TBR’s Business Insights

What Spectrum Will 6G Use?

01.13.25

The telecom industry continues to struggle with realizing new revenue and deriving ROI from 5G, even after five years of market development. TBR continues to see no solution to this persistent challenge, and with no catalyst on the horizon to change the situation, CSPs’ appetite for and scope of investment in 6G will likely be limited.

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AI Agents: What Are They, and How Will They Impact the AI PC Space in 2025?

01.09.25

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.

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AI Buzz Sparks IT Infrastructure Shifts, but Privacy and Strategic Challenges Are Impacting Adoption

12.20.24

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.

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GenAI, IT Modernization and Strategic M&A Drive Infrastructure as a Service and Platform as a Service Growth

12.19.24

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.

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Harnessing AI and Automation in Business Process Outsourcing to Drive Growth Amid Shifting Buyer Priorities

12.13.24

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.

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Emerging Consultancy Trends: Talent Management and Innovation in the Spotlight

12.12.24

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.

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Federal IT Spending Will Remain Robust in FFY25 Amid AI Prioritization

12.06.24

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.

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Meet MAMAA: The Top 5 Hyperscalers Shaping the Future of Digital Ecosystems

11.20.24

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.

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Growing Infrastructure as a Service Commitments and Competitive Dynamics

11.19.24

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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Mixed results expected in the U.S. federal sector for IT services vendors

10.21.19/by admin

Earnings season for federally focused IT vendors begins the week of Oct. 21. Senior Analyst John Caucis has been tracking Northrop Grumman Technology Services (TS), General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT) and Raytheon Intelligence, Information and Services (IIS) ahead of their 3Q19 fiscal earnings release. Raytheon IIS is expected to be the top performer among the […]

Growing traditional revenues in IT services remains a challenge

10.16.19/by admin

TBR’s quarterly IT Services Vendor Benchmark published last week, with the following comment from lead Senior Analyst Elitsa Bakalova: “Vendors are scaling transformational portfolios; however, lingering growth challenges in traditional service areas challenge revenue performance. Trailing 12-month IT services revenue growth, at 1.9% year-to-year in U.S. dollars, was down 140 basis points sequentially in 2Q19 […]

Returning to a co-CEO structure completes the executive refresh to support SAP in the ongoing cloud war

10.11.19/by Allan Krans, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Bill McDermott chose not to renew his contract as SAP CEO, making room for SAP to return to its co-CEO structure with Jennifer Morgan and Christian Klein. This changing of the guard is the capstone on SAP’s management realignment, and the announcement comes with some glaring similarities to key ERP challenger Oracle’s announcement a month […]

Tear down those paywalls: A better solution is possible

10.07.19/by TBR

Paywalls are going up all over the internet, hurting both publishers and readers. A better solution is possible, but no one is offering it. TBR can describe the solution but cannot explain why the market is not working to produce it. The internet is smothering publishing Online reading is harming both print and online newspapers […]

Digital Transformation Insights: What do we mean by ‘cross vendor’?

10.03.19/by admin

As part of our Digital Transformation Insights portfolio, twice this year we’ve published cross vendor reports, narrowing our analysis down to a few select vendors while staying within the context of digital transformation. In the first report, we put Accenture and IBM side by side — looking at the two companies’ past, present and future […]

Top growing consultancies lean into emerging technologies

10.02.19/by admin

Twice a year TBR publishes its Management Consulting Benchmark, which provides key service line, regional, vertical and operational data and analysis for 13 leading management consulting vendors. The benchmark also includes deep dives into 11 of the 13 vendors. This week, TBR will publish insights into two of those vendors: IBM and EY. “IBM is […]

Blockchain makes more noise in 2H19: Hearing from services vendors and consultancies

09.30.19/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Last month, my colleagues Geoff Woollacott and Boz Hristov published a report on the business of blockchain, and next month, Geoff and I will be attending a KPMG event on the same topic. We are looking forward to learning how that Big Four firm approaches both the technology and the business model impacts, on itself […]

Is the term data protection anachronistic?

09.26.19/by admin

The only real constant in the technology industry is change, and that change has been accelerating rapidly and is now poised to explode. During the many transformations that have occurred in the industry, legacy terms well known for one thing lose favor or actually wind up adding confusion rather than clarity to the discussions. Business […]

Relaunched Security Benchmark highlights emerging security trends

09.25.19/by admin

TBR’s Security Benchmark makes its return to the data center portfolio this week, covering many of the current trends impacting the enterprise security market. With a new look and feel, the Security Benchmark now covers insights into emerging security trends, in addition to the traditional eight TBR segments of the enterprise security market. For example, […]

Acquisitions and internal changes strengthen Capgemini in consulting

09.18.19/by admin

Every spring and fall, TBR releases a Management Consulting Benchmark with details on 13 leading vendors, including strategies, performance, positioning, and expectations for the next few years. For most of those consultancies, TBR also publishes individual profiles, providing additional details and analysis. The first of those profiles, on Capgemini, will be released this week, with […]

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