3Q24 Federal IT Services Benchmark

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Expansion accelerated in the federal IT market in 3Q24 as renewed M&A activity by several federal IT vendors augmented strong, stable demand for digitally based IT modernization

Statutory year-to-year revenue growth for the 11 benchmarked vendors in the U.S. federal market on a weighted average basis rose 100 basis points sequentially, increasing from 8.3% in 2Q24 to 9.3% in 3Q24. Acquisitions by AFS (Cognosante), BAH (PAR Government Systems Corporation [PGSC]), CACI (Quadrint in 1Q24 and Azure Summit Technologies [AST] in 3Q24), CGI Federal (Aeyon), General Dynamics Technologies (Iron EagleX) and KBRWyle (LinQuest) generated an inorganic tailwind to overall market growth of roughly 180 basis points in 3Q24.
 
Federal IT executives (e.g., CACI CEO John Mengucci) have indicated that the M&A market became more buyer-friendly during 2024, prompting several benchmarked vendors to leverage acquisitions to address portfolio gaps in multiple areas, including digital transformation (DT) and emerging technologies for classified defense and intelligence operations. Vendors have been acquiring, and will continue to hunt for, smaller peers with scalable cloud and digital modernization capabilities as well as deep existing (and likely cloud-related) relationships with federal agencies.
 
Underpinning inorganic market growth is enduring robust demand for digitally transformative technologies in AI, cloud, analytics and data science, as well as the continued need to upgrade baseline IT infrastructures across the federal sector to accommodate digital modernization.
 

Graph: 3Q24 Federal Market Year-to-year Growth (Source: TBR)

3Q24 Federal Market Year-to-year Growth (Source: TBR)

Civil agencies continue to aggressively invest in cybersecurity, health IT and Agile-based software systems, leading to sustained double-digit civil sector IT spending growth

Weighted average growth in the civilian sector accelerated 80 basis points sequentially, rising from 9.6% in 2Q24 to 10.4% in 3Q24. Vendors including BAH and Leidos have posted multiple quarters of double-digit growth in their respective civil units as of 3Q24, with robust rates of growth expected to persist well into 2025. Sector growth was sustained at or near 10% throughout federal fiscal year 2024 (FFY24) as demand among civil agencies remains robust for comprehensive zero-trust and cyber incident support solutions, particularly by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the IRS and NASA.
 
Attracting and retaining cybersecurity talent also remain top priorities for nearly all civilian agencies, which are tapping vendors like AFS, BAH and Deloitte Federal for human resource advisory services. NASA launched an eight-year, $2 billion program, NASA Consolidated Applications and Platform Services (NCAPS), during 3Q24 to develop and deploy Agile-based software for over 200 IT systems, with vendors including CACI among the primary awardees.
 
Health IT is generating new revenue and profit streams for the benchmarked vendors, and agencies including the HHS (and its subagencies, CMS, the CDC and NIH) are seeking agencywide AI and analytics adoption services. The top five benchmarked vendors in year-to-year civilian sector revenue growth in 3Q24 were AFS (25%), BAH (16.1%), SAIC (10.8%), Maximus (9.3%) and CACI (7.9%).

Federal IT spending remained robust throughout FFY24, and the market appears poised for another strong year in FFY25, even as CY25 begins with yet another continuing resolution

TBR projects weighted average year-to-year federal IT services revenue growth for the 11 benchmarked companies will decelerate to between 8% and 8.5% in 4Q24, down from 9.3% in 3Q24. We anticipate weighted average year-to-year revenue growth in the defense sector will fall to between 6.8% and 7.3% in 4Q24, down from 8.6% in 3Q24, while civilian revenue growth remains between 10% and 10.5% in 4Q24, in line with the 10.4% increase in 3Q24.
 
Four leading federal systems integrators — BAH, CACI, Leidos and SAIC — as well as smaller federal IT peer KBRWyle elevated their respective revenue growth forecasts for their current fiscal year when tendering 3Q24 fiscal results, indicators that the federal IT macro environment will remain mostly growth-friendly through FFY25.
 
The new federal fiscal year began with a continuing resolution (CR) that extended government funding until Dec. 20, when a subsequent CR was enacted to fund federal operations until March 14, 2025. Further CR extensions in FFY25 would cause budget delays that could impede the ability of federal IT contractors to convert backlog into revenue, but most vendors expect revenue growth to remain on a solidly upward growth trajectory in FFY25.
 

