBR noted in our Fall 2024 Management Consulting Benchmark: “Deloitte announced the opening of a Deloitte Innovation Hub in Egypt, which will include a $30 million investment over the next three years in the country. Deloitte is looking to staff the hub with 5,000 employees supporting Europe and regional clients by providing services including AI, marketing and commerce, cloud, and cybersecurity, among others.”
In a 2020 blog, we wrote, “According to the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics in Egypt, approximately 500,000 students graduate from universities in Egypt every year, of which around 90,000 speak English, turning the country into a favorable destination for firms to invest in. Just like in other emerging markets, Deloitte will face competition staffing the centers as IT services peers like IBM and Capgemini, among others, have well-established operations in the country.”
https://tbri.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/middle-east-on-globe_mozcann_getty-images-signature.png10801080Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analysthttps://tbri.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/TBR-Insight-Center-Logo.pngPatrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst2025-03-21 14:15:422025-03-21 14:15:42PwC Middle East Experts Weigh In on Economic Trends and Transaction Activity
Current state of deployment services in the telecom industry
With deployment services growth tied to 5G rollouts in large markets — notably India, China and the U.S. — most vendors in TBR’s Telecom Infrastructure Services Benchmark saw segment revenue decline in 3Q24 as these markets are in post-peak 5G spend territory. The pace of India’s aggressive 5G build has decelerated since 4Q23. Ericsson outperformed its closest peers due to its Cloud RAN deployment for AT&T.
The deployment services market faces growing headwinds, including communication service provider (CSP) consolidation, open vRAN’s lower installation costs, and reduced demand for site location and construction (SL&C), offset somewhat by hyperscaler spend and 5G rollouts in select developing markets. Hyperscaler investments provide incremental volume to the market, and TBR notes these companies are increasing their investments in access technologies (e.g., Google Fiber).
Over the past few years, Ericsson, Nokia and Tech Mahindra have deemphasized deployment services to improve telecom infrastructure services (TIS) margins, and other vendors have similarly reduced their own exposure to labor-intensive deployment, especially as wage inflation accelerates. Ericsson outsourced field services in the U.S. to Authorized Service Providers effective Oct. 1, 2023. This could drive more field installation work to third-party construction firms, such as Dycom and MasTec.
5G RAN projects drive investment in optical transport for fronthaul, midhaul and backhaul, as well as the core network. Ciena, most notably, has capitalized on this trend. Part of the rationale for Nokia’s acquisition of Infinera is to gain greater exposure to this domain.
CSPs have deferred 5G core investment in general because they do not see a clear path to ROI and standards that would enable new features for the network, especially those that pertain to B2B, have been delayed. The ability to deploy 5G-Advanced services will spur only incremental growth in this area of the market.
TBR expects fiber deployment will increase in 2025 and 2026 as broadband services are extended to unserved and underserved areas globally, with government funds supporting CSP efforts in this area, especially in the U.S.
Preview TBR’s Telecom Infrastructure Services research, featuring insights into the Managed Services segment, North America revenue and Tier 2 TIS leaders
China-based leaders’ TIS revenue declined as domestic 5G RAN rollouts slowed; Nokia’s revenue decreased due to reduced activity in India and lower market share in the U.S.
Deployment services leaders
Revenue leader: China Communications Services (CCS)
CCS derives most of its deployment services revenue from the network infrastructure domain but is increasing its exposure to data center deployments to diversify. The supplier is taking market share from smaller competitors in China as well as Huawei and ZTE. CCS is aligned with and has benefited from the Chinese government’s Belt and Road Initiative, which supports international revenue.
Revenue declined year-to-year in 3Q24 as 5G deployment activity in China lessened, partially offset by CCS increasing its account share from its largest customer, China Telecom. TBR believes CCS’ installation work as part of 5G RAN builds is transitioning to maintenance. CCS is increasingly deploying gear in international markets such as MEA, particularly Saudi Arabia and CALA, though volumes in this region pale in comparison to the company’s presence in China.
Figure 1: Ten Largest Telecom Infrastructure Suppliers: Deployment Services Revenue for 3Q24
Growth leader: Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)
Deployment is a noncore area of HPE’s TIS business as the company is much more concerned with monetizing maintenance services. HPE largely leaves deployment to its partner base.
TBR believes HPE participates in some server installs for CSP clients adopting its hardware as part of open and/or virtualized RAN deployment, such as for Telus in Canada.
