TBR’s Business Insights

How Will Advanced AI Impact Pricing, Labor Practices and Client Expectations?

02.05.26

Advanced AI may be front and center in IT services strategy, but execution challenges remain a familiar story. Despite ongoing hype around unlocking new efficiencies and nonlinear growth, IT services firms continue to grapple with the reality of needing labor arbitrage in the short term and meeting client expectations.

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AI Alliances Will Increasingly Target OT

02.03.26

New and expanding partnerships are increasingly targeting the convergence of IT and OT, as system integrators (SIs) align with OEMs, manufacturing ISVs and silicon providers. This momentum is driven by the strong growth potential in high-tech manufacturing, where solutions that improve accuracy, efficiency and safety can be deployed on-site without reliance on rack-scale compute systems in neoclouds or Tier 1 clouds. As a result, while AI has long operated at the edge, these partnerships will accelerate both the sophistication of AI-driven use cases and the pace of solution framework development.

Agentic AI Adoption Is Pressuring Security Architectures to Converge

01.29.26

The emerging pattern of multicloud security consolidation has direct implications for both Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft, as enterprises reassess detection pipelines, governance models and operating frameworks heading into 2026. Although AWS remains well positioned in analytics-heavy workloads, the company needs to reevaluate its long-established “building block” approach, especially as peers deliver more integrated platforms. For Microsoft, its strengths will continue to be with organizations where Microsoft 365 already anchors their identity and collaboration strategies.

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The U.S. doesn’t have a Spectrum Shortage — It has a Utilization Problem

01.13.26

The mobile industry continues to beat the drum for more spectrum, but it should instead focus on fully utilizing the spectrum already allocated. TBR notes there are vast tranches of spectrum in the U.S. market that are broadly underutilized, either for technical or economic reasons. And challenges will only worsen as the industry aims to bring upper midband frequencies into the fray, which have greater propagation challenges and are less suited for macro coverage.

Shutdown Ends, but Federal Contractors Face a Slow Return to Normal

12.17.25

The 43-day U.S. federal government shutdown, the longest in history, came to a welcome end on Nov. 13, 2025, but for some federal systems integrators (FSIs), the shutdown’s impact could linger well into federal fiscal year 2026 (FFY26). According to the Professional Services Council, the national trade association for federal technology and professional services contractors, it will take three to five days for agency functions to return to normal for each day of the shutdown, implying that operations at some agencies may not return to normal until March 2026.

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Partnerships, Not Products, Will Define How Consultancies and Native AI Companies Share Value in Agentic AI Era

11.03.25

Just like supporting startup programs, many traditional IT services companies and consultancies have struggled to adequately put themselves in their alliance partners’ shoes. And when those partners are startups or immature native AI companies, that struggle will be harder in the absence of leadership, strategic direction and sustained investment. But that’s the potential downside. The upside is that consultancies are perfectly positioned to be change management specialists, helping their largest clients adopt the best new AI.

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Human Capital Management in the Age of (Agentic) AI

10.07.25

Fundamentally HR management remains a back-office function that IT services companies and consultancies can use to drive managed services engagements. And TBR’s research shows that managed services can lead to additional consulting opportunities, particularly when managed services providers (whether a traditional IT services company or consultancy) partners smartly with technology companies, leveraging the data and insights generated through back-office platforms to uncover issues and opportunities.

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GenAI Outcomes or Autonomous AI Architecture: Where Should CIOs Focus?

10.01.25

What good are AI-enabled solutions if an enterprise’s IT environment and architecture can’t handle the data orchestration demands and IT becomes a roadblock to faster, better, clearer insights from AI, rather than the business accelerator expected of IT departments in the AI era? After more than a decade of consultancies and IT services companies helping IT departments become business drivers, will inadequate architecture slow down AI adoption and AI agents at scale?

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Amdocs Is Well Positioned to Continue Absorbing Market Share in the Telecom Industry; AI Is a Key Growth Vector

09.24.25

Although TBR believes it is very early days for agentic AI branding, Amdocs’ early foray into this emerging area and thought leadership underscore how the company is seeking to move into new and adjacent areas as it expands its offerings, especially around consulting, design and transformation enablement.

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HCLTech’s Expanding KYC Journey: From Technology Provider to Trusted Compliance Partner

09.11.25/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

By evolving its KYC offerings across platforms and clients, HCLTech has shifted from tech implementer to outcomes-driven partner.

