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.

Getty Images via Canva Pro

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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Informatica returns to the public market with an emphasis on data democratization and hyperscale partnerships

11.29.21/by Catie Merrill, Senior Analyst

Informatica’s fall 2021 launch, which consisted of a new cloud-native marketplace, automated data quality features and new data scanners, comes alongside the company’s return to the market in an $840 million IPO. The announces offerings, from new services to partner integrations, largely complement the Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) platform — the key announcement at […]

Big Blue and big government: Enhancing security and co-innovation operations improves IBM’s chances in the U.S. public sector

11.15.21/by Elitsa Bakalova, Senior Analyst

IBM 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

10.19.21/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

New 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

10.08.21/by Elitsa Bakalova, Senior Analyst

In 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 […]

Technology Business Research, Inc.

CSP demand for 5G infrastructure is expected to remain robust for at least the next few years

10.07.21/by Steve Vachon, Senior Analyst

Key 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

10.05.21/by Michael Soper, Senior Analyst

Key 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?

09.16.21/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

COVID-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

08.30.21/by admin

Welcome 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

08.11.21/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

For 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

08.02.21/by admin

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