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5 Key Questions on Big Four Evolution and Strategy
The Big Four professional services firms — Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC — have all been undergoing organizational changes in the last couple years. TBR regularly hears five questions about how these firms manage themselves, grow and change. Taking a longitudinal view allows TBR to see that recent restructurings, layoffs and offerings all reflect how these firms are trying to address the following: who gets the best talent, who decides what’s next, who sells, how everyone in a firm knows what everyone else does, and what role will managed services play.

DOGE Federal IT Vendor Impact Series: Accenture Federal Services
The full impact of the 10 canceled task orders on Accenture Federal Services (AFS) remains unclear, but TBR’s secondary research indicates the terminated work has a total contract value of nearly $93 million, including a $35 million order from DOE’s CIO office and a $2 million order for geospatial services. If we assume all $93 million worth of orders was booked by AFS as the prime awardee, that sum would represent just under 2% of AFS’ estimated FY24 revenue of $5.4 billion.

DOGE Federal IT Vendor Impact Series: SAIC
TBR was surprised by SAIC’s FY26 (CY25) outlook, which was consistent with CEO Toni Townes-Whitley’s comment during the company’s 4Q24 earnings call that SAIC’s “current revenue with agencies under particular scrutiny by DOGE is immaterial.” In fact, SAIC elevated several elements of its FY26 guidance in 4Q24.

Google Recognizes Critical Role of Security, and Its Standing in the Cloud Market, in Acquisition of Wiz
With the business environment changing and cybersecurity perhaps more relevant than ever, Google saw an opportunity to repursue the Wiz acquisition, and a $32 billion offer, marking a major uptick in valuation, was simply too good for Wiz to ignore. Should the deal close in 2026 as expected, Wiz — with roughly 1,800 employees and ties to half the Fortune 500 — will join the Google Cloud division, offering synergies with Mandiant, an added layer of protection for the Google Security Operations platform, and the potential to help Google Cloud formalize cybersecurity as an agentic AI use case.

Hardware-centric Vendors Continue to Make Their Move Into Software
Though revenue mixes are increasingly shifting in favor of software, driven in part by acquisitions (e.g., Cisco’s purchase of Splunk), hardware continues to dominate the market, accounting for 80% of benchmarked vendor revenue in 3Q24. Industry-standard servers being sold to cloud and GPU “as a Service” providers are overwhelmingly fueling market growth, more than offsetting unfavorable cyclical demand weakness in the storage and networking markets.

PwC Middle East Experts Weigh In on Economic Trends and Transaction Activity
PwC Middle East’s webcast provides excellent monthly insights into the region’s economies, but it is not the only active Big Four firm. As TBR reported in our Fall 2024 Management Consulting Benchmark, KPMG “announced the opening of Risk Hub in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in collaboration with Microsoft and IBM, paving the way for more in-person, tech-enabled GRC [governance, risk and compliance] discussions with regional clients embarking on their digital transformation programs.” TBR also learned in February that KPMG intends to open a new Ignition Center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in 2025, building on the firm’s global network of innovation and transformation centers.

Deployment Services in Telecom Face Post-5G Slowdown, Shifting Market Dynamics and Growth in Fiber Expansion
The deployment services market faces growing headwinds, including communication service provider (CSP) consolidation, open vRAN’s lower installation costs, and reduced demand for site location and construction (SL&C), offset somewhat by hyperscaler spend and 5G rollouts in select developing markets. Hyperscaler investments provide incremental volume to the market, and TBR notes these companies are increasing their investments in access technologies (e.g., Google Fiber).

TBR Case Study: Price Benchmarking
Explore this competitive pricing example from TBR's Tailored Services team, which helped this global Top 3 hardware OEM capitalize on their investment in pricing research.
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IBM, Atos and SAP report cloud growth in 1Q20 despite COVID-19 pandemic
/by adminAs companies begin releasing 1Q20 earnings, TBR is analyzing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the latter half of the quarter. Our findings from earnings this week show: IBM’s cloud business prospered despite the negative impact of COVID-19 on overall revenue as synergies with Red Hat drove subscription sales, which is a testament to […]
COVID-19: Shifting customer loyalties and selling motions
/by adminRecent earnings calls by IBM and SAP triggered two broad yet interconnected thoughts: The current pause in economic activity presents a pervasive period of thinking slow — recalling the book “Thinking, Fast and Slow” — for businesses, which could result in persistent share shifts. The tactical need for more digital commerce avenues seems poised to […]
Multiyear bull market in public sector IT spend faces an abrupt end in 2020 as COVID-19 upends global governments
/by admin“The COVID-19 outbreak represents a significant threat to public sector IT investment that has trended steadily upward for the last several years,” says Senior Analyst John Caucis in TBR’s recently published Public Sector IT Services Benchmark. “The full impact, however, may not manifest in public sector vendor fiscal performance until 2H20.” Caucis, Analyst Brian Baker, […]
COVID-19 survey update: Cloud reliance grows
/by Angela Lambert, Principal Analyst and Practice ManagerThis piece is an update to our blog post in late March that looked at how IT organizations are being impacted by COVID-19, including insights from TBR’s survey of enterprise IT leaders. The blog discussed how we are experiencing the second wave of impacts from the outbreak, in which widespread business disruption is affecting demand […]
COVID-19 preparedness: Looking back to achieve perfect vision for tomorrow
/by Allan Krans, Practice Manager and Principal AnalystFinger-pointing from the vantage of hindsight Last year, nearly 18 years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, three former Department of Homeland Security secretaries urged the U.S. government to place cybersecurity at the top of the national threat list. The call to action was issued prior to any knowledge of a looming pandemic, and adherence to […]
COVID-19: Life between trapezes
/by adminEconomic activity currently appears more in cessation than recession. It is as if the world is suspended, untethered between two trapezes. As activity resumes, we know inquisitive humans will turn to easy-to-assemble technology to meet the emerging business demands and consumer pain points materializing daily. We will see a flurry of IoT-enabled endpoint applications that […]
Enterprises thinking above and beyond the bottom line
/by Allan Krans, Practice Manager and Principal AnalystNot all news related to the pandemic is bad news Just a couple of months ago, the term “going viral” lightly referred to the match-to-kerosene-like spread of images, videos or other content across borders and populations. Today’s news has literally gone viral, carrying coverage of the COVID-19 outbreak in an unfortunate and devastating new realization […]
Accenture and COVID-19: Challenges ahead
/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal AnalystCOVID-19 will pressure Accenture’s short-term performance but could accelerate adoption of automation as the company maintains pricing agility While a global health pandemic is not something vendors typically prepare for as part of their business continuity plans, for many, including Accenture, the COVID-19 outbreak will certainly test the resiliency of their business models. As a […]
Aligning assets with partners’ complementary solutions: 2019 strategy may be critical for Wipro in 2020
/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal AnalystAs we look at significant changes coming to the IT services landscape and focus on agile shifts toward a post-COVID-19 world, strategies launched in the last 12 months may prove to be critical for some vendors’ long-term success. Understanding Wipro’s February 2019 moves can point to how the company might perform throughout 2020. Wipro has […]
COVID-19: Impact on IT organizations
/by Angela Lambert, Principal Analyst and Practice ManagerWe asked 205 IT leaders who are decision makers for cloud purchasing about the current impact of COVID-19 on their companies and their expectations for the future. These responses were collected between March 17 and March 24. Initial findings show disruption to ongoing projects and increased importance of cloud capabilities in the future. The impact […]