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.

Getty Images via Canva Pro

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.

Getty Images via Canva Pro

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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With Project Apex, Dell aims to surround the public cloud and tame it

10.28.20/by TBR

At the virtual Dell Technologies World on Oct. 21 and 22, the company painted a picture of the future, a picture it calls Project Apex. “Apex” can refer to a summit, but it is also the term used to describe the top predator in an ecosystem. Dell Technologies spokespeople did not clarify which definition they […]

Quick Quantum Quips: Quantum commercialization is on our doorstep

09.29.20/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 […]

Cloud supports enterprise needs related to COVID-19, facilitating public cloud revenue growth

09.16.20/by admin

With Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, Google and Alibaba established as the IaaS cloud market leaders, Technology Business Research, Inc. (TBR) has noted an increase in partner ecosystem activity, particularly among IT services vendors, such as Accenture, Infosys and Cognizant, that are vying for a share of cloud services like migration and implementation. Consolidation will […]

NVIDIA acquires ARM: Creating a next-generation AI platform

09.14.20/by TBR

NVIDIA announced Sept. 14 an agreement to acquire ARM holdings from SoftBank for $40 billion, subject to regulatory approval in the U.S., the U.K., the European Union and China. The acquisition has been rumored for several weeks, but the announcement generated negative comments from ARM customers. The two companies’ IP portfolios complement each other, especially […]

Quick Quantum Quips: Quantum algorithms and infrastructure reach milestones

08.31.20/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 will keep the community up to date on recent announcements while stripping away the hype around developments. For more details, reach […]

COVID-19 causes analytics services market to pause, allowing vendors to prove the true value of analytics and better train their AI models

08.13.20/by admin

All vendors tracked in TBR’s Digital Transformation: Analytics Professional Services Benchmark except Oracle expanded their analytics services revenue in 1Q20, albeit at a slower pace from the previous year, highlighting that optimizing IT operations — through the use of analytics — is becoming table stakes for buyers. Accenture took over the No. 1 spot from […]

Quick Quantum Quips: Vendors roll out software applications to increase customer connections through partnerships and internal innovation

07.30.20/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 will keep the community up to date on recent announcements while stripping away the hype around developments. For more details, reach […]

Mipsology’s Zebra looks like a winner

07.22.20/by TBR

Mipsology is a 5-year-old company, based in France and California, with a differentiated product that solves a real problem for some customers. The company’s product, Zebra, is a deep learning compute engine for neural network inference. While these engines are not uncommon, Zebra unlocks a potentially important platform for inference using the field programmable gate […]

Informatica acquires Compact Solutions to improve metadata management across the enterprise

07.20.20/by Allan Krans, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Enterprises are developing hybrid IT environments at an increasing rate, leveraging cloud-based technologies to achieve flexibility and scalability while keeping workloads on premises that contain sensitive information or require low latency. This creates complex IT environments that need to be integrated, governed and made compliant with local regulations. Informatica has positioned itself as a leading […]

Logicalis’ local scale and investments in services transformation offerings position it well to withstand the COVID-19 headwinds in LATAM

07.17.20/by Bozhidar Hristov, Principal Analyst

Following one of the last in-person analyst events held in in Sao Paolo, Brazil, just before COVID-19 took over our personal and business lives, TBR had a chance to reconnect virtually with Logicalis LATAM CEO Rodrigo Parreira and Logicalis LATAM Director of Strategy Eduardo Harada. Expanding on our discussion at the analyst event in February, […]

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