Telecom infrastructure services market overview
TIS revenue continued to shrink outside North America in 3Q24 while operating margins sustained recovery
Aggregate TIS revenue among benchmarked vendors declined 2.8% year-to-year in 3Q24, falling across all segments and regions, with the exception of North America, which grew 1.9% year-to-year. North America growth was largely due to favorable comparisons to 3Q23, when aggregate revenue declined 12.9% year-to-year, but also because of AT&T’s open RAN deployment and hyperscaler investments in optical projects.
Conversely, several vendors, including Nokia, Ericsson, Samsung and Ciena, are seeing sharply lower revenue in APAC as India’s CSPs reduced investment following 5G RAN rollouts by Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel. Huawei and ZTE are also seeing revenue in APAC decline due to loss of share in India as their installed bases of LTE and optical equipment are replaced by equipment from trusted vendors, as well as lower spend on 5G RAN deployments in China, which peaked in 2022.
As CSPs wind down 5G coverage rollouts in China, the U.S. and India in favor of densification, TIS operating margins are growing. Declining deployment activity, which tends to carry the lowest margins among TIS segments, in these markets — especially India — is the main driver of improving TIS operating margins. In 3Q24 deployment services constituted 18.2% of aggregate revenue, down 120 basis points year-to-year. Meanwhile, maintenance services, which tend to carry the highest margins among the TIS segments, grew to 34.2% of aggregate revenue, up 80 basis points year-to-year.
Benchmarked vendors’ aggregate TIS operating margin increased year-to-year for the fourth consecutive quarter, following six consecutive quarters of declines. Aggregate operating margin grew from 11.1% in 3Q23 to 12.4% in 3Q24. TBR expects aggregate TIS operating margin gains to continue into 2025 despite an anticipated rebound in TIS revenue in India (where margins are typically low) as new RAN agreements that Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung have with Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel come online, due to the relatively smaller scale of these contracts compared with initial coverage rollouts by Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio. In addition, TBR believes the digital transformation market will recover as CSPs receive clarity on M&A, driving high-margin professional services revenue for several IT services vendors. Further, AT&T’s open RAN rollout will peak in 2025, though it will continue through at least 2026, and margins in the U.S. tend to be higher than in other countries.
TBR’s Telecom Infrastructure Services Benchmark
Telecom infrastructure services includes all external spend (capex and opex) on services by communication service providers (CSPs), including telcos, cablecos and hyperscalers, on or related to communications and IT infrastructure. For our Telecom Infrastructure Services Benchmark, TBR categorizes TIS revenue into four main segments: deployment services, professional services, maintenance services and managed services.
Vendor coverage for this research includes, but is not limited to, Amdocs, CGI, Ciena, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Infosys, Juniper, Nokia, Oracle, Samsung, Tech Mahindra and ZTE.
In February TBR met with a Fujitsu team led by Akihiro Inomata, Ph.D., Senior Project Director, Social Digital Twin Core Project, Fujitsu Research, Fujitsu Limited, to discuss Fujitsu’s Policy Twin, a creative application of digital twin technologies to public policy. The following reflects both that discussion and TBR’s ongoing research and analysis around Fujitsu.
Fujitsu’s research of “Social Digital Twin” and efforts to bring digital twin concepts and technologies to bear on social issues dates back a few years, although the company initially did not describe the work as “Policy Twin.” As early as 2022, Fujitsu and Japan’s Tsuda University started joint research for community healthcare to find better solutions to bottlenecks in the healthcare delivery processes. Fujitsu used similar approaches to tackle Japan’s healthcare needs that it had previously successfully used in other domains. These involved what Inomata called “green shared mobility” on a U.K. island, EV charging stations in India, and traffic in Pittsburgh.
Leveraging lessons learned from those engagements and seeing the applicability of digital twins beyond the confines of the physical world, Fujitsu conceived the Policy Twin. Using its Policy Twin, Fujitsu helps public sector clients recreate new policies from policies generated from the clients’ existing policy documents, and, critically, according to Inomata, allows for a “Digital Rehearsal” that can be used to verify the effectiveness and impact of policies in advance, based on real-world data. He added that the policy twin approach helped Fujitsu “solve social challenges … by understanding human behavior and social movements through Social Digital Twin.” Policymakers at any level could, with Fujitsu’s help, test variations of policies and evaluate the outcomes using Policy Twin, calibrating the scenarios based on desired outcomes, all before actually implementing any changes.