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Pressures on resource management teams at federal IT contractors continue easing as the federal technology labor market returns to pre-pandemic rates of employee attrition and retention

Federal IT vendors are expanding training of their workforces across a variety of emerging technologies, including AI, analytics, cloud, EW, SIGINT and communications. The competition for talent in federal IT continues to cool, according to executives at several vendors, who have indicated that current trends in the labor market in federal technology are reminiscent of those seen in 2020. Recruiting and upskilling initiatives at federal IT vendors emphasize skills in AI/GenAI, machine learning and security technologies.

Spotlight on IT and professional services vendors serving the public sector: Resource management

Leidos CFO Chris Cage noted in the company’s 3Q24 earnings discussion that employee retention levels remain at all-time highs, as the federal IT labor market continues to cool after the hyper-competitive, post-pandemic period. BAH CFO Matt Calderone indicated his firm received over 100,000 applications in one month during 3Q24.
 
Amanda Christian, CACI SVP of Contracts and Subcontracts, is leading an effort to consolidate the company’s finance, accounting, contracts and subcontracts activities to enhance cross-collaboration and improve the company’s already strong win rates on net-new awards and recompetes.
 
Peraton continued to support Dakota State University’s CybHER Security Institute this summer to encourage young girls to pursue careers in cybersecurity. The company has recently ramped up its efforts to develop a cybersecurity talent pipeline. Peraton has promised to double its related apprenticeships, hire over 200 interns, set up an initiative to help people pivot into cybersecurity, and expand its ties with community colleges over the course of 2024.

 

2H24 Hyperconverged Platforms Customer Research

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Turmoil over VMware’s licensing changes for VCF could cause customers to shift to other hyperconverged platforms or even to move away from HCI altogether and toward public cloud

Artificial intelligence

Although AI has been part of HCI workloads for some time, industry hype has brought more attention to both AI-enabled workloads and AI running as its own workload. Respondents cited AI as the top workload being run on HCI, and indicated AI is enabling a number of other workloads, including database management, business intelligence/ analytics, business apps (CRM, ERP), data backup, disaster recovery and IoT.
 
When it comes to generative AI (GenAI), the majority of the respondents’ organizations had already implemented GenAI into some of their business workflows or are evaluating how to do this. Organizations face different adoption challenges depending on their size. For example, large enterprises look for solutions that ensure data privacy and accuracy of results, while smaller organizations consider cost, skill set needed to operate the solution and how data must be structured.

Hybrid cloud

Nearly 70% of respondents are utilizing HCI for hybrid cloud, and HCI vendors continue to roll out enhancements to their hybrid cloud offerings with partners such as Microsoft Azure, VMware, Nutanix and Red Hat. At the same time, complex integration with existing infrastructure was the top challenge respondents faced with HCI rollouts in 2024. Additionally, 26% of respondents indicated they have not yet realized the benefits of integrating their HCI into a hybrid cloud. As HCI systems are increasingly becoming the foundation for numerous hybrid cloud and edge computing solutions, vendors must be prepared to simplify and enable system deployment, becoming more complex due to integrations with other systems and platforms.

VMware

VMware’s licensing changes for VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) and other software have created significant upheaval among customers, with over half of respondents surveyed indicating they are exploring alternatives. While this may create opportunities for competing HCI solutions, such as Azure Stack HCI or Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure, customers frustrated with licensing fees may also choose to shift HCI workloads to a public cloud alternative instead of to another on-premises solution.
 

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While the rate of on-premises data center consolidation has declined for 2 consecutive years, the rate of data center expansion has increased

Over the past two years, the percentage of respondents who are significantly consolidating their on-premises data center space has decreased from 53% in 2022 to 40% in 2024. At the same time, the percentage of respondents who are significantly increasing their on-premises data center footprints has grown from 4% in 2022 to 13% in 2024.
 
Overall, data center consolidation is still the prevailing trend, with 66% of respondents somewhat or significantly consolidating their on-premises data center space. However, respondents are trending toward more of a middle ground, which is likely driven by a combination of factors including hybrid cloud adoption, workload placement optimization, cloud repatriation and upgrading older data center infrastructure to denser systems.
 
Graph: On Premises Data Center Strategy, 2H24 (Source: TBR)

HCI customer respondents’ managed services uptake increased approximately 5% in 2024 compared to 2023

Hardware services such as break-fix and firmware update continue to be the most commonly attached services to purchases of hyperconverged platforms, while managed services ranks a close second.
 
