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Google Recognizes Critical Role of Security, and Its Standing in the Cloud Market, in Acquisition of Wiz
With the business environment changing and cybersecurity perhaps more relevant than ever, Google saw an opportunity to repursue the Wiz acquisition, and a $32 billion offer, marking a major uptick in valuation, was simply too good for Wiz to ignore. Should the deal close in 2026 as expected, Wiz — with roughly 1,800 employees and ties to half the Fortune 500 — will join the Google Cloud division, offering synergies with Mandiant, an added layer of protection for the Google Security Operations platform, and the potential to help Google Cloud formalize cybersecurity as an agentic AI use case.

Hardware-centric Vendors Continue to Make Their Move Into Software
Though revenue mixes are increasingly shifting in favor of software, driven in part by acquisitions (e.g., Cisco’s purchase of Splunk), hardware continues to dominate the market, accounting for 80% of benchmarked vendor revenue in 3Q24. Industry-standard servers being sold to cloud and GPU “as a Service” providers are overwhelmingly fueling market growth, more than offsetting unfavorable cyclical demand weakness in the storage and networking markets.

PwC Middle East Experts Weigh In on Economic Trends and Transaction Activity
PwC Middle East’s webcast provides excellent monthly insights into the region’s economies, but it is not the only active Big Four firm. As TBR reported in our Fall 2024 Management Consulting Benchmark, KPMG “announced the opening of Risk Hub in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in collaboration with Microsoft and IBM, paving the way for more in-person, tech-enabled GRC [governance, risk and compliance] discussions with regional clients embarking on their digital transformation programs.” TBR also learned in February that KPMG intends to open a new Ignition Center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in 2025, building on the firm’s global network of innovation and transformation centers.

Deployment Services in Telecom Face Post-5G Slowdown, Shifting Market Dynamics and Growth in Fiber Expansion
The deployment services market faces growing headwinds, including communication service provider (CSP) consolidation, open vRAN’s lower installation costs, and reduced demand for site location and construction (SL&C), offset somewhat by hyperscaler spend and 5G rollouts in select developing markets. Hyperscaler investments provide incremental volume to the market, and TBR notes these companies are increasing their investments in access technologies (e.g., Google Fiber).

TBR Case Study: Price Benchmarking
Explore this competitive pricing example from TBR's Tailored Services team, which helped this global Top 3 hardware OEM capitalize on their investment in pricing research.

Saudi Arabia’s Message to Global Firms: Deliver Real Value or Step Aside
Bottom line upfront: Understand that this is a Saudi story, not a PwC story, although undoubtedly it doesn’t feel that way in PwC’s corridors right now. Saudi Arabia has an opportunity to send some critical messages to players in the country, in the region and globally, and the kingdom is taking advantage.

SaaS Vendors Bet on AI Agents to Unlock New Revenue Streams
For SaaS vendors, the long-term opportunity lies in the ability to upsell GenAI solutions integrated directly into their existing workflows. While all major SaaS providers have made such solutions generally available, revenue from GenAI tools has not been enough to offset the slowing top-line growth many vendors are experiencing. Issues like cost, reliability, data governance and use-case validation remain obstacles to broader adoption, preventing the technology from becoming the growth driver vendors had hoped. Nevertheless, enterprise SaaS vendors continue to hold an optimistic long-term outlook, with many believing the technology will become a strategic necessary.

Who Is the Market Leader in IT Services?
Increased managed services activities around cost optimization and streamlined business processes and the recovering banking, financial services and insurance segment will help vendors alleviate revenue growth pressures in 2025.
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Technology Alliances Are Evolving
/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal AnalystTBR has been evaluating the changing nature of technology alliances through its subscription and commissioned research for decades. A series of best practices have emerged, most often developed by young technology companies, while the commercial impediments seem more acute for legacy vendors with their employees’ resistance to change. The balance of this document will discuss the successful approaches vendors have shared with TBR, and what end customers and small technology companies have shared with us as the anachronisms associated with legacy partner program structures.
Assessing Vendor Partnerships
/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal AnalystTBR interviews with leaders of small SaaS vendors have shown a consistent blueprint for successful engagement with big vendors that consists of three major elements: Are you a strategic fit with the large vendor? How do you approach the large vendor for top-down attention within the firm? And how do you initially engage the large organization for positive, bottom-up, word-of-mouth marketing inside the large vendor?
Build a Successful GSI Alliance Program in 5 Steps
/by adminTBR views the path to a successful GSI alliance program as a five-step process, with many small steps, tasks and requirements associated with each step. Technology vendors may be anywhere in this journey, depending on the maturity of their GSI alliance program, if they have one. It should be noted that this is our perspective, based on the support we have given companies along this journey with our research and advisory services. We have drawn elements of this framework from ASAP’s Alliance Life Cycle framework to make it specific to ISV-GSI partnerships.
PwC India Update: Sustained Outcomes and Trust
/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal AnalystIn early March, TBR met with Arnab Basu, PwC India’s Consulting Leader to discuss developments in India and how the firm’s presence and activities have changed in recent years. The following reflects that conversation, as well as TBR’s ongoing research around PwC, the other Big Four firms, and the broader management consulting and IT services market.
Analytics, AI and digital transformation reach tipping point in acceleration
/by TBRDiscover the two main forces shaping TBR’s outlook for the digital transformation market and how they can help you capture analytics and insights opportunities while reducing and managing expenses
Top 5 Questions To Ask When Creating Market And Competitive KIQs
/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal AnalystDeveloping and deploying KIQs requires creativity and precision, mixed with experience, so we wanted to share five tips we’re learned from over 20 years in this business
Ensuring Competitive & Market Intelligence Models Suit Your Needs
/by adminThere’s no one playbook or set of “hacks” that can help you build models that are actionable for addressing your business challenges. For that, only collaboration and iteration (read: hard work) will do. However, there are a number of key success factors that we believe can help ensure that a CI/MI.
The Top Metrics You Should Be Modeling In Competitive/Market Intelligence (CI/MI)
/by adminTBR dives into the top categories of metrics and specific metrics that we typically see as part of a foundational CI/MI modeling program
How To Build Trust In Financial Model(ing)
/by Allan Krans, Practice Manager and Principal AnalystA model is only as valuable as the validation, sourcing and trust that underly the numbers. In other parts of this series, we’ve talked about what a financial model is and how it can be used, but none of those things matter without trust in the data. At TBR, this fact plays into every step of working with clients on financial modeling engagements: upfront, during the modeling process, and in the final delivery of the models and our recommendations based on them. Here are some of the techniques we recommend for building trust in your financial models.
IBM makes smart IT services play in the U.S. federal sector IT services space
/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal AnalystThis month Patrick chats with Senior Analyst John Caucis, lead author of TBR’s Federal IT Services Benchmark, and Senior Analyst Elitsa Bakalova, who leads TBR’s coverage of IBM, about IBM’s investments in serving the U.S. federal IT market.