Market & Competitive Intelligence Special Reports and Analysis

In 2025 IT services companies and consultancies will refine their alliances, winnowing lists of 100-plus technology partners to the handful that drive more than 90% of their business, articulate a clear joint value proposition, and align at both the leadership and sales force levels. A technology- and partner-agnostic approach was always a bit of a fiction and in the coming years will become a relic of the past. To make all that happen, IT services companies, cloud and on-premises infrastructure vendors, and consultancies will invest in ecosystem intelligence and elevate alliance management within their organizations.

Of the three major focus areas for TBR’s 2025 predictions — strategy consulting, generative AI (GenAI) and ecosystem intelligence — the first may seem a long shot, the second too obvious to be new, and the third too well established to be changing much. All three will upend expectations in 2025 with wildly varying results for the IT services companies and consultancies that TBR tracks and for their technology partners.

When OEMs first started releasing AI PCs, they shared expectations that the advent of this new product category would help drive the next major PC refresh cycle. However, even as vendors continue to roll out new generations of AI PCs containing increasingly powerful NPUs, adoption remains relatively slow. To build out the market and drive greater adoption of AI PCs over the next few years, silicon providers, PC OEMs and ISVs will need to collaborate around and invest in developing applications that increase the functionality of these devices beyond what can be achieved by a traditional, non-AI PC.

6G will ultimately happen, and commercial deployment of 6G-branded networks will likely begin in the late 2020s (following the ratification of 3rd Generation Partnership Project [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.

Underneath the enthusiasm for hybrid AI, Lenovo’s mission remains unchanged: It is driving transformation to become a technology leader in global devices, infrastructure solutions and services worldwide. Lenovo positions itself as having an end-to-end technology portfolio, a user-centered approach and an immense emphasis on open innovation. The company offers its customers choices thanks to its partnerships across semiconductor, AI platforms and ISVs; and it leverages its Solutions and Services Group to accelerate solution development between its own portfolio and partner ecosystem.