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.

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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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Federal IT vendors capitalizing on a growth-friendly spending environment expected to see healthy top-line expansion

11.19.19/by admin

Senior Analyst John Caucis reports on three federal IT services providers this week, each delivering robust, double-digit revenue growth amid the strongest federal technology market witnessed in many years. “The strongest performance was tendered by CACI, whose revenue rose 16.9% year-to-year to $1.36 billion in 3Q19, showing the tight alignment of its differentiated solutions with […]

Revving the engine in Stuttgart: Accenture in the heart of the German auto zone

11.13.19/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

In July, Accenture announced a new Customer Experience Center in Stuttgart, Germany, focused on working with automobile manufacturers and their partners to accelerate the future of connected cars. With seemingly every IT services vendor and consultancy rolling out initiatives around automobiles, TBR spoke last week with Accenture’s Axel Schmidt, senior managing director and industry managing […]

IBM continues to separate itself from the pack

11.12.19/by admin

Senior Analyst Nicki Catchpole reports this week on IBM’s cloud and software practice, noting: “While IBM’s 3Q19 overall results continued to experience a downward slide, its Cloud & Cognitive Software sector experienced immediate positive effects from the much-anticipated $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat. Red Hat’s OpenShift technology and channel-driven approach have boosted IBM’s cloud […]

Betting on business model transformation through appointment of new leaders

11.07.19/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

As companies must manage multidisciplinary andmultigenerational workforces, maintaining properlytrained leaders, with visions closely aligned to theorganization’s DNA rather than investor expectations,will provide a strong foothold in a largely disrupted ITservices market. The impact on employee culture,morale, purpose and other organizational behaviorlargely depends on the CEO of the company, particularlyif a new one needs to be […]

Quick Quantum Quips: A call for quantum supremacy sends ripples through the market

11.06.19/by admin

The quantum market changes rapidly, and the hype can often distract from the realities of the technological developments. In our new monthly newsletter, Quick Quantum Quips (Q3), TBR will brief readers on the latest market announcements, stripping that hype to dig deeper into how recent events will impact the market as a whole. To schedule […]

UiPath’s enhanced and expanded technology stack provides a solid foundation to reach scale

11.05.19/by admin

In mid-October Senior Analyst Boz Hristov attended the annual UiPath Forward conference in Las Vegas, and recently, he published his thoughts on the event and UiPath’s role in the robotic process automation market. He wrote, “UiPath’s position as one of the leading vendors defining the robotic process automation (RPA) market comes with responsibilities for managing […]

Microsoft beats out Amazon after contentious competition for DOD’s JEDI award

10.28.19/by admin

Last Friday’s announcement of the massive U.S. federal government cloud contract led Senior Analyst John Caucis to publish a special report explaining how Microsoft won, why Amazon lost, and what it all means for the IT services vendors in the U.S. public sector space. “Regardless of why the DOD [Department of Defense] chose to announce […]

IBM and the Raptors: Building an NBA champion and looking for a repeat

10.23.19/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

While watching the NBA’s defending champion Toronto Raptors begin their season, I thought back to a trip to IBM’s Toronto office in late summer 2018, where we got to play with the technology IBM built for the Raptors’ draft and trade war room. We created teams, selecting college players, current NBA players and even European […]

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 […]

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