Policy Twin success story
Inomata outlined a few critical components for successful implementation of digital twins in a nonphysical world:
Fujitsu uses a logic model for running simulations, but the reference policies should be coming from the same business or framework. Fujitsu’s Policy Twin approach, for example, could not use policies in public health to digitally rehearse tax policies.
Policies must be machine-readable, which typically is not an issue as all public policies are publicly available. The challenge, of course, comes when policies are unclear, inexact, contradictory, or understood but not written down.
Fujitsu’s approach must begin with understanding the underlying social issues. Similar to consulting and technology engagements, implementations succeed when directed at specific business problems. Fujitsu’s Policy Twin works best when the stakeholders, including Fujitsu, have clearly defined problems and desired outcomes.
Inomata and his team described the example of Fujitsu’s work with Japan’s Tsuda University around preventive medicine approaches and cost savings that were attributable to the use of Policy Twin technologies. Practically, Inomata walked through a recent project on how the local government was able to reduce expenses and improve the overall population health by using Policy Twin to create optimal policies around clinic visits. The Fujitsu presentation noted developed policy options of the preventive medical engagement that could reduce medical costs and improve health outcomes significantly after only one year post-implementation. Additionally, the Fujitsu presentation projected developed policy options that double both cost savings and health outcome improvements in preventive healthcare trial.
Fujitsu’s presentation also set ambitious targets for 2025 and 2026, noting that the Policy Twin approach could be applied to societal problems such as “service restructuring to address workforce shortages, disaster prevention and mitigation, and enhancing supply chain resilience.” Inomata also confirmed that the company intends to put the Policy Twin approach under the Uvance Wayfinders umbrella.
Fujitsu shows how technology can be used to benefit society
Applying digital twins to the nonphysical world — and to an inherently political part of the nonphysical world — takes courage and conviction, which are not attributes TBR typically writes about when covering IT services and technology companies. As Figure 1 from Fujitsu shows, the company does not lack for ambition: “Technology to predict future and design society.” Critically, in TBR’s view, Fujitsu will scale its Policy Twin initiative within the embrace of Uvance.
As TBR reported last year about the company’s strategy, “Fujitsu will focus on technology consulting, rather than McKinsey-style business consulting, playing to Fujitsu’s legacy technology strengths. In TBR’s view, technology-led consulting reflects the current demand among enterprise consulting buyers to infuse every consulting engagement with technology, a trend well underway before the hype began around generative AI. Fujitsu’s leaders added that Uvance Wayfinders — essentially business and technology consultants — are able to pull together all of Fujitsu’s capabilities and offerings.”
Stepping back from the specifics of Policy Twin and its place within Fujitsu, the overall approach of bringing data-driven, digital twin-enabled “digital rehearsals” to public policy strikes TBR as a substantial positive societal contribution, rooted firmly in Fujitsu’s technology legacy, capabilities and innovations. TBR will be watching closely to see which societal challenges Fujitsu takes on next.
Figure 1
Definitions of terms
Social Digital Twin: Fujitsu’s proprietary digital twin technologies
Policy Twin: A core technology within Social Digital Twin
Digital twins: general digital twin technology
https://tbri.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/digital-binary-code-concept_metamorworks_getty-images-pro.png10801080Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analysthttps://tbri.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/TBR-Insight-Center-Logo.pngPatrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst2025-03-18 15:43:052025-03-18 15:43:05Fujitsu’s Policy Twin: Revolutionizing Public Policy with Digital Twins
If the key takeaway from Mobile World Congress 2025 (MWC25) in Barcelona, Spain, could be boiled down to one word, that word would be: warning.
Though warnings for the telecom industry have been trumpeted ever since the LTE cycle underwhelmed and failed to bring significant new revenue to telcos, TBR notes that the warning has reached a new level and that the telecom industry faces arguably the most uncertain period in its 150-year history.
There is real concern that endemic, chronic issues that have been challenging the telecom industry for many years could be compounded by the agenda and policies of the new U.S. administration, which has created global uncertainty regarding geopolitics, the strength of nation-state alliances, trade policy, economic development and other key areas, ratcheted up to levels not seen since the Cold War.