Vendors continue to leverage “as a Service” offerings to drive increased services attach on hyperconverged platform sales. As customers increasingly opt in to managed services contracts, education and certification services attach has fallen.
 
Consumption of assessment planning and implementation services as well as advisory, strategy and consulting services remained largely flat on a year-to-year basis in 2024, demonstrating consistent demand for such offerings as customers continue to seek support in evaluating new use cases.
 

Graph: Additional Services Requested When Purchasing Hyperconverged Platforms, 2H24 (Source: TBR)

Additional Services Requested When Purchasing Hyperconverged Platforms, 2H24 (Source: TBR)

As organizations’ data volumes continue to increase, respondents expect to leverage HCI more heavily, taking advantage of the highly scalable nature of these platforms

Data backup and disaster recovery was the second most common workload respondents reported running on their hyperconverged infrastructure, and the top workload customers plan to move to hyperconverged platforms.
 
While DevOps was ranked No. 8 in overall workload adoption on HCI, respondents have identified it as a future growth area as the second most popular workload expected to be moved to hyperconverged platforms.

1H25 5G & 6G Telecom Market Landscape

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FWA will persist as the dominant 5G use case for operators for foreseeable future as ROI of emerging use cases for 5G SA and 5G-Advanced remains uncertain

Communication service providers (CSPs) in many countries (developed and developing) globally will leverage 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) to provide competitive high-speed broadband services. CSPs view 5G FWA as a viable and, in many cases, more cost-effective alternative to traditional fixed broadband services.
 
In many cases, FWA also provides CSPs with a time-to-market advantage versus traditional, fixed-access operators in greenfield environments such as rural areas. According to the November 2024 Ericsson Mobility Report, more than 130 CSPs globally are currently offering 5G FWA services.
 
The U.S. remains a market leader in FWA adoption as T-Mobile and Verizon recently updated their FWA customer targets to reach 12 million and up to 9 million customers, respectively, by the end of 2028. Additionally, TBR believes fiber-poor markets, such as Germany, the U.K. and India, are especially attractive candidates for 5G FWA as they provide a faster and more cost-effective way to deliver fiber-like services to end users compared to building out fiber to the premises (FTTP). TBR notes that deploying fiber everywhere is not economically feasible and that governments are becoming more aware that FWA is a viable alternative.
 
Despite its potential to generate revenue and customer growth, TBR believes FWA is largely viewed as an ancillary offering in the mobile industry and is lacking a level of attention and innovation in the market. Additionally, existing standards do not adequately account for FWA, and network architectures are not optimized to fully support this use case. Spectral efficiency technologies tailored to optimize FWA traffic could free up significant capacity on existing networks, which could then be utilized for other purposes.

Lack of a clear ROI for the private sector to justify investing sufficiently in 6G puts the fate of the technology into the hands of the government

The telecom industry continues to struggle with realizing new revenue and deriving ROI from 5G, even after five years of market development. TBR does not see a solution to this challenge, and with no catalyst on the horizon to change the situation, CSPs’ appetite for and scope of investment in 6G will likely be limited. TBR expects CSP capex investment in 6G will be subdued compared to previous cellular network generations and deployment of the technology will be more tactical in nature, which would be a marked deviation from the multihundred-billion-dollar investments in spectrum and infrastructure associated with the nationwide deployments during each of the prior cellular eras.
 
In a longer-term effort to address this situation, TBR expects the level of government involvement in the cellular networks domain (via stimulus, R&D support, purchases of 6G solutions and other market-influencing mechanisms) to significantly increase and broaden, as 6G has been short-listed as a technology of national strategic importance.
 
With that said, 6G will ultimately happen, and commercial deployment of 6G-branded networks will likely begin in the late 2020s (following the ratification of 3GPP Release 21 standards, which is tentatively slated to be complete in 2028). However, it remains to be seen whether 6G will be a brand only or a legitimate set of truly differentiated features and capabilities that bring broad and significant value to CSPs and the global economy. Either way, the scope of CSPs’ challenges is growing, and governments will need to get involved in a much bigger way to ensure their countries continue to innovate and adopt technologies deemed strategically important.
 

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Global CSP spend on 5G infrastructure is slowly growing following a dip in 2024 as CSPs reassess their capital allocation and become more conservative

A pull forward of capex into 2023 in the U.S. and India resulted in a decline in CSP 5G capex in 2024, but slow growth will resume in 2025 as CSPs gradually deploy additional 5G base stations for coverage and capacity as well as roll out 5G core.
 
