TBR’s Business Insights

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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Amdocs Is Well Positioned to Continue Absorbing Market Share in the Telecom Industry; AI Is a Key Growth Vector

09.24.25

Although TBR believes it is very early days for agentic AI branding, Amdocs’ early foray into this emerging area and thought leadership underscore how the company is seeking to move into new and adjacent areas as it expands its offerings, especially around consulting, design and transformation enablement.

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HCLTech’s Expanding KYC Journey: From Technology Provider to Trusted Compliance Partner

09.11.25

By evolving its KYC offerings across platforms and clients, HCLTech has shifted from tech implementer to outcomes-driven partner.

DOGE drives civil sector slowdown; defense contractors gear up as Trump’s budget shifts billions to military priorities

08.04.25

The Trump administration’s recent “skinny” budget proposal for FFY26 suggests that nondefense spending will fall from around $720 billion in FFY25 to approximately $557 billion in FFY26, representing a 23% decline. Contractors with any level of exposure to the civilian sector can expect agency reorganizations, layoffs, budget reductions and in-depth contract reviews within civil agencies for the remainder of FFY25 and likely into at least the first half of FFY26. The pace of new awards has already slowed significantly at some civilian agencies, as has the rate of new bookings on existing civilian engagements.

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Geopolitics with Purpose: EY-Parthenon Drives Strategy, Not Just Awareness

07.17.25

TBR has long maintained that the Big Four firms have an inherent advantage against all competitors when it comes to understanding and advising on geopolitical risk. Perhaps only the U.S. government has the same global spread of talent, with professionals in nearly every country, most intimately aware of local business, economic and even political trends. When EY-Parthenon showed off its Geopolitical Advisory team recently, TBR wanted to know: Is this something special?

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IT infrastructure vendors balance demand hurdles and portfolio strategy in 2022

10.19.22/by TBR

Despite demand hurdles, IT infrastructure vendors continue to invest in expanding their portfolios to capture greater wallet share from customers and create more diversified revenue streams

How has economic uncertainty impacted the cloud applications market in 2022?

10.18.22/by TBR

Cloud applications vendors are pursing growth amid mounting economic uncertainty ranging from inflation challenges to geopolitical concerns — headwinds that are set to linger well into 2023

SAP and SoftwareONE: Persistent value through pragmatic transformation

10.17.22/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Emphasizing pragmatic, incremental transformation over broad digital transformations helps SoftwareONE more easily define its value to clients

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Cloud partnerships prove even more important than expected in 2022

10.17.22/by TBR

The current macroeconomic uncertainty makes cloud partnerships an even more important factor in cloud growth heading into 2023

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Native PaaS services delivered via hybrid architectures shape the cloud market in 2022

10.14.22/by TBR

Throughout 2022 cloud service providers continue to recognize that PaaS services are only as effective as the architecture they run on

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Automation enables business continuity and offsets macroeconomic-pressured human-centered implications

10.13.22/by TBR

Macroeconomic pressures have compelled vendors to reconsider the true opportunity to scale the integration of automation in service delivery.

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5G and edge computing remain top focus areas for telecom industry in 2022

10.12.22/by TBR

Revenue growth from 5G and edge computing remains tepid thus far in 2022, but new use cases for these technologies are likely to emerge and scale as the digital ecosystem evolves

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2022 was a good year for federal IT, but will 2023 be as growth-friendly?

10.11.22/by TBR

Cloud-centered IT modernization, cybersecurity enhancement, and accelerating adoption of digital technologies feature heavily in federal IT outlays in 2022 and will again in 2023

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Will IT services revenue grow despite the competitive talent environment?

10.10.22/by TBR

For the rest of 2022, attracting and managing talent will remain vendors’ core challenge to successfully growing IT services revenue and managing costs