Amid this uncertainty, the modus operandi for telcos and their network vendors is to shrink back to basics and cut costs. With catalysts for sustainable, ROI-positive new revenue for telcos remaining unclear, the will to spend more on capex is simply nonexistent. Rather, telcos are becoming more fixated on cost reduction, especially through AI and M&A.
Using history as a guide, deep structural change and regulatory reform, such as that yearned for by the telecom industry, typically only occur in times of monumental crisis, such as severe macroeconomic deterioration, which tends to force governments into action and drive broader restructuring and changes at organizations.
For example, two of the most significant, large-magnitude industrial changes across major societies in the past 150 years occurred during the Great Depression of the 1930s, which reshaped labor and industrial dynamics, and the Great Recession of 2007-2009, which reshaped the financial services industry and real estate market. Telecom will, unfortunately, need a similar economically driven crisis to bring about the changes that the industry desperately needs.
The telecom industry might finally be getting the fundamental, transformational change it needs, and President Donald Trump may well be the catalyzing agent for this change.
MWC25: Disruptive Technologies and Business Models Create New Opportunities for the Mobile Ecosystem
Join Principal Analyst Chris Antlitz and Senior Analyst Michael Soper Thursday, March 20, 2025 for an exclusive deep dive into top takeaways from Mobile World Congress 2025. The pair will also discuss how emerging opportunities are likely to drive technology and business model disruption and impact markets.
Europe risks reaching a point of no return and dragging its telecom industry down with it
Europe is regressing, and its way of life is threatened unless drastic change is implemented. This was a frequently discussed theme at MWC25. Although Europe has a leading educational system and talented workforce, regulation and taxation in the region have become so restrictive that they are causing chronic disinvestment, brain drain (mostly to the U.S.) and capital flight (again, mostly to the U.S.).
There has also been an acceleration in the decline of birth rates, which portends future, structural headwinds for European society. Though it is not too late to bring Europe back from the brink and reassert the continent as a major powerhouse in the global economy, the window to fix the situation is closing.
For example, TBR’s research suggests Europe is approximately five to seven years behind other first-world economies in key technological areas, such as 5G, cloud, AI and quantum computing, and the gap is widening as the pace of technological change accelerates.
How Europe responds to the impact of the Trump administration will solidify the bloc’s future. Broad-based, structural reform is required to ensure the highest probability of success, with European Union (EU) member states acting more like one, unified bloc that is leveraging the best that each state offers.
As part of this, a regulatory overhaul is required, with increased domestic investment and less restrictive encumbrances to economic development enacted. Additionally, M&A, especially as it pertains to nationally important entities, such as telecom operators, must be allowed in order to attain a competitive level of scale and increase the health and financial well-being of these sectors.
There are simply too many communication service providers (CSPs) in Europe (between 100 and 200, depending on how operating companies [OpCos] and subsidiaries are counted), most of which are sub-scale, impacting their ability to innovate and invest, especially on the world stage.
With three CSPs now remaining in most major countries, Europe’s telcos are minnows in a sea of big fish. More years of the same will further constrict and make the telecom industry even more unhealthy. Structural reform must happen now.
Relevant documents pertaining to the future of the EU, such as the Draghi and Leiter reports, were frequently mentioned at MWC25, and many European influencers and decision makers are using those documents to draw ideas from and promote change.
A potential silver lining for Europe is that Trump’s new world order may usher in a renaissance for the continent, whereby the EU bands together in solidarity and cooperation to address its weaknesses and focus on becoming competitive again on the world stage.
Though the deck is stacked against Europe due to the sheer number and scope of problems that the continent faces, recent events that coincided with the timing of MWC25, such as Germany’s new stance on debt and defense spending, could shake the continent awake from its multidecade slumber and be a watershed moment for structural change.
Growth remains the No. 1 problem for the telecom industry, still with no viable solution
When adjusting for inflation, the telecom industry is shrinking and has been for some time. Though mobile has been offsetting chronic weakness in legacy wireline businesses, even now mobile is exhibiting maturity from a global perspective, with industry-level revenue growth rates flatlining.
While it is true that fixed wireless access (FWA) is a new driver of revenue growth, thanks to 5G, the size of the pie is likely to continue shrinking on an inflation-adjusted basis as CSPs fight to attract and retain new subscribers and engage in pricing tactics, such as offering discounts for bundling (aka convergence) to achieve this goal.
