TBR’s Business Insights

Federal IT Spending Trends: Why Growth Is Contracting and Where It Is Shifting

03.30.26

The Trump administration has proposed a double-digit increase in defense spending, which will flow through to IT budgets in the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community, particularly in areas of national security, which will receive top priority. Federal IT acquisition is also slowly pivoting to embrace outcome-based contracting, while the DOD looks to accelerate IT purchasing by adopting new and innovative IT procurement approaches.

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Governance Becomes a Prerequisite for Success with AI

03.30.26

Governance was a recurring theme across content sessions and executive meetings at Mobile World Congress 2026. As telecom operators move from experimentation to operational in AI, creating a corporatewide, centralized framework for data management, model oversight and regulatory compliance is becoming essential. Without clear governance, AI initiatives often remain fragmented across business units, leading to inconsistent outcomes, duplicated efforts and limited enterprise impact.

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New Growth in Consulting Is Emerging from an Unexpected Place: Managed Services

03.18.26

A scaled managed services practice trained in spotting consulting opportunities and armed with AI-enabled solutions will unquestionably win some management consulting market share. More significantly, from TBR’s objective view, is whether the Big Four firms can manage their staffing, brand promise and technology alliances to take advantage of the managed services practices they’ve already built and use those opportunities to return to robust management consulting growth. Maybe, but probably not all four. The next two years will be telling, and TBR expects the existing differences between the Big Four will become even more pronounced.

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.

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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.

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Innovative Ecosystem Expansion: Leveraging Tech Startups for Sustainable Growth in IT Services

10.31.23/by Kelly Lesiczka, Senior Analyst

Expanding ecosystems to include tech startups and research academia will be key to vendors successfully collaborating with partners and clients, remaining ahead of trends and evolving portfolio offerings

IT Infrastructure Vendors Leverage Analytics and AI to Enhance Sustainability Services

10.13.23/by TBR

IT infrastructure consumption analytics underpinning ‘as a Service’ offerings will enable a new level of sustainability-oriented workload management

Jirsak/GettyImages/CanvaPro

Infosys and TCS: Forecasting to 2027 and Anticipating Upcoming Earnings

10.09.23/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Ahead of quarterly earnings releases, we look at best-case scenarios for CAGR for India-centric vendors Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys.

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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

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