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AI Agents: What Are They, and How Will They Impact the AI PC Space in 2025?
Over the past several quarters, OEMs have focused on incorporating local AI-powered features into their new PC releases, with initial neural processing unit (NPU)-enabled use cases leveraging AI to further enhance collaboration experiences and extend battery life. However, AI agents take the NPU’s functionality a step further, combining the capabilities of large language models (LLMs) with other resources to partially or fully automate a wide range of tasks, including responding to emails, booking hotel stays, or opening and closing IT help desk tickets.
AI Buzz Sparks IT Infrastructure Shifts, but Privacy and Strategic Challenges Are Impacting Adoption
The industry enthusiasm surrounding AI has quickly led to shifts in organizations’ strategic priorities and expected investments such as demand for servers. Despite the hype, few organizations have operationalized GenAI to date. Instead, most are focused on overcoming initial barriers to adoption, including understanding the business implications of this new technology frontier.
GenAI, IT Modernization and Strategic M&A Drive Infrastructure as a Service and Platform as a Service Growth
Top hyperscalers Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft are capturing legacy Oracle and SAP workloads as customers continue to migrate to the cloud to not only outsource their IT operations but also drive lasting business value. Though the geopolitical outlook is increasingly uncertain, we expect customers will continue to prioritize more traditional “lift and shift” migrations, and steps vendors are taking to deliver more integrated solutions could help.
Harnessing AI and Automation in Business Process Outsourcing to Drive Growth Amid Shifting Buyer Priorities
Vendors’ business process outsourcing (BPO) businesses continue to benefit from the ongoing shift in buyer priorities from innovation and growth toward business resiliency and optimization. Buyers are investing in automating business processes to free up costs, providing pathways to growth for vendors with AI-powered and platform-based offerings.
Emerging Consultancy Trends: Talent Management and Innovation in the Spotlight
Technology continues to threaten the nature of consulting engagements, requiring consultancies to showcase value and deliver on outcomes. Greater investment in talent frameworks, structure and skill will equip staff to lead client discussions and effectively leverage technology to assist workflows. Partnerships remain a core piece of the technology integration, bringing in new expertise and go-to-market opportunities that enable consultancies to meet a wider variety of client needs. Client retention remains a priority across consultancies but will require the firms to effectively deliver value through services.
Federal IT Spending Will Remain Robust in FFY25 Amid AI Prioritization
Since coming into office, the Biden administration has fueled an unprecedented federal IT bull market. While the White House’s proposed federal civilian technology budget of $75.1 billion for federal fiscal year 2025 (FFY25) is the smallest increase in several years (up less than 1% compared to $74.5 billion in FFY24), it is still an increase of more than 14% from $65.8 billion in FFY23, and up 25% from $60.1 billion in FFY21, the last year of the prior administration. FFY25 has started with a continuing resolution (CR), as have most of the last several fiscal year. The impact of the latest CR on the largest federal systems integrators may be limited to shorter-cycle programs in their order books, but some disruptions to larger, longer-term engagements are not out of the question.
Meet MAMAA: The Top 5 Hyperscalers Shaping the Future of Digital Ecosystems
TBR research shows only the Tier 1 hyperscalers can transcend most, if not all, of the major lifestyle categories to provide a seamless end-to-end ecosystem experience, touching all aspects of people’s lives, primarily due to their scale and access to resources.
Growing Infrastructure as a Service Commitments and Competitive Dynamics
Market leaders Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft have highlighted that customers are signing larger cloud contracts with longer terms. At least in the case of AWS, customers are increasingly applying their cloud credits toward one- or three-year subscription offerings like Savings Plans and Reserved Instances.
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How Agility and Governance Are Key to Thriving in the Evolving Partner Ecosystem
/by Bozhidar Hristov, Principal AnalystMature alliance partnerships have enabled vendors across the spectrum to collaborate as they realize the value of the ecosystem. Cultural, portfolio and leadership DNA have shaped vendors’ behavior when it comes to go-to-market efforts and partner strategies, which is not surprising given that vendors often lean on what they do best when pursuing opportunities.