The reality is that network APIs, edge computing (including AI inferencing at the edge), network slicing and other areas frequently viewed as growth opportunities for telcos over the past few years are still not yielding substantial revenue, and the revenue that is derived from these areas is more cosmetic (i.e., revenue positive but lacking profitability and scale) than genuine (i.e., ROI positive) in nature.
AI gains traction and becomes more sophisticated
One area in which leading telcos are making progress is applying generative AI (GenAI), and now agentic AI, to boost productivity and reduce costs. TBR notes that the increased level of sophistication of AI solutions demonstrated at MWC25 shows significant progress since MWC24, a bright spot for the industry.
Customer care and billing remain the most popular domains to apply AI currently, and these areas represent low-hanging fruit, but sales, marketing and, increasingly, the network domain will all be impacted by AI as well. Many use cases and business cases for AI and GenAI in the telecom industry make logical sense and have the potential to produce profoundly significant business outcomes, especially related to cost efficiency.
Technological readiness for and commercialization of AI and GenAI are in process, and much more innovation is in store. Additionally, AI will take on increased importance as telcos navigate the deteriorating geopolitical and economic environment and look to sustain their bottom lines.
5G standalone (SA) adoption remains extremely sluggish, and the gap is widening between leading operators and late adopters
The cost and complexity associated with deploying a 5G core, coupled with the lack of a clear ROI from having a 5G core, continues to stifle the pace of commercial deployment of the technology. While approximately 326 CSPs globally have deployed 5G to date, just 123 have officially signed deals to purchase and deploy a 5G core, and about half of those (62 out of the 123 operators) have not actually begun commercial deployment.
Additionally, of the 61 CSPs that have deployed a 5G core, most are not what some consider a “complete 5G network,” meaning the architecture utilized for the 5G core is not cloud-native. Given that a 5G core is a prerequisite for network slicing, deploying forthcoming 5G Advanced features, and using other key features associated with 5G, such as for B2B use cases, this means most CSPs that have deployed 5G to date are still not able to participate in these nascent areas.
CSPs cannot hope to capture revenue from network slicing, AI inferencing at the edge, or forthcoming use cases enabled by 5G Advanced if they do not invest in the infrastructure needed to provide these services at scale and with low latency. Most CSPs’ cautious capex strategies are hindering their future revenue growth opportunities and risk ceding the value capture from these services to hyperscalers, most likely, or to their own incumbent vendors that elect to bypass the CSP middleman.
FWA is starting to get the attention it deserves from telcos but still has significant untapped potential
TBR continues to believe that FWA represents one of the biggest opportunities for mobile network operators to monetize their 5G investments and drive scalable revenue growth. Though CSP deployment of 5G FWA continues to grow, most CSPs keep underestimating the potential of the technology, likely because FWA ties up a lot of spectrum resources for relatively low average revenue per user (ARPU). There is also an embedded industry bias toward full fiber, though TBR believes this mindset has begun to soften as FWA has proved its staying power.
Technological innovations currently available (e.g., multiband carrier aggregation, beamforming, extended range millimeter wave, non-line-of-sight antenna design, New Radio Unlicensed [NR-U], integrated access and backhaul [IAB], silicon advancements) are likely to bring dramatic improvements in network performance, energy efficiency, and the usability of spectrum to support services such as FWA at large scale. FWA customer-premises equipment (CPE) is also becoming more cost effective to buy and deploy.
TBR maintains that 5G FWA should be thought of as wireless fiber and that the notion of having to deploy fiber to every business and residential premises globally is not only economically unfeasible but also unrealistic from a pure time-to-market standpoint to meet digital equity initiatives. 5G FWA can address these challenges and is a far more realistic and economically feasible technology to help the world bridge the digital divide, bring more competition into the global broadband market and support new use cases.
Changes to the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program and other stimulus programs in the U.S. to legitimize FWA (and satellite broadband) is a great step forward in leveraging fiber alternatives without sacrificing significant performance and other benefits that fiber-to-the-premises provides. More than 90% of households and most businesses globally do not need more than 100Mbps of broadband speed, mostly thanks to advancements in video compression technologies.
Over the next few years, TBR believes the industry’s perception of FWA will shift from being viewed as an “intermediate, good enough” solution pending fiber rollout to a legitimate fiber alternative, and that ultimately up to 50% of global premises (residential dwellings and businesses) could be addressed with FWA, with the balance being served by Fiber-to-the-X (FTTx) and satellites.