Though some CSPs will continue to test and commercially deploy the newest technologies for 5G, most CSPs are in no rush to deploy 5G Stand-alone or 5G-Advanced due to the lack of ROI-positive B2B use cases.
 
FWA is one key area that will receive increased attention and investment through the forecast period as more CSPs legitimize the technology as an economically viable means of bridging the digital divide and bringing more competitive broadband services to existing markets that have fixed access.
 

Graph: 2023-2028Est. 5G CSP Capex Spend (Source: TBR)

2023-2028Est. 5G CSP Capex Spend (Source: TBR)


 

CSP investment in 5G infrastructure and technologies is being limited by ROI uncertainties

Phase 3: Ecosystem maturity (2025-2030)

  • Most CSPs will have at least begun commercial deployments of 5G SA.
  • Global operators implement 5G-Advanced, which is dependent on a 5G SA core, to realize benefits in areas including network performance, sustainability and enhanced AI/machine learning (ML) capabilities.
  • Network slicing will mature and become commercialized, likely creating new 5G B2B revenue opportunities for operators.

Enterprise 5G use cases in areas including private cellular network and multi-access edge computing will gain greater traction but account for a relatively limited portion of overall CSP revenue. FWA will remain the most predominant 5G revenue-generating use case, likely contributing tens of billions of dollars in net-new revenue annually for CSPs globally.
 
The first 6G specification in 3GPP Release 21 is expected to be finalized in 2028. Initial commercial 6G network deployments are expected by 2030.

TBR assessment

CSPs are becoming more conservative about investing further in their 5G networks until they see a clear path to ROI. LTE remains sufficient for most customers, and the technology is likely to persist in the market for an extended period. This CSP approach is drawing out the migration to the new RAN architecture (e.g., open vRAN) and to 5G SA, which uses a 5G core. 5G-Advanced will lead to a slight increase in capex but will not reach anywhere near the peak levels experienced in prior years.

Scope of government support for the telecom industry will increase and persist to facilitate 6G market development

The persistent lack of ROI to justify private sector investment in 6G (and cellular networks more broadly) will ultimately push governments further into the telecom industry, prompting them to increase the scope of their involvement in the wireless technology ecosystem as well as embed these support structures more deeply in the market.
 
During the first half of the 5G cycle, governments from various countries around the world pumped many hundreds of billions of dollars in aggregate into their respective domestic technology sectors via various stimulus programs, which provide direct or indirect capital, low- or zero-interest rate loans, as well as subsidies and other means of market support. Governments have also been fostering and overseeing various consortiums and other initiatives to promote 6G market development.
 
Still, additional government backing will be required to enable the full benefits of 6G to come to fruition. Governments have a vested interest in supporting the telecom industry and the broader technology sector as the telecom industry provides innovations of societal and national security importance and serves as foundational infrastructure to support long-term economic development.

4Q24 AI & GenAI Market Landscape

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‘If you save 30%, I want to save 30%’: the coming pressures on consulting and IT services, even as GenAI budgets increase

When PwC publicly stated its internal adoption of GenAI-enabled tools enhanced productivity and generated time and cost savings of up to 50% in software development and 30% in marketing, TBR’s clients began asking about implications for all consultancies and IT services companies if enterprise clients started expecting that those efficiencies would begin to lower their IT and consulting bills. A “customer zero” strategy helps IT services companies and consultancies test, calibrate and evolve technology solutions before rolling them out to clients. It also affords IT services companies instant credibility — “We’re using it ourselves!” — but the sword cuts the other way, too, if enterprise clients expect the efficiencies and cost savings will begin immediately.
 
In TBR’s view, managing margins while embracing — and delivering — GenAI-enabled solutions will be the biggest challenge facing IT services companies and consultancies in 2025.
 

