TBR’s Business Insights

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.

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

09.24.25

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 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

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

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

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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BearingPoint’s bold triple bet on cars

04.30.20/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Can the Europe-centric consultancy lead the race to remake the automotive industry? In recent years, as nearly every IT services vendor and consultancy has attached itself to an automotive sector client and touted their industry expertise, TBR has followed the routes those vendors have taken and which aspects of the car industry they have focused […]

Quick Quantum Quips: Economic advantage nears as software development advances

04.30.20/by admin

Welcome to TBR’s monthly newsletter on the quantum computing market: Quick Quantum Quips (Q3). Market activity remains strong despite the impact of COVID-19 on daily lives, as researchers spider out through many different elements of the quantum ecosystem in pursuit of scientific discoveries that will bring the quantum era into clearer view and closer proximity. […]

IBM, Atos and SAP report cloud growth in 1Q20 despite COVID-19 pandemic

04.24.20/by admin

As 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

04.23.20/by admin

Recent 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

04.17.20/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

04.16.20/by Angela Lambert, Principal Analyst and Practice Manager

This 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

04.15.20/by Allan Krans, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Finger-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

04.10.20/by admin

Economic 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

04.07.20/by Allan Krans, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Not 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

04.06.20/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

COVID-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 […]

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