Satellite industry enters the telecom hen house
Though there are significant benefits for mobile network operators (MNOs) (and their customers) to partner with satellite connectivity providers, there is also a growing undercurrent of concern. Led by Starlink, which had a strategically located booth in one of the prominent courtyards of the MWC venue, telco leaders are starting to realize that satellite operators pose a legitimate competitive threat.
Non-terrestrial networks (NTNs) are advancing quickly, with a broader range of smartphones now off-the-shelf compatible with satellite networks, just as they are with terrestrial networks. From a services perspective, satellite connectivity has advanced from basic SOS messaging services to full text support, with voice and data services on the road map for later this decade, all of which can be utilized by the latest popular smartphones.
Satellite broadband is even starting to compete against terrestrial broadband, especially xDSL and FWA, an inflection point made possible by the steady reduction in satellite CPE costs, which historically made satellite connectivity too expensive to be an economically feasible alternative to terrestrial broadband options, as well as significant increases in downlink speeds.
Ultimately, according to TBR’s research, it is conceivable that up to 100 million premises globally could be supported by satellite broadband providers, with Starlink likely to remain the frontrunner in the ecosystem.
Defense industry poised to become a major growth area for network vendors
The Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas wars have demonstrated how warfighting has evolved with technology, prompting a reassessment of military strategy, assets and the production of military-related equipment, especially by the U.S. Department of Defense and NATO members in Europe. Additionally, with the U.S. now retreating from Ukraine, Europe is forced to revitalize its own military industrial complex. All of this incurs more spend on military and defense, with mobile technology set to be a prominent feature of new systems and solutions.
5G, 6G, private cellular networks, edge computing and AI will all be leveraged in some way in modernized military solutions. Of the more than $13 trillion that it is estimated will be spent on defense globally through the rest of this decade, TBR expects many billions of dollars of this amount to flow to the telecom industry, with Nokia, Ericsson and a broad range of other vendors as well as operators providing the bulk of this equipment and services.
Conclusion
Telecom operators remain unhealthy, and the prognosis is deteriorating. One of the first things the industry needs is a comprehensive reassessment of the regulatory environment to give telcos some breathing room and flexibility to accelerate their digital transformation journeys. A catalyzing event, which usually stems from crises, is needed to force the telecom ecosystem to change, and for regulators to create a friendlier economic and competitive environment.
TBR maintains that the telecom industry will look very different by the end of this decade and that significant consolidation will need to take place to create more financially healthy and sustainable telcos. It is possible that Trump and his unconventional policies will be the catalyzing agent to usher in this new phase of telecom industry evolution.
https://tbri.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/AdobeStock_263924573-scaled.jpeg14082560Chris Antlitz, Principal Analysthttps://tbri.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/TBR-Insight-Center-Logo.pngChris Antlitz, Principal Analyst2025-03-14 09:40:382025-03-14 09:40:38Trump Could be the Worst (or Best) Thing Ever for the Telecom Industry
Bridge the pricing gap with data-driven insights from TBR
Introduction
In the absence of validated data, many professional and IT services firms rely on pricing strategies of the past and anecdotal, and often biased, inputs from field sales and partners within their ecosystem. To optimize both margin and market share, a data-centric, live “state of the market” pricing analysis can solve many of the unanswered questions services leadership and pricing directors face.
Client’s background
The client for this price benchmarking project was a global Top 3 hardware OEM. The company provides a diverse range of hardware and related services globally across industries such as healthcare, financial services, education and other key industries.
Client’s challenge
The client needed to better understand the competitive pricing environment for consulting and residency services in the U.S. market, including the price points and pricing strategies utilized by key competitors for comparable roles and services. The client sought data and insights on competitive pricing, as well as recommendations on how to translate the insights into executable strategic actions that could be deployed to optimize its near-term and long-term services competitiveness in the U.S. market.
Preview a TBR Tailored Services custom competitive pricing engagement, showcasing a rate card assessment and managed services pricing outputs
Ongoing company coverage and years of dedicated pricing research have allowed TBR to refine and perfect our methodologies to deliver precise, data-driven insights such as street price, list price, deal size-to-discount ratios, staffing levels and levels of automation. Our expertise enables TBR to identify market trends, optimize pricing strategies and drive competitive advantage.
