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

Manufacturing Growth Slows, But EMEA IT Services Vendors Find Lifeline in Public Sector Wins
This quarter, we look at Accenture, Atos, Capgemini and IBM Consulting in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) market, and compare how their industry diversification, portfolios and localization strategies position them for revenue growth. Atos and Capgemini, the two IT services companies whose EMEA revenue makes up over half of total revenue, experienced a steady decline in trailing 12-month (TTM) year-to-year revenue growth in recent quarters. Yet, Accenture and IBM were better able to maintain growth as macroeconomic conditions deteriorated in recent quarters.

Capgemini to Acquire WNS for $3.3B, Tripling BPO Revenue and Accelerating AI Ambitions
The acquisition undoubtedly serves as an important stepping stone to transform Capgemini’s BPO offerings, which are housed in its Operations & Engineering segment, yet Capgemini must be strategic with its approach, balancing new clients’ expectations with the introduction of incremental GenAI and agentic AI capabilities. Capgemini’s recent investments in partner-enabled portfolio offerings position the company well for a large change in the segment, such as its new agentic AI offerings announced with Google Cloud in April and its NVIDIA NIM-powered industry-specific agentic AI solutions and agentic gallery.

DOGE Federal IT Vendor Impact Series: Maximus
Partnerships will be integral as vendors across the federal IT market look to quickly demonstrate their value to the new administration. While Maximus has historically been quiet regarding its alliance activity, this could change as the vendor aims to avoid falling behind. For example, Maximus recently announced a partnership with Salesforce to augment its CX as a Service efforts. The Maximus Total Experience Management solution is being augmented with the Agentforce platform to provide clients with AI agents tailored to their needs that use data to adapt to citizens’ needs and simplify interactions.

DOGE Federal IT Vendor Impact Series: ICF International
TBR anticipates ICF will also explore ways to make its IT modernization and digital transformation work more agile while increasingly booking these types of engagements as fixed-price, outcome-based contracts, given the Trump administration’s preference for this contracting method. At least 50% of ICF’s IT modernization and digital transformation engagements are already fixed-price, outcome-based contracts.

Atos Is Starting to Regain Client Trust and Develop Commercial Opportunities That Will Generate Revenue in 2025
After years of instability and declining performance, Atos enters 2025 with new leadership, improved liquidity and early signs of commercial momentum, positioning the company for gradual recovery and long-term stabilization.

Oracle Strategy: Large Backlog and New Government Contracts Boost Vendor’s Long-term Outlook
Oracle’s current business strategy centers on streamlining customer success efforts, enhancing partner collaboration, and expanding multicloud infrastructure. By consolidating its services under the Oracle Customer Success Services (CSS) umbrella, the company has improved life cycle support for clients, reduced overlap with systems integrators, and equipped partners with tools like the Cloud Success Navigator to enhance implementation and renewal outcomes.

DOGE Federal IT Vendor Impact Series: Booz Allen Hamilton
The disruption that has very suddenly overtaken BAH’s civil business has prompted the firm to craft what Rozanski called a “one-time reset” of its civilian operations, including a 7% reduction in global headcount (about 2,500 employees) in 2Q25 that will disproportionately impact BAH’s civilian operations. The decline in civilian award activity has been so abrupt that BAH has not been able to sufficiently redeploy civilian project staff to DOD, IC or commercial sector programs, despite the firm’s expectations that growth will continue in its DOD and IC units in FY26.
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Big Blue and big government: Enhancing security and co-innovation operations improves IBM’s chances in the U.S. public sector
/by Elitsa Bakalova, Senior AnalystIBM is strengthening public sector resources in the U.S. to capture modernization opportunities While the public sector accounts for less than 10% of IBM’s revenue, in TBR’s estimates, IBM is expanding resources in the U.S. to ramp up activities. IBM developed its delivery capabilities for the U.S. federal sector by establishing the IBM Center for […]
Lenovo Turnkey Solutions: How Lenovo’s art of the practical enables clients to practice the art of the possible
/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal AnalystNew offerings built on a smart long-term strategy In advance of Lenovo’s Oct. 18 announcement of Lenovo Turnkey Solutions, executives with the company’s Industry Solutions group briefed TBR on elements of the new offering. In building the turnkey solutions, executives emphasized Lenovo’s continued focus in three critical areas: simplicity, core competencies and smart partnering. Keeping […]
Opportunities for IT services abounding in a resurgent APAC market
/by Elitsa Bakalova, Senior AnalystIn the most recent edition of the quarterly IT Services Vendor Benchmark, which published Oct. 7, TBR analysts took a deep dive into services vendors’ performance in APAC over the last few quarters, noting trends and anticipating how the market would react to easing pandemic restrictions and new investments in people and capabilities. The following […]
CSP demand for 5G infrastructure is expected to remain robust for at least the next few years
/by Steve Vachon, Senior AnalystKey Insights Traditional RAN will remain the predominant architecture through 2025. Open vRAN will take time to mature and go mainstream. Mobile broadband (MBB) and fixed wireless access (FWA) will remain primary use cases for 5G; government and enterprise pursuit of digital transformation wil drive other use cases. APAC will lead the world in 5G […]
TBR projects CSP spend on edge compute infrastructure will grow at a 46.1% CAGR from 2020 to 2025 and reach $100B
/by Michael Soper, Senior AnalystKey Insights The Big Nine hyperscalers will collectively outspend the combined outlays of telcos and cablecos on edge compute infrastructure before the middle of this decade. All Big Nine hyperscalers are investing in the edge in some way. Amazon, Microsoft and Google have global ambitions for edge, though and the hyperscalers intend to partner […]
What happened to smart cities?
/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal AnalystCOVID-19 and cloud have overrun smart cities, for now A question from a client spurred an internal discussion among TBR’s Professional Services, IT Services and Digital Transformation Services Team around smart cities and what the vendors we cover had been doing lately to advance what had been one of the hottest topics in 2017, 2018, […]
Quick Quantum Quips: August quantum developments advance multiple rival architectures, with education and standards rising in importance
/by adminWelcome to TBR’s monthly newsletter on the quantum computing market: Quick Quantum Quips (Q3). This market changes rapidly, and the hype can often distract from the realities of the actual technological developments. This newsletter keeps the community up to date on recent announcements while stripping away the hype around developments. For more details, reach out […]
Deconstructing COVID-19’s impact on IT services and manufacturing
/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal AnalystFor IT services vendors working with manufacturers, resiliency, business continuity, security and digitalization spark new revenue growth During 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic negatively affected IT services vendors’ revenue growth in industrial solutions, manufacturing and automotive due to country lockdowns across the globe that caused major supply chain and production disruptions. Enterprises in the sector weathered […]
Quick Quantum Quips: July quantum developments encompass the entirety of the ecosystem
/by adminWelcome to TBR’s monthly newsletter on the quantum computing market: Quick Quantum Quips (Q3). This market changes rapidly, and the hype can often distract from the realities of the actual technological developments. This newsletter keeps the community up to date on recent announcements while stripping away the hype around developments. For more details, reach out […]
Digital transformation for market, competitive and strategy intelligence
/by adminTBR is the first place we look for a foundational, normalized view to benchmark against core competitors in markets that are important to our firm. — Senior Manager, Strategy, Big Four TBR dedicates a significant portion of our research to the technologies and company actions around digital transformation. We have found that the most impactful […]