“Managing the noise and risk around deploying GenAI services and solutions at scale will be key for vendors to take advantage of GenAI-related budget increases. We believe the advent of SLMs [small language models] and the emergence of a plethora of GenAI startups will test vendors’ positioning in the market, likely creating two camps: vendors that position themselves as tech-agnostic model orchestrators and those that use proprietary platforms to steer model development discussions in an effort to manage risk and decrease revenue sharing with tech partners.” — TBR’s November 2024 Digital Transformation: Voice of the Customer Research

Cloud vendors are all in on GenAI, despite dramatic investments and sparse returns in short term

Delivering GenAI services at scale is a massive undertaking, and cloud vendors of all types are moving full-speed ahead to maintain their competitive positions. From the IaaS and PaaS vendors alone, we expect capex spending to exceed $150 billion in 2024, a significant portion of which is driven by new data center locations and infrastructure build-outs to support AI-related workloads. Most of the large hyperscale platforms are increasing total capex spending by up to twofold on a year-to-year basis, noting AI as the largest driver of those increases.
 
The investment extends well beyond just capex, however, as R&D for new offerings, training and ecosystem investments targeted at AI technology are being undertaken.
 
Despite the furious pace and scale of investment taking place on the vendor side, customers remain tentative regarding their GenAI investments. The predominant use cases have remained stable since the initial onset of GenAI technologies, with customer service and general productivity being the most widely deployed. Together, the high cost of many GenAI services and the difficulty in clearly documenting financial returns from those investments have slowed the pace of spending. We expect 2025 to be a pivotal year for GenAI, as customers move beyond initial use cases and build operational and financial experience with the technologies.
 

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AI infrastructure demand will see a new spike in early 2025 with launch of NVIDIA’s Blackwell GPU

AI server demand has increased rapidly over the past year, primarily fueled by purchasing from cloud service providers.
 
From Dell and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) alone, their combined AI server revenue increased from $1.2 billion in 4Q23 to $4.4 billion in 3Q24. This represents only a portion of the total market, as other vendors including NVIDIA, Supermicro, Lenovo and Penguin Computing have not published specific data on their AI server sales.
 
While revenues leveled off from 2Q24 to 3Q24, TBR expects demand to spike again once new server models are ready to ship with NVIDIA’s latest GPU.
 
NVIDIA’s H200 GPU, announced in November 2023, has had huge success reaching quarterly revenues in the tens of billions of dollars in 3Q24 and being deployed in data centers by all of the Big Three public cloud providers. A single AI server can use between one and eight H200 GPUs, demonstrating that the total infrastructure market opportunity will be many multiples in size.
 
In addition to server demand, AI use cases prompt the need for complex networking systems, storage equipment and all services. AI infrastructure vendors will need to capitalize on this broader opportunity to help support margins as the high volume of AI servers sold has negatively impacted profitability. Much of this ability to improve margins relies on increased enterprise adoption of AI infrastructure, as the cloud service provider customer base is more cost competitive.

PC OEMs and other ecosystem players are bullish on the opportunity presented by the advent of AI PCs, especially as new x86-based AI PC chips come to market

While TBR believes the ongoing rise of GenAI will continue to have more profound impacts on devices-adjacent technology markets, PC OEMs and other devices vendors across the industry are modifying their go-to-market strategies to align with evolving AI-driven market dynamics while also investing in the development and integration of AI-enabled capabilities and components to strengthen portfolio offerings.
 
For example, over the last several quarters PC OEMs, including those outside the Windows ecosystem, have increasingly invested in the development and marketing of machines powered by PC silicon offerings featuring a neural processing unit (NPU). The NPU is a dedicated chip component meant to accelerate and optimize certain AI workloads by offloading them from other compute-oriented components, like the CPU.
 
Despite Apple M Series chips having featured NPUs since their inception in 2020, silicon offerings featuring onboard NPUs for Windows-based machines first came to market in 2023. This development paved the way for the introduction of the AI PC, and despite the definition of an AI PC varying between OEMs and silicon platform providers, there is consensus that for a PC to be considered an AI PC, it must be equipped with components specifically designed to enable local AI acceleration.
 
As PC OEMs await the ramping of the next major PC refresh cycle, they are encouraged by the opportunities presented by the new AI PC category. The richer configurations of AI PCs support PC premiumization while new, albeit limited, AI features and capabilities are expected to drive increased advisory and professional services engagements as well as third-party software sales. However, TBR expects the lack of killer apps for the AI PC to continue to throttle the first wave of AI PC adoption, despite chip makers like AMD, Intel and Qualcomm all bringing more powerful AI PC silicon to market.

