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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Technology Business Research, Inc.

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

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

Technology Business Research, Inc.

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

Blog series: Gimme 3 Insight Interviews with TBR's Subject-matter Experts

Technology Business Research, Inc.

Turmoil in IT services: Talent, org charts and acquisitions

10.06.22/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Learn whether talent will remain a headache in the IT services space for the remainder of 2022 and into next year

Technology Business Research, Inc.

Why are Deloitte’s, Accenture’s and TCS’ revenues per hyperscaler practice much higher than the benchmarked average?

09.07.22/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Learn why TBR’s data shows Accenture’s revenues per hyperscaler practice are much higher than our benchmarked average

Demand pull and cost push: Two sides of the inflation coin

06.28.22/by admin

A nonfactor for decades, inflation is now being parsed into demand pull and cost push, and pricing analysts are having to adjust.

SAP use case reveals big things for PwC

06.03.22/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

In early 2022 a PwC use case drew TBR’s attention, particularly its assertion that “PwC and SAP co-developed a process to allow clients to migrate to SAP’s Group Reporting module at any point in the year.”

Global IT talent: Accelerated hiring for IT services counters persistent attrition

04.25.22/by Bozhidar Hristov, Principal Analyst

In TBR’s latest Global Delivery Benchmark, one particular number leapt out as both surprising and indicative of the sustained battle for technology talent.

IBM Quantum offers incremental improvements to commercializing exponential technology

04.13.22/by admin

Two of IBM’s core quantum offerings are of particular interest, as each is indicative of the growing market interest in becoming quantum ready and in trialing different prototypes ahead of the development of commercial-grade quantum computing capabilities.

Russia-Ukraine war: Talking talent and leadership

04.07.22/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

If the conflict in Ukraine remains hot, labor unions may kick into higher gear, extracting additional concessions and making it more costly for companies to exit any European market.

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