TBR’s Business Insights

TCS vs. HCLTech: 2 Distinct Paths to AI Leadership

11.10.26

As AI reshapes the IT services market, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and HCLTech are positioning themselves for leadership — but from very different starting points. TCS brings immense scale, disciplined resource management and exceptional financial resilience, while HCLTech leans on ecosystem orchestration, infrastructure investment and its long-standing engineering capabilities.

Technology Business Research, Inc.

Salesforce vs. ServiceNow in AI Adoption Expectations for 2027

10.24.26

The defining question for ServiceNow and Salesforce in 2027 is no longer whether they can articulate compelling agentic use cases. It is whether those use cases begin driving meaningful consumption on their platforms. Both companies have been messaging that opportunity for months, but 2027 should show whether early momentum can translate to sustainable growth.

Technology Business Research, Inc.

Should Accenture Enter Assurance?

10.16.26

The opportunity is not for Accenture to become the fifth member of the Big Four but rather to challenge their position as trusted enterprise advisers by making independent AI assurance a critical component of enterprise transformation. The strategic risk is that, without credible independence, Accenture Assurance would become another consulting offering wrapped in the language of trust.

Technology Business Research, Inc.

5G’s Next Act Is About Monetization, While 6G Builds on the 5G Foundation

10.09.26

TBR believes the path to 6G runs directly through unfinished 5G work. Operators that expand 5G SA, improve spectrum efficiency, commercialize differentiated connectivity and build programmable, AI-ready networks will be better positioned for an economical 6G migration. FWA will remain the near-term revenue anchor, but longer-term value will increasingly depend on whether CSPs can turn AI, sensing and network capabilities into standardized services that enterprises and governments can easily buy. The transition to 6G is about proving that operators can finally monetize the capabilities 5G was designed to enable.

Technology Business Research, Inc.

Exploring KPMG’s Role in Quantum

10.08.26

KPMG has positioned itself as ready to help clients prepare for when quantum shifts from an expensive idea to an immediate opportunity and threat. Can the firm create near-term revenue as PQC meets its Y2K moment, provide reliable and useful services through hybrid computing, and manage the ecosystem and orchestration layer in quantum? Maybe. At scale with clients? Likely. Are KPMG’s clients really ready for that? Are all of KPMG’s partners, principals and directors?

Technology Business Research, Inc.

Holiday Shopping Is Becoming an AI Story: How Value-conscious Consumers, Rising Memory Costs and Connectivity Are Reshaping Retail

10.07.26

As retailers invest more heavily in AI to capture increasingly value-conscious holiday shoppers, the effectiveness of those investments will depend on the infrastructure supporting them. AI recommendations, computer vision, mobile point-of-sale, real-time inventory and in-store personalization only create value when data can move reliably between devices, stores, edge systems and cloud platforms.

Technology Business Research, Inc.

AI Is Changing Enterprise Networking, but Not All Disruption Looks the Same

10.06.26

Our initial results show an industry in transition. HIRI and operating margins are improving across the peer group, but AI is only one part of the story. Restructuring efforts, revenue growth, subscription adoption and portfolio consolidation continue to strongly influence workforce productivity. Additionally, customer demand for AI-based solutions to support their own AI transformations boosts financial performance independent of the vendors’ internal AI investments.

Technology Business Research, Inc.

Exploring KPMG’s Role in AI

10.03.26

What struck TBR most about KPMG’s frequent evocations of trust was the humility that went with it. Knowing trust has to be earned, maintained and renewed seemed to inform how KPMG leaders spoke about the firm’s capabilities and relationships. And in casual discussions with KPMG clients at the Utah event, trust came up repeatedly as a key reason they were there.

The Midmarket Opportunity: Which GSIs Can — and Should — Pursue It?

09.25.26

Expanding into the midmarket has been a recurring theme for GSIs for many years, and some are dusting off that strategy yet again. This time, platform-led operating models that are less linked to FTE-based pricing may change the game. When looking at Accenture, Atos Group, Capgemini and Deloitte, which company could reasonably enter or expand into the midmarket? More importantly, which should?

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Where to Start with an Alliance Partnership

03.29.23/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Alliance partner prospecting will start with requests from the stakeholders for more information about a specific vendor — a request, basically to understand, Who are those guys?

Technology Alliances Are Evolving

03.28.23/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

TBR has been evaluating the changing nature of technology alliances through its subscription and commissioned research for decades. A series of best practices have emerged, most often developed by young technology companies, while the commercial impediments seem more acute for legacy vendors with their employees’ resistance to change. The balance of this document will discuss the successful approaches vendors have shared with TBR, and what end customers and small technology companies have shared with us as the anachronisms associated with legacy partner program structures.

Assessing Vendor Partnerships

03.27.23/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

TBR interviews with leaders of small SaaS vendors have shown a consistent blueprint for successful engagement with big vendors that consists of three major elements: Are you a strategic fit with the large vendor? How do you approach the large vendor for top-down attention within the firm? And how do you initially engage the large organization for positive, bottom-up, word-of-mouth marketing inside the large vendor?

Build a Successful GSI Alliance Program in 5 Steps

03.24.23/by admin

TBR views the path to a successful GSI alliance program as a five-step process, with many small steps, tasks and requirements associated with each step. Technology vendors may be anywhere in this journey, depending on the maturity of their GSI alliance program, if they have one. It should be noted that this is our perspective, based on the support we have given companies along this journey with our research and advisory services. We have drawn elements of this framework from ASAP’s Alliance Life Cycle framework to make it specific to ISV-GSI partnerships.

PwC India Update: Sustained Outcomes and Trust

03.23.23/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

In early March, TBR met with Arnab Basu, PwC India’s Consulting Leader to discuss developments in India and how the firm’s presence and activities have changed in recent years. The following reflects that conversation, as well as TBR’s ongoing research around PwC, the other Big Four firms, and the broader management consulting and IT services market.

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

Technology Business Research, Inc.

Analytics, AI and digital transformation reach tipping point in acceleration

03.10.23/by TBR

Discover the two main forces shaping TBR’s outlook for the digital transformation market and how they can help you capture analytics and insights opportunities while reducing and managing expenses

Ensuring Competitive & Market Intelligence Models Suit Your Needs

02.24.23/by admin

There’s no one playbook or set of “hacks” that can help you build models that are actionable for addressing your business challenges. For that, only collaboration and iteration (read: hard work) will do. However, there are a number of key success factors that we believe can help ensure that a CI/MI.

The Top Metrics You Should Be Modeling In Competitive/Market Intelligence (CI/MI)

02.23.23/by admin

TBR dives into the top categories of metrics and specific metrics that we typically see as part of a foundational CI/MI modeling program

How To Build Trust In Financial Model(ing)

02.22.23/by Allan Krans, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

A model is only as valuable as the validation, sourcing and trust that underly the numbers. In other parts of this series, we’ve talked about what a financial model is and how it can be used, but none of those things matter without trust in the data. At TBR, this fact plays into every step of working with clients on financial modeling engagements: upfront, during the modeling process, and in the final delivery of the models and our recommendations based on them. Here are some of the techniques we recommend for building trust in your financial models.

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