GenAI is expected to have a broad impact across the telecom industry, but the technology is still immature and transformation will take time as telcos tend to invest slowly in new technologies

GenAI Telecom Outlook (Source: TBR)

2Q24 Telecom Infrastructure Services Benchmark

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Persistent TIS revenue contraction will cease in 2025 as growth catalysts emerge

While TIS revenue continued to shrink among the vast majority of benchmarked vendors, TIS operating margins continue to recover as the business mix becomes more favorable and India’s coverage builds wind down

Aggregate telecom infrastructure services (TIS) revenue among benchmarked vendors declined 4.8% year-to-year in 2Q24, falling across all segments and regions. All but six vendors saw TIS revenue decline year-to-year in 2Q24. Several vendors, including Nokia, Ericsson, Samsung and Ciena, are seeing sharply lower revenue in India as 5G RAN rollouts by Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel have gone post-peak. This will create difficult comparisons for vendors through at least 3Q24. Huawei and ZTE are also seeing their maintenance revenue in India evaporate as their installed bases of LTE and optical equipment is replaced by trusted vendors.
 
Simultaneously, vendors such as Cisco, CommScope, Fujitsu, NEC, Nokia and Samsung continued to be hampered by U.S. Tier 1 communication service providers (CSPs) significantly reducing or shifting their capex budgets following a peak in spend in 2022. Lower spend on 5G RAN deployments in China, which also peaked in 2022, is impacting a narrow set of vendors, including China Communications Services (CCS), Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia and ZTE, as new deployments in the country are focused on capacity enhancement, which is typically less intense from a TIS perspective.
 
The shift that is occurring as CSPs wind down their 5G coverage rollouts in the key countries of China, the U.S. and India and focus on densification is helping drive operating margin growth. Declining deployment activity, which tends to carry the lowest margins among TIS segments, in these markets — especially India — is helping to improve operating margin.
 
In 2Q24 deployment services constituted 17.7% of aggregate revenue, down 110 basis points year-to-year. Benchmarked vendors’ aggregate TIS operating margin increased year-to-year for the third consecutive quarter, following six consecutive quarters of declines. Aggregate operating margin grew from 10.8% in 2Q23 to 11.6% in 2Q24.
 
TBR attributes the increase in large part to a favorable revenue mix, with maintenance services growing to 34.1% of aggregate revenue, up 100 basis points year-to-year. The 5G gear vendors have built out in the aforementioned countries over the past few years is leading to follow-on support revenue.

With CSP 5G spend post-peak in India, the U.S. and China, RAN-centric vendors universally saw their TIS revenue decline in 2Q24

 

Graph: Tier 2 Telecom Infrastructure Services 2Q24 Revenue (Source: TBR)

Tier 2 Telecom Infrastructure Services 2Q24 Revenue (Source: TBR)


 
2Q24 Total Benchmarked Revenue for IaaS and PaaS (Source: TBR)India-based IT services firms Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) (a Tier 1 supplier in 2Q24), Infosys, Tech Mahindra and Wipro are winning deals from CSPs to support their evolutions to digital service providers. These vendors are helping customers migrate network and IT applications to the cloud and implement new business models. These firms have recently been hampered in part by lower application integration spend as CSPs in key markets such as the U.S. and Europe adopted a cautious cash flow management posture and paused some digital transformation activity.
 
Like Tier 1 vendor Amdocs, Tier 2 vendor CSG is a SaaS-centric, primarily BSS-focused, company offering revenue management and digital monetization products in a scalable managed services model. CSG has expanded account share among key clients in the U.S. over the last several years — namely, cable operators Charter and Comcast — and abroad, particularly in APAC and with an unnamed client in CALA, where CSG is ramping up a relatively large BSS contract. CSG’s TIS revenue declined in 2Q24 due to lower revenue from an unnamed global telco in Europe.
 
Samsung has executed on significant 5G work for CSPs that are based primarily in the U.S., India, South Korea and Japan. Samsung’s TIS revenue declined year-to-year in 2Q24 due to slowing spend at Verizon, which is Samsung’s largest customer by revenue, as well as in India, where Samsung participated in 5G RAN rollouts for Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio, though at lower levels than Ericsson and Nokia.
 
Like RAN vendors in India, Ciena’s TIS revenue in the country declined significantly as 5G-adjacent projects wound down. Ciena offset this decline with strong software-related services revenue growth in developed countries.
 

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Vendor SL&C revenues largely declined as large-scale 5G and greenfield rollouts wound down and new network business models and arrangements proliferated

Site location and construction (SL&C) work is often subcontracted to local vendors (such as CCS) with better access to resources in a given area. The SL&C market is in decline as temporary gains driven by 5G deployments in China and the U.S. as well as some greenfield deployments have concluded.
 