Primary research that ensures existing research is rooted in direct, current market perspective from competitors and customers
Fully customized research plan that ensures data captured is aligned to TBR’s client taxonomies and is directly comparable to internal pricing
Outputs that yield quantitative pricing comparisons AND qualitative contextual insights on pricing models, pricing structures, discounting and other commercial tactics
To capture apples-to-apples results, TBR typically fields pricing research by devising a set of hypothetical deal parameters to frame market insiders’ pricing inputs. Upon project launch, TBR collaborates with the client to generate services and deal configuration descriptions to best mirror real-world market conditions and ensure outputs will be representative of the client’s services business.
Services scope: Services covered in the engagement and anticipated services deliverables; also includes considerations such as type of services engagement (e.g., residency versus project-based)
Technology scope: As applicable, any specifics on the types of technologies encompassed by the engagement per the services deliverables as outlined in the previous bullet
Commercial scope: Contract length/term and anticipated deal value in dollar terms as applicable
Client’s results
TBR strives to bring contextual understanding of the multitude of professional services, from management consulting to managed services, security services to attached services.
This client was able to capitalize on the investment in pricing research by:
Better understand the necessary resource mix to support its deal pursuits and respective pricing schemes (staffing levels and automation mix)
Optimally calibrate pricing and go-to-market strategies tied to end-customer outcomes
Reframe the value of the partner ecosystem through data-centric lens (reset commercial deal structures and long-term partnership models)
Understand implications of new technologies such as GenAI and multicloud on its pricing and profitability (reduce costs from the equation)
Invest in hiring and training geared toward what’s next to support elastic pricing and commercial models
Learn more
TBR leverages a proprietary analytical approach to uncover list price vs. street price, delivery models, rate card breakdowns and discount frameworks, developed over 20 years of analyzing professional and IT services vendors and their pricing habits, strategies and discount structures. Each engagement utilizes multiple research tools, including vendor, partner and customer interviews and surveys, with key focus areas spanning competitive intelligence and benchmarking, customer intelligence, financial modeling, go-to-market enablement, and opportunity analysis.
Click here to download a free preview of a TBR Tailored Services custom competitive pricing engagement, showcasing a rate card assessment and managed services pricing outputs.
https://tbri.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Tailored-Services-Campaign-Email-Header-1.png250750TBRhttps://tbri.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/TBR-Insight-Center-Logo.pngTBR2025-03-12 11:59:402025-03-12 11:59:40TBR Case Study: Price Benchmarking
My previous and current careers collided last week when the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) announced a one-year moratorium on doing business with PwC (details continue to emerge even as I type this and the exact contours of the new Saudi PIF and PwC arrangement will likely shift, so I won’t try to evaluate a moving target). Having spent 13 years as a U.S. diplomat — including living in the Middle East for four years and taking at least a dozen trips to Saudi Arabia while working at the U.S. State Department, White House, and Department of the Treasury — I have some thoughts on how business and politics work in that region. I’ve also spent almost two decades trying to understand the Big Four firms, and I recently sat down in Washington, D.C., with some of PwC’s leadership to discuss the market, the firm’s ecosystem and what’s coming in 2025.
Bottom line upfront: Understand that this is a Saudi story, not a PwC story, although undoubtedly it doesn’t feel that way in PwC’s corridors right now. Saudi Arabia has an opportunity to send some critical messages to players in the country, in the region and globally, and the kingdom is taking advantage. If you’re among the many IT services companies and consultancies — and other multinational companies, although they’re less of a concern to me professionally right now — investing aggressively on growth in the Middle East and you’re misinterpreting this recent development as what PwC did wrong instead of listening to what the Saudis are trying to say, take a long pause and step forward only cautiously.
What are the Saudis saying?
First, the Saudis, through the PIF, have issued a warning — a shot across the bow — to management consultancies, IT services companies and others that have been enjoying a seemingly relentless flow of funds from the kingdom: Tighten up your accounts, sharpen your delivery, ensure your value proposition and the Saudis’ return on their investment in you will be abundantly clear. The McKinsey & Co., Boston Consulting Group and Deloitte partners may be enjoying some schadenfreude at the moment, but they understand the message coming from the Saudis: Bring tangible value, or don’t send us a bill.
Second, the Saudis have been feeling the positive heat of the world’s economic attention for a few years now, particularly as new leadership has pushed hard to invigorate the non-oil part of the kingdom’s economy. I wrote recently about what that has looked like in the United Arab Emirates — based on a webcast by PwC, coincidently — and for the Saudis, the initial success of those efforts and the increased global market and investor attention have been welcomed. What better time to send a message that Saudi Arabia has a transparent, high-functioning, rules-based economy, long since evolved from the souks of the old days and the opaqueness that characterized so much of the kingdom as late as the mid-2000s?
