Entries by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Salesforce Highlights Strengths in Innovation and Relationships at Agentforce World Tour

With the recent hype around the “death of SaaS” and other pressures on the business models of technology companies, Salesforce’s growing presence, success, and apparent disruption of competitors and alliance partners alike underscore Salesforce’s strengths in creating stickier client relationships and continually innovating, two qualities essential in the agentic AI age.

KPMG Collaborates with Microsoft to Develop Governed Agent Operating Model at Scale

KPMG appears to be attempting to move the competitive battleground from implementation speed to governed operations. If the market evolves in this direction, partners and competitors will need to clarify their roles and demonstrate credibility in an environment where agentic transformation is treated less as a discrete project and more as a continuously governed system.

New Growth in Consulting Is Emerging from an Unexpected Place: Managed Services

A scaled managed services practice trained in spotting consulting opportunities and armed with AI-enabled solutions will unquestionably win some management consulting market share. More significantly, from TBR’s objective view, is whether the Big Four firms can manage their staffing, brand promise and technology alliances to take advantage of the managed services practices they’ve already built and use those opportunities to return to robust management consulting growth. Maybe, but probably not all four. The next two years will be telling, and TBR expects the existing differences between the Big Four will become even more pronounced.

Consulting Will Rebound in 2026

After a period of relative softness, consulting revenues are expected to rebound to high-single- or low-double-digit growth as pervasive uncertainty pushes enterprises to seek external guidance. Demand will be particularly strong around risk mitigation, strategic planning and AI adoption, positioning forward-deployed engineers, supply chain management and people advisory services as leading revenue drivers in 2026.

2026 Predictions: AI Momentum Drives Deeper Ecosystem Alliances

2026 will be a transitional year defined by technology ecosystem expansions — multiparty alliances spanning IT, OT, devices, edge and silicon; industrial/physical AI acceleration, especially at the edge and in manufacturing; and strategic bottlenecks as skill shortages and infrastructure gaps slow sovereign AI adoption. TBR expects significant changes in how technology vendors collaborate and compete, which lays the groundwork for broader, more integrated AI ecosystems. This is an optimistic prediction. Multiparty alliances require exceptional leadership, shared understanding of commercial models and transparency among partners, and AI aids only the last of these. The human component remains the most significant roadblock. IT-OT convergence and a surge in connected everything have been a TBR (and broader market) prediction for years, and while “signs point to yes,” as the Magic 8 Ball says, 2026 could be another year of disappointing progress, as hype around physical AI could far outpace reality.

2026 Predictions: Managed Services Shifts from Delivery Model to Growth Engine

The smartest IT services companies and consultancies will act on managed services as an entrée to consulting, a complete reversal of the traditional consulting to implementation to managed services model. Everyone should benefit from the increased demand for consulting in 2026. Still, most of the top IT services companies and consultancies will leverage their managed services relationships to capture new opportunities and further cement their stickiness with clients.