Pockets of growth include fiber rollouts for broadband access, backhaul and/or fronthaul, and the deployment of small cells. However, the relative volume of spend on these tasks is significantly lower than that for traditional SL&C for macro cell sites.
 
TBR has a negative long-term outlook for the SL&C market as CSPs shift their focus to adding incremental capacity to their existing macro sites, partially offset by growing CSP investment in small cell sites. This densification primarily consists of software upgrades and/or requires adding new radios to existing sites. CSP consolidation also weighs on the SL&C market.
 
New network architectures and business models, including network-sharing arrangements, neutral host providers, satellites to provide coverage for rural and/or remote locations, and third-party infrastructure owners such as tower companies increasingly owning cell sites and promoting the colocation of operator equipment, also reduce the need for net-new sites.

North America TIS revenue continued to decline in 2Q24, but at an improving rate as growth catalysts begin to emerge, including in Canada, where recent M&A and vRAN investments are driving growth

Benchmarked vendors logged a 1.4% year-to-year decrease in aggregate TIS revenue growth in North America in 2Q24, a dramatic improvement from an 8% decline in 1Q24 as year-to-year comparisons turned more favorable and Ericsson began to receive meaningful revenue from its Cloud RAN rollout for AT&T.
 
Still, revenues declined due to numerous factors, including Verizon’s and AT&T’s C-Band rollouts being post-peak as well as T-Mobile’s build-out of its 2.5GHz spectrum being post-peak. In addition, CSPs are awaiting government funding before expanding their fiber footprints, and DISH drastically reduced spending in 2H23 and 1H24 after it reached a key coverage milestone in June 2023 and it neared bankruptcy before receiving new funding in 2H24.
 
TIS spend in the region is positioned to grow in 2025 as comparisons become more favorable and CSPs focus on building out fiber access, including by leveraging the BEAD Program, through which CSPs will receive federal funds that are currently being disbursed to states to bring broadband to the unserved and underserved.
 
The BEAD Program has seen numerous delays and will likely run through the mid-2030s, later than the original 2028 time frame. The program will benefit a somewhat different slate of vendors compared to the midband 5G build-out, as fiber will be the primary technology deployed. Nokia will be one of the biggest beneficiaries due to its embrace of Build in America requirements. Ciena will also benefit, due in part to its 4Q22 acquisitions of Benu Networks and Tibit. Meanwhile, Ericsson and Samsung will have no role in BEAD-related fiber deployments, though they could participate in fixed wireless access (FWA) build-outs.
 
5G development continues in Canada through measures including builds in the 3.5GHz spectrum band, BCE’s capital investment acceleration program, Telus’ vRAN build leveraging HPE and Samsung, and the replacement of equipment from China-based vendors. Tier 2 operators in Canada are also advancing their 5G strategies.
 
Canada CSPs are focused on deploying fiber across their footprints and will expand 5G services to new spectrum bands, including the 3.8GHz band, which Bell Canada began deploying in 1H24. Rogers’ acquisition of Shaw Communications is also driving spend due to investment commitments made by the merged entity and Videotron, which acquired a piece of Shaw.

Spotlight: 2Q24 Cloud Infrastructure & Platforms Benchmark

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Acquiring to fill portfolio gaps and deliver complete end-to-end solutions at any layer of the PaaS stack is a top strategy for IT’s biggest players

Enterprise migrations and large-scale M&A are influencing the IaaS & PaaS market, as is GenAI, but disillusionment is coming and may cause customers to re-evaluate their IT priorities

 

Graph: 2Q24 Total Benchmarked Revenue for IaaS and PaaS (Source: TBR)

2Q24 Total Benchmarked Revenue for IaaS and PaaS (Source: TBR)


 

IaaS Market

Among benchmarked IaaS vendors, average revenue growth increased 21% year-to-year in 2Q24, marking the fourth consecutive quarter of acceleration. There are two primary factors at play: enterprise IT modernization activity, which is much stronger now than it was this time last year, and generative AI (GenAI). Top hyperscalers Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft are capturing legacy Oracle and SAP workloads as customers continue to migrate to the cloud to not only outsource their IT operations but also drive lasting business value.
 