The Saudi Arabia and PwC story serves that purpose perfectly: We’re holding accountable a Big Four accounting and consulting firm and subjecting them to our high standards, just like every other advanced economy. The particulars of the kingdom’s regulatory environment and business culture can certainly be up for discussion, but the message, again, is clear: Everyone needs to play by the Saudis’ rules.
And maybe that’s the biggest takeaway as this story develops. Operating in the Middle East requires local knowledge, a regional presence, and an on-the-ground understanding that can only be sustained by being there. Yes, I am writing this 6,303 miles from Riyadh, but lessons learned hard are lessons long remembered, even over long distances. TBR has seen a surge in IT services companies’ and management consultancies’ investments in the Middle East and heard expectations around growth in the near term.
In my view, those investments and expectations are smart strategies and well founded. It’s the execution that matters, and a significant — perhaps the most significant — part of that execution comes from knowing the ground, reading the messages being sent, and understanding the story behind the story.
https://tbri.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/value-jigsaw-puzzle-concept_bagi1998_getty-images-signature.png10801080Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analysthttps://tbri.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/TBR-Insight-Center-Logo.pngPatrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst2025-03-05 10:19:202025-03-05 10:19:20Saudi Arabia’s Message to Global Firms: Deliver Real Value or Step Aside
AI’s promise persists, but SaaS vendors await tangible revenue gains
While emerging technology AI and generative AI (GenAI) has been widely discussed, it has yet to translate into significant revenue growth for SaaS vendors. This is partly due to customers’ skepticism surrounding the technology and a persistent desire to limit IT spending. Despite this, vendors across all cloud segments have continued to invest heavily, through R&D and capital expenditures, showing a strong willingness to make substantial upfront investments for long-term gains. As a result, AI development strategies have progressed according to previously established road maps, a trend TBR expects to continue through 2025.
For SaaS vendors, the long-term opportunity lies in the ability to upsell GenAI solutions integrated directly into their existing workflows. While all major SaaS providers have made such solutions generally available, revenue from GenAI tools has not been enough to offset the slowing top-line growth many vendors are experiencing. Issues like cost, reliability, data governance and use-case validation remain obstacles to broader adoption, preventing the technology from becoming the growth driver vendors had hoped. Nevertheless, enterprise SaaS vendors continue to hold an optimistic long-term outlook, with many believing the technology will become a strategic necessary. This has prompted vendors to stay committed to their previously established AI road maps.
Learn how scale, innovation and even repatriation will moderate cloud market growth in 2025.
Download TBR’s 2025 Cloud Market Share Predictions special report today!
SaaS vendors will shrug off growing GenAI disillusionment, focusing on the long term by prioritizing GenAI agents within their development strategies
In the latter half of 2024, cutting-edge GenAI tools evolved from copilots that could perform a single task based on natural language prompts to agents capable of handling multiple tasks, paving the way for greater automation. This was a logical progression and an important step in vendors’ efforts to automate workflows.
Click the image below to watch this recent TBR Insights Live session, Cloud Market 2025: How GenAI Will Shape the Future
Now that agents are available, expanding their capabilities has become the next priority, with vendors allocating more internal resources to develop prebuilt agents specialized in specific tasks. To complement internal development, codevelopment around GenAI agents will become a common initiative in SaaS leaders’ partnership strategies, as they look externally to fill domain expertise gaps.
Whether through internal development or ecosystem collaboration, TBR expects a proliferation of GenAI agents in the coming year. However, we remain skeptical about whether this will be enough to make GenAI a significant growth driver. Barriers to adoption, particularly the need for data modernization within enterprises, will likely persist as key challenges to broader GenAI adoption. Nevertheless, vendors will continue to push their development pipelines to stay ahead of competitors in the GenAI arms race.
https://tbri.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/cloud-network-solution_da-kuk_getty-images-signature_canva-pro.png6271200Alex Demeule, Senior Analysthttps://tbri.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/TBR-Insight-Center-Logo.pngAlex Demeule, Senior Analyst2025-03-04 11:22:262025-03-04 11:22:26SaaS Vendors Bet on AI Agents to Unlock New Revenue Streams
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