TBR’s Business Insights

Bad Debt Expenses Will Rise for CSPs in 2026

02.06.26

In a K-shaped economy that increasingly separates financial winners from losers, the majority of households and businesses on the lower arm of the “K” are under mounting financial strain and are finding it more difficult to pay their bills. As these economic pressures persist, communications service providers (CSPs) should expect bad debt expenses to continue rising, with the potential to meet, or even exceed, levels experienced during the Great Recession.

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.

Gustavo Quiroga Gaitan, Canva Pro

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.

Saitharn, Getty Images via Canva Pro

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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Human at the Center: EY Combines Data and Corporate Social Responsibility to Solve World Hunger

07.14.23/by Bozhidar Hristov, Principal Analyst

In June TBR attended an awards ceremony for the EY Open Science Data Challenge, which gave a glimpse into how well the firm mixes data and corporate social responsibility programs to solve society’s biggest problems, including world hunger.

How Are IT Infrastructure Vendors Helping Customers Navigate Uncertain Economic Conditions?

07.13.23/by TBR

Automation of management tasks has risen in priority as IT organizations seek to shift the balance from tactical to strategic actions while adapting to post-pandemic ways of working.

Exploring the Industrial Metaverse: A Glimpse into the Future

07.05.23/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Offering users an immersive, real-time experience, the industrial metaverse draws on existing cloud-to-edge technologies to simulate, optimize and simplify complex systems across industries, predominantly manufacturing.

Facilitating Simplicity: KnowledgeRiver’s Analytics Tool and Its Secret to IT Services

06.30.23/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

More technical minds can argue about simplicity for simplicity’s sake; I’m interested in the various approaches IT services vendors have been deploying to meet that growing client demand, and I’m constantly contrasting what I hear and see to a firm we spoke to late in 2022, KnowledgeRiver.

Conducting Competitive Intelligence Research – A How To

06.26.23/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Patrick M. Heffernan, Principal Analyst and Practice Manager, has strong opinions on what it takes to conduct useful competitive intelligence research, and in this blog, he dives into three steps for producing research that will support your business goals and help you win in your industry.

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TBR’s Business Insights

Bad Debt Expenses Will Rise for CSPs in 2026

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

AI Alliances Will Increasingly Target OT

Agentic AI Adoption Is Pressuring Security Architectures to Converge

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

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

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

Human Capital Management in the Age of (Agentic) AI

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

Our most-read analysis, free in your inbox each week!

Human at the Center: EY Combines Data and Corporate Social Responsibility to Solve World Hunger

How Are IT Infrastructure Vendors Helping Customers Navigate Uncertain Economic Conditions?

Exploring the Industrial Metaverse: A Glimpse into the Future

Facilitating Simplicity: KnowledgeRiver’s Analytics Tool and Its Secret to IT Services

Conducting Competitive Intelligence Research – A How To

Conducting an Opportunity Analysis the TBR Way

When Will PC Demand Rebound?

The Big 10, the 200, and Accenture’s Ever Successful Alliance Strategy

Layoffs, AI and Optimization: Exploring Top Trends of the Chaotic Digital Landscape

PTC Liveworx Showcases Evolving Alliances and Trends in Partnering