Though the geopolitical outlook is increasingly uncertain, we expect customers will continue to prioritize more traditional “lift and shift” migrations, and steps vendors are taking to deliver more integrated solutions could help. For instance, by the end of 2024, Oracle’s database services will officially be available on AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), which could be a big growth tailwind for these vendors. For context, converting Oracle’s remaining database support install base to the cloud represents a roughly $18 billion incremental revenue opportunity for these hyperscalers, including Oracle itself.
 
Regarding GenAI, investments in AI compute and new data centers are translating into top-line growth. Most vendors report they have multibillion-dollar AI and GenAI businesses, though this is minuscule compared to the tens of billions of dollars these vendors are investing. Vendor capex guidance for 2025 suggests that the level of investment will only increase, although we do expect this is when GenAI fatigue will hit and many customers may begin to re-evaluate their IT priorities.

PaaS Market

The PaaS market is similarly growing behind GenAI adoption, as many customers who still have a fear-of-missing-out mentality are spinning up new workloads natively in the cloud with services like Amazon Bedrock, Microsoft Azure OpenAI and Google Vertex AI. The PaaS market will similarly be impacted by GenAI disillusionment, but we believe this trend will also cause customers to focus more on the data layer, prompting them to take a second look at strategies around governance, data quality and integration for long-term AI success.
 
Another key trend driving PaaS market growth is M&A. IT leaders are acquiring to enter new markets and access IP they can ultimately sell as part of an entire end-to-end suite of offerings, as customers continue to crave more simplified, integrated solutions. By far the best example is Cisco’s acquisition of Splunk, which added $960 million to Cisco’s top line in 2Q24 and is quickly making Cisco a rising force in PaaS with its observability portfolio. IBM’s proposed acquisition of HashiCorp, which is expected to close by the end of 2024, would be another transformative deal that would put IBM squarely into the Terraform space and deliver synergies with Red Hat that will be attractive to unsatisfied VMware customers.
 

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Though often regarded as less secure, public cloud environments offer an array of automated tools, giving customers the opportunity to better secure their assets than they can on premises

Public IaaS: As the cloud market matures, customers are becoming more comfortable with moving to public cloud infrastructure. Security remains a leading barrier to migration; however, many customers recognize that the public cloud offers the opportunity to better secure their infrastructure and data, due to automation and emerging capabilities such as Infrastructure as Code.
 
Public PaaS: Organically, public PaaS remains the fastest-growing segment as public cloud IaaS capabilities improve and vendors tailor their services to developers.
 
Hosted Private IaaS: Private IaaS growth is supported by enterprises’ rising acceptance of hybrid-enabling solutions such as AWS Outposts and Azure Stack, although some customers still consider these solutions immature. Customers continue to demand solutions that address data sovereignty, governance and compliance use cases.
 
Hosted Private PaaS: Single-tenant PaaS is a popular option for customers looking for more customization yet a greater degree of scalability over their on-premises environment. Many enterprises use dedicated clouds as an intermediary step to the public cloud, and as such, segment growth could start to slow. The acceleration in PaaS revenue for 2Q24 is largely influenced by Splunk, which can run in a customer’s environment as both a private and public cloud.
 

Graph: Revenue Growth by Cloud Delivery Method, 2Q24 (Source: TBR)

Revenue Growth by Cloud Delivery Method, 2Q24 (Source: TBR)

IaaS revenue growth rates will not return to what they once were, while PaaS tells a different story as acquisitions and the modernization of critical workloads fuel growth

AWS retains the majority of mindshare in legacy infrastructure workloads, but Azure and GCP continue to be competitive on net-new AI workloads in the cloud

AWS makes up the majority of IaaS vendor revenue, at an estimated 58% in 2Q24, but this is down over 1,200 basis points from the year-ago quarter.  For many legacy customers looking to rehost and/or replatform applications, AWS continues to be top of mind due to its establishment, infrastructure availability and breadth of developer-friendly services. But when it comes to net-new workloads already in the cloud, Microsoft and increasingly Google Cloud, will be competitive.
 
Though SAP and IBM still offer either dedicated or multitenant IaaS to their customers (see TBR’s Cloud Components Benchmark for IBM’s on-premises cloud infrastructure business), the Big Three, and increasingly Oracle, are consolidating the market. Alibaba’s sluggish growth in the China market caused the company to cede the No. 3 position to Google Cloud. While Alibaba’s growth is rebounding, we do not expect the company to take back the position it once held. At the rate Oracle’s OCI is growing, it will not be long before Alibaba gives up share to Oracle in the IaaS market as well.