Learn how a widening variety of industry groups are leveraging their unique strengths, expanding partnerships, and providing new offerings and pricing models to differentiate their value propositions and cement their share in the ever-growing managed services market
On June 5 and 6, 2025, Fujitsu hosted around 25 analysts and advisers for an Executive Analyst Day event in Santa Clara, Calif. Fujitsu leaders from across the globe spoke on various parts of the company’s business and Fujitsu subject matter experts demonstrated solutions currently in research development or recently piloted with a few Fujitsu clients. This special report includes insights from the event and analysis based on TBR’s ongoing research around Fujitsu and the broader IT services sector.
TBR has long maintained that the Big Four firms have an inherent advantage against all competitors when it comes to understanding and advising on geopolitical risk. Perhaps only the U.S. government has the same global spread of talent, with professionals in nearly every country, most intimately aware of local business, economic and even political trends. When EY-Parthenon showed off its Geopolitical Advisory team recently, TBR wanted to know: Is this something special?
Although smaller than the typical IT and professional services firms covered by TBR, Hitachi Digital Services warrants close attention in the coming years. Its distinctive business model, strategic direction and performance — particularly its combination of IT, OT, AI and domain expertise — position Hitachi Digital Services as a potential outlier in the IT services landscape.
Companies keep recruiting, hiring, paying, rewarding, moving, repatriating, retiring and hiring in an endless loop, and EY has capabilities — including consulting, tax and software — that can accelerate movement around that endless loop. EY did not need to say that at the Global Mobility Reimagined conference, as clients understood it already. EY also has a stated ambition to grow People Advisory Services to more than $3 billion by 2031. Absent the worst possible global political and economic scenarios, including a drastic curtailment of global mobility, TBR believes that ambition is perhaps a bit too modest.
Learn how competitors, including IT services companies with consulting capabilities, can calibrate their strategies in the consulting market to take advantage of missteps by the Big Four firms, McKinsey and BCG
TBR has reported extensively on Fujitsu’s evolving AI capabilities and offerings, noting in a special report in May 2024: “TBR appreciates that Fujitsu’s combination of compute power and proven AI expertise makes the company a significant competitor and/or alliance partner for nearly every player fighting to turn GenAI [generative AI] hype into revenue. Second, Fujitsu’s vision of ‘converging technologies’ aligns exceptionally well with the more tectonic trends TBR has been observing in the technology space, indicating that Fujitsu’s market positioning is more strategic than transactional or opportunistic.” Add in Fujitsu’s deepening experience in delivering AI solutions to AI clients, and TBR continues to see tremendous near-term opportunity and growth for Fujitsu and its ecosystem partners.
Trade wars and tariff uncertainties conjure up visions of cargo ships, ports, factories and stacks of goods stranded by economic chaos, not consultants and IT services professionals. Fear, uncertainty and doubt are usually good for the consulting business, while the higher costs of running a business fuel demand for more outsourcing. This time, things might be different. This trade war, even if partially suspended for now, may significantly disrupt professional services, especially if tariffs continue creeping into new areas and the trust deficit continues to grow. Steel now, services later.
One could argue that many of KPMG’s steps, including launching partner-enabled industry IP, reinforcing trust, developing regionally organized operations, outlining a select few strategic partners, and investing in platform-enabled service delivery capabilities, resonate with the moves taken by many of its Big Four and large IT services peers. We see two differences: KPMG is laser-focused on exactly which of the strategies above to amplify, rather than taking a trial-and-error approach, and KPMG has an opportunity to ride the wave of a once-in-a-century professional services market transformation.
The Big Four professional services firms — Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC — have all been undergoing organizational changes in the last couple years. TBR regularly hears five questions about how these firms manage themselves, grow and change. Taking a longitudinal view allows TBR to see that recent restructurings, layoffs and offerings all reflect how these firms are trying to address the following: who gets the best talent, who decides what’s next, who sells, how everyone in a firm knows what everyone else does, and what role will managed services play.