Market & Competitive Intelligence Special Reports and Analysis

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.

On April 15 and 16, PwC Japan hosted over 20 analysts, a partner and PwC executives for a day and a half summit at the company’s Technology Laboratory in Tokyo. Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Innovation Officer Kenji Katsura set the tone when opening the meeting by explaining that over the course of the event attendees would be hearing from leaders across PwC’s businesses — including audit, tax, deals and consulting — highlighting the importance of PwC’s strategy to deliver the full range of the firm’s expertise to clients. While ensuring that PwC’s services remain highly relevant to clients in Japan, the firm’s GTM strategy is closely aligned with its global network. This alignment allows PwC Japan to leverage the best practices and innovations from across the network while also contributing homegrown insights and advancements that can benefit clients worldwide.

Between the technology partners and GSIs, Informatica works with a robust ecosystem of partners in a triparty approach, where resources from a hyperscaler, GSI and Informatica are brought together to help customers modernize their data faster and, by default, hasten AI’s time to value. When we survey and speak to alliance decision makers at IT services firms, data management comes up as one of the top areas for partner-led growth, signaling to the ecosystem that they will continue to invest in resources to guide conversations with customers with the technology maturity to address the data foundations ahead of GenAI.

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.

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.