TBR’s Business Insights

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.

Dee Angela, Canva Pro

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.

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.

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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.

Russia-Ukraine war: Is Saudi Arabia’s consideration of the yuan the camel’s nose under the tent of U.S. economic sanctions policy?

03.31.22/by admin

As Russia continues its invasion of Ukraine, analysts monitoring the war’s global repercussions have also noted Saudi Arabia intriguingly stating the kingdom would consider accepting yuan payments for oil sold to China.

Russia-Ukraine war: 3 factors critical to IT services vendors and consultancies

03.28.22/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Expecting little change but some opportunities in the near term In the near term, ceased or slowed operations in Russia and Belarus will not significantly affect the revenues or strategic directions of most IT services vendors and management consultancies. Firms will stay clear of Russia, understanding any lost revenues will be well worth forgoing to […]

Atos: Digital twin enables decarbonization

03.24.22/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

At scale, digital twin is a sustainability play “Digital twin is a decarbonization enabler” and in the next five years “people will generate carbon credits out of digital twin.” Sandeep Bhan, Atos’ global senior expert on digital twin made those assertions at the end of a LinkedIn webinar today in response to TBR’s question about […]

Inflation, cybersecurity and taxes: PwC’s update from Dubai

03.10.22/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

What happens in Dubai … well, happens everywhere On March 1, PwC Dubai hosted a LinkedIn webcast, “Transforming Our Region,” featuring commentary by Stephen Anderson, PwC Middle East markets leader; Richard Boxshall, PwC chief economist for the region; and Hanan Abboud, a partner in PwC’s International Tax & M&A practice. This latest episode of the […]

Capgemini aims for growth in digital marketing services

03.10.22/by Elitsa Bakalova, Senior Analyst

Building regional capabilities through acquisitions to disrupt the APAC market In TBR’s most recent Digital Transformation: Digital Marketing Services Benchmark, my colleague Boz Hristov examined trends across different regions and wrote, “While regional nuances … compel vendors to build local resources to ensure they can tailor culturally aligned campaigns, the evolving nature of the DMS […]

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