DOGE drives civil sector slowdown; defense contractors gear up as Trump’s budget shifts billions to military priorities

08.04.25/by John Caucis, Senior Analyst

The Trump administration’s recent “skinny” budget proposal for FFY26 suggests that nondefense spending will fall from around $720 billion in FFY25 to approximately $557 billion in FFY26, representing a 23% decline. Contractors with any level of exposure to the civilian sector can expect agency reorganizations, layoffs, budget reductions and in-depth contract reviews within civil agencies for the remainder of FFY25 and likely into at least the first half of FFY26. The pace of new awards has already slowed significantly at some civilian agencies, as has the rate of new bookings on existing civilian engagements.

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Geopolitics with Purpose: EY-Parthenon Drives Strategy, Not Just Awareness

07.17.25/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

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?

Manufacturing Growth Slows, But EMEA IT Services Vendors Find Lifeline in Public Sector Wins

07.16.25/by Jill Cookinham

This quarter, we look at Accenture, Atos, Capgemini and IBM Consulting in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) market, and compare how their industry diversification, portfolios and localization strategies position them for revenue growth. Atos and Capgemini, the two IT services companies whose EMEA revenue makes up over half of total revenue, experienced a steady decline in trailing 12-month (TTM) year-to-year revenue growth in recent quarters. Yet, Accenture and IBM were better able to maintain growth as macroeconomic conditions deteriorated in recent quarters.

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Capgemini to Acquire WNS for $3.3B, Tripling BPO Revenue and Accelerating AI Ambitions

07.15.25/by Jill Cookinham

The acquisition undoubtedly serves as an important stepping stone to transform Capgemini’s BPO offerings, which are housed in its Operations & Engineering segment, yet Capgemini must be strategic with its approach, balancing new clients’ expectations with the introduction of incremental GenAI and agentic AI capabilities. Capgemini’s recent investments in partner-enabled portfolio offerings position the company well for a large change in the segment, such as its new agentic AI offerings announced with Google Cloud in April and its NVIDIA NIM-powered industry-specific agentic AI solutions and agentic gallery.

Technology Business Research, Inc.

DOGE Federal IT Vendor Impact Series: Maximus

06.11.25/by John Caucis, Senior Analyst

Partnerships will be integral as vendors across the federal IT market look to quickly demonstrate their value to the new administration. While Maximus has historically been quiet regarding its alliance activity, this could change as the vendor aims to avoid falling behind. For example, Maximus recently announced a partnership with Salesforce to augment its CX as a Service efforts. The Maximus Total Experience Management solution is being augmented with the Agentforce platform to provide clients with AI agents tailored to their needs that use data to adapt to citizens’ needs and simplify interactions.

Technology Business Research, Inc.

DOGE Federal IT Vendor Impact Series: ICF International

06.11.25/by John Caucis, Senior Analyst

TBR anticipates ICF will also explore ways to make its IT modernization and digital transformation work more agile while increasingly booking these types of engagements as fixed-price, outcome-based contracts, given the Trump administration’s preference for this contracting method. At least 50% of ICF’s IT modernization and digital transformation engagements are already fixed-price, outcome-based contracts.

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Atos Is Starting to Regain Client Trust and Develop Commercial Opportunities That Will Generate Revenue in 2025

06.06.25/by Elitsa Bakalova, Senior Analyst

After years of instability and declining performance, Atos enters 2025 with new leadership, improved liquidity and early signs of commercial momentum, positioning the company for gradual recovery and long-term stabilization.

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Oracle Strategy: Large Backlog and New Government Contracts Boost Vendor’s Long-term Outlook

06.05.25/by Catie Merrill, Senior Analyst

Oracle’s current business strategy centers on streamlining customer success efforts, enhancing partner collaboration, and expanding multicloud infrastructure. By consolidating its services under the Oracle Customer Success Services (CSS) umbrella, the company has improved life cycle support for clients, reduced overlap with systems integrators, and equipped partners with tools like the Cloud Success Navigator to enhance implementation and renewal outcomes.

Technology Business Research, Inc.

DOGE Federal IT Vendor Impact Series: Booz Allen Hamilton

05.30.25/by John Caucis, Senior Analyst

The disruption that has very suddenly overtaken BAH’s civil business has prompted the firm to craft what Rozanski called a “one-time reset” of its civilian operations, including a 7% reduction in global headcount (about 2,500 employees) in 2Q25 that will disproportionately impact BAH’s civilian operations. The decline in civilian award activity has been so abrupt that BAH has not been able to sufficiently redeploy civilian project staff to DOD, IC or commercial sector programs, despite the firm’s expectations that growth will continue in its DOD and IC units in FY26.

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