Accenture Partners: Niche Providers Add Depth to Drive Long-Term Opportunities
/by Bozhidar Hristov, Principal AnalystAs Accenture’s revenue continues to grow, so does the share of revenue from its top 10 partners, reducing the share of sales from the rest of its alliance partners. With Accenture’s top 10 alliance partners helping to generate close to 50% of the company’s total sales, it remains to be seen whether Accenture will be able to retain its other partner relationships in the long term.
NVIDIA 2Q24 Earnings Recap: Capitalizing on AI Infrastructure Demand and Strategic Ecosystem Collaborations
/by TBRWith the introduction of its OVX storage validation program, NVIDIA is able to verify the efficacy of storage solutions from partners, including Dell Technologies, NetApp and Pure Storage, in combination with OVX servers to ensure enterprise-grade performance, manageability, security and scalability for AI workloads. This helps enterprises pair the right storage solution with their NVIDIA-certified OVX servers, which are available from partners such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Lenovo and Supermicro.
Peraton Revenue on Track for $8B Despite Shaky Start to 2024
/by James Wichert, AnalystTBR anticipates that Peraton will continue to more efficiently convert its backlog (last reported at $24.4 billion in the middle of 2022) into revenue while the company also keeps capitalizing on federal budget priorities favoring civilian, defense and healthcare agencies. A government shutdown in 4Q24 could still disrupt Peraton’s expansion, but TBR believes Peraton will still reach between $8.0 billion and $8.1 billion in annual revenue during 2024, representing growth of between 2.6% to 5.2% over 2023.
Implementing a Comprehensive Strategy: Infosys Enhances Talent Development, Sales Efficiency and Profitability
/by Bozhidar Hristov, Principal AnalystInfosys Cobalt, Infosys Topaz and now Infosys Aster will continue to act both as the backbone of IT services modernization and as access points to generative AI (GenAI)-related opportunities. With many of its peers are pursuing similar strategies and poaching key Infosys executives to emulate success, the company needs to remain vigilant and maintain transparent communication with stakeholders to avoid client and talent confusion and secure its long-term success.
GenAI Disruption: Rewriting the Business Models of Tech Titans and Consultancies
/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal AnalystAs the efficiencies of automation, analytics and AI begin benefiting technology companies themselves, not just their enterprise clients, TBR sees the latter half of 2024 as fundamentally business model disruptive for pretty much every technology company we cover, from McKinsey & Co. to Infosys to Dell Technologies to Amazon Web Services to IBM to Ericsson to NVIDIA.
Adapting to Market Needs: How Consultancies are Investing in Talent and Partner Ecosystems
/by Kelly Lesiczka, Senior AnalystWhile macroeconomic uncertainty remains across markets, the consultancies look to develop core services such as around AI, partnerships and networks of physical centers to strengthen client engagements and continue advisory discussions. Increasing technology complexity, operational cost-driven optimizations and data strategies will draw on consultancies’ core experience to successfully drive digital transformation programs.
How AI Is Revolutionizing Cost Efficiency and Customer Experience in Telecom
/by Chris Antlitz, Principal AnalystTBR’s latest telecom research indicates customer care, which includes contact centers, will be profoundly transformed by AI. Though traditional AI has been utilized in customer care for many years (e.g., chatbots and interactive voice response), GenAI will take customer care to an advanced state. TBR estimates that GenAI could reduce the costs of running contact centers by up to 80%, and this is an area telecom operators are keenly interested in as they remain focused on cutting expenses across their businesses.
Competitive Benchmarking: A Strategic Guide
/by Elitsa Bakalova, Senior AnalystDiscover the power of competitive benchmarking in the IT services market. Learn how it can help IT services vendors outperform their peers and drive business growth strategies.
Is India the Right Growth Market for Global Consultancies?
/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal AnalystTBR looks at the question: If India is on track to become the third largest economy, will it also be the third largest revenue source for the Big Four, Accenture, IBM and Capgemini, or only for the firms that act first and implement the optimal strategies?