TBR’s Business Insights

Skills Shortage Will Challenge the Scaling of Sovereign AI in 2026

02.20.26

AI-related skills will remain scarce across both buyers and ecosystem partners as the rapid pace of innovation and the technical complexity required to enable sovereign AI continue to hinder adoption. These challenges, combined with a lack of clearly defined and compliant use cases among sovereign customers, gaps in sovereign cloud infrastructure availability and steep AI learning curve faced by ecosystem partners, will constrain meaningful investment and implementation of sovereign AI throughout 2026.

PaaS Revenue Will Outpace SaaS Revenue for Cloud Software Vendors

02.17.26

Enterprise customers are prioritizing the modernization of their existing SaaS estates rather than adding new applications, driven by market saturation, accumulated technical debt, and a growing imperative to become AI-ready. As IT buyers shift their focus toward modern platforms, traditional SaaS leaders should expect their PaaS segments to continue significantly outperforming their core SaaS businesses in revenue growth.

Dee Angela, Canva Pro

Alliances Will Extend Beyond Core Offerings as AI-driven Sales and Marketing Reshape Ecosystems

02.12.26

IT services companies have their limits, and clients have preferred technology vendors, leading IT services companies to look to alliances to drive new growth. We have seen this pattern before, but in 2026 we will see IT services companies extend those alliances into devices, connectivity and even silicon, requiring a multiparty alliance approach that will strain commercial models, sales strategies and alliance leaders across the ecosystem.

Consulting Will Rebound in 2026

02.10.26

After a period of relative softness, consulting revenues are expected to rebound to high-single- or low-double-digit growth as pervasive uncertainty pushes enterprises to seek external guidance. Demand will be particularly strong around risk mitigation, strategic planning and AI adoption, positioning forward-deployed engineers, supply chain management and people advisory services as leading revenue drivers in 2026.

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.

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No Matter Your Strengths or Strategy, You Must Partner to Deliver on GenAI Opportunities

10.06.23/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

IT services firms possess not only the trust of buyers but also the knowledge of buyers’ businesses to educate clients, and then help tailor GenAI tools to their business needs. In this blog, we look at the strategies and activities of three key players: Accenture, IBM Consulting and Dell Technologies.

The Evolution of Acquisitions, GenAI and Digital Transformation in IT Services and Consulting in 2023

09.20.23/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Near-term, expect GenAI opportunities around consulting and limited case uses around productivity

Enterprise Storage Remains a Highly Competitive Space in 2023

09.08.23/by Angela Lambert, Principal Analyst and Practice Manager

Disruptive vendors are adding pressure to incumbents with targeted strategies to push into enterprise storage accounts

Telecom Industry Navigated Weakening Macro Backdrop Well in 1H23, but 2H23 and 2024 Will Likely be a More Challenging Situation

09.07.23/by Chris Antlitz, Principal Analyst

Despite holding up relatively well thus far in 2023, CSPs face significant challenges in managing their debt — the pressure is on to grow revenue and monetize their 5G investments

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.

Conducting an Opportunity Analysis the TBR Way

06.26.23/by TBR

Opportunity analysis is one of the most critical and complex forms of research. It frames the big bets that technology, telecommunications and professional services companies make.

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