TBR’s Business Insights

Who Will Win the AI Services Race in the Next Wave of AI?

04.21.26

This quarter, TBR FourCast looks at Accenture, Capgemini, HCLTech and IBM Consulting, comparing how their underlying data strategies, especially related to engineering and integration, prepares them for advanced AI adoption.

Anthropic, OpenAI and Palantir: Who Gains and Who Loses in the Federal Fallout

04.16.26

Insights into how important the recent developments between Anthropic, OpenAI and Palantir are considering the implications for the largest agency (DOD), within the single largest buyer of IT in the world (U.S. Federal Government), relating to the single largest technology priority (AI).

Technology Business Research, Inc.

Salesforce Highlights Strengths in Innovation and Relationships at Agentforce World Tour

04.14.26

With the recent hype around the “death of SaaS” and other pressures on the business models of technology companies, Salesforce’s growing presence, success, and apparent disruption of competitors and alliance partners alike underscore Salesforce’s strengths in creating stickier client relationships and continually innovating, two qualities essential in the agentic AI age.

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Federal IT Spending Trends: Why Growth Is Contracting and Where It Is Shifting

03.30.26

The Trump administration has proposed a double-digit increase in defense spending, which will flow through to IT budgets in the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community, particularly in areas of national security, which will receive top priority. Federal IT acquisition is also slowly pivoting to embrace outcome-based contracting, while the DOD looks to accelerate IT purchasing by adopting new and innovative IT procurement approaches.

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Governance Becomes a Prerequisite for Success with AI

03.30.26

Governance was a recurring theme across content sessions and executive meetings at Mobile World Congress 2026. As telecom operators move from experimentation to operational in AI, creating a corporatewide, centralized framework for data management, model oversight and regulatory compliance is becoming essential. Without clear governance, AI initiatives often remain fragmented across business units, leading to inconsistent outcomes, duplicated efforts and limited enterprise impact.

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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.

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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.

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Amdocs Is Well Positioned to Continue Absorbing Market Share in the Telecom Industry; AI Is a Key Growth Vector

09.24.25/by Chris Antlitz, Principal Analyst

Although TBR believes it is very early days for agentic AI branding, Amdocs’ early foray into this emerging area and thought leadership underscore how the company is seeking to move into new and adjacent areas as it expands its offerings, especially around consulting, design and transformation enablement.

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HCLTech’s Expanding KYC Journey: From Technology Provider to Trusted Compliance Partner

09.11.25/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

By evolving its KYC offerings across platforms and clients, HCLTech has shifted from tech implementer to outcomes-driven partner.

DOGE drives civil sector slowdown; defense contractors gear up as Trump’s budget shifts billions to military priorities

08.04.25/by John Caucis, Senior Analyst

The Trump administration’s recent “skinny” budget proposal for FFY26 suggests that nondefense spending will fall from around $720 billion in FFY25 to approximately $557 billion in FFY26, representing a 23% decline. Contractors with any level of exposure to the civilian sector can expect agency reorganizations, layoffs, budget reductions and in-depth contract reviews within civil agencies for the remainder of FFY25 and likely into at least the first half of FFY26. The pace of new awards has already slowed significantly at some civilian agencies, as has the rate of new bookings on existing civilian engagements.

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

07.17.25/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

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

07.16.25/by Jill Cookinham

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.

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Capgemini to Acquire WNS for $3.3B, Tripling BPO Revenue and Accelerating AI Ambitions

07.15.25/by Jill Cookinham

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.

Technology Business Research, Inc.

DOGE Federal IT Vendor Impact Series: Maximus

06.11.25/by John Caucis, Senior Analyst

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.

Technology Business Research, Inc.

DOGE Federal IT Vendor Impact Series: ICF International

06.11.25/by John Caucis, Senior Analyst

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.

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Atos Is Starting to Regain Client Trust and Develop Commercial Opportunities That Will Generate Revenue in 2025

06.06.25/by Elitsa Bakalova, Senior Analyst

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.

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Oracle Strategy: Large Backlog and New Government Contracts Boost Vendor’s Long-term Outlook

06.05.25/by Catie Merrill, Senior Analyst

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.

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