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?

Previous Next

Our most-read analysis, free in your inbox each week!

Fill out the form to the right to subscribe to Insights Flight today

Establishing realistic expectations for AI potential requires vendors to address economies of change management first, technology second

03.13.20/by admin

AI is one of the technologies that will help standardize the digital transformation (DT) market and turn the wildly loose use of the term digital into tangible business results. Though the technology sparks urgency for many buyers to accelerate the execution of their DT programs, they need to carefully balance messaging with external and internal […]

Two Back, Three Forward: Growth in the Western Hemisphere

03.11.20/by admin

In our new weekly blog series Two Back, Three Forward, we look at two numbers in TBR reports from the prior week as well as three numbers from our upcoming reports, highlighting the analysis TBR provides and the vast amount of data — the numbers — we’re working with every day. It’s all about the […]

TBR predicts total enterprise spend on edge infrastructure will grow at a 41% CAGR through 2024 to almost $120B

03.10.20/by Allan Krans, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Webscale drives projected forecast for enterprise edge On Feb. 26, TBR senior analysts Nicki Catchpole and Stephanie Long were joined by hundreds of professionals across multiple vendors and verticals for TBR’s first webinar on the enterprise edge. The session, The emerging and evolving landscape of enterprise edge computing, focused on the components of the enterprise […]

Insights from TBR’s inaugural Enterprise Edge Compute Market Landscape

03.09.20/by Allan Krans, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

The edge computing market spans a spectrum of use cases that meet various customer needs, including sensitivity for latency and analytics. According to TBR’s 1Q20 Enterprise Edge Compute Market Landscape, while the edge is not new, its use for low-latency-dependent applications and close-to-the-data computing has increased and will continue to do so to support connected […]

Perspecta prepares to move beyond NGEN loss

03.06.20/by admin

2020 will be critical as Perspecta attempts to make up for its NGEN-R bid loss, with federal spending priorities providing an avenue for growth “Perspecta delivered steady top-line results in 4Q19 as it posted a very strong book-to-bill ratio (1.4) and continues to win new deals in areas of strategic importance for both Perspecta and […]

Two Back, Three Forward: All about consecutive quarters

03.03.20/by admin

Quick Quantum Quips: Demonstrating quantum’s value to customers is top of mind early in 2020

02.27.20/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 […]

The emerging and evolving landscape of enterprise edge computing

02.25.20/by admin

TBR launches its inaugural Enterprise Edge Compute Market Landscape this week. The report profiles key vendors playing in the enterprise edge compute market as well as trends in alliance and acquisition activity, emerging market opportunities, and use cases and business cases for edge. As a complement to TBR’s Telecom Edge Compute Market Landscape, this new […]

The federal IT services market remains highly favorable in growth for technology contractors in 2020

02.20.20/by admin

Defense, intelligence and civilian agencies are accelerating modernization efforts in 2020. M&A activity in the market will also remain at a brisk pace. “Leidos released its 4Q19 and 2019 fiscal results on Feb. 18, posting 4Q19 revenue growth of 11.6% year-to-year to $2.95 billion on the back of strong bookings and backlog growth throughout 2019 as […]

Growing partnerships with key cloud vendors help sustain Capgemini’s success

02.11.20/by admin

As Senior Analyst Elitsa Bakalova notes this week, “Partners are key contributors to Capgemini’s technology-enabled transformations around next-generation technologies, such as digital and cloud. The expanded partnership with Amazon Web Services enhances Capgemini’s AWS business in North America and improves its ability to advance cloud adoption in a strategic region for Capgemini’s global expansion. Additionally, […]

Free Data & Analysis

Subscribe to Insights Flight today!