TBR’s Business Insights

New Growth in Consulting Is Emerging from an Unexpected Place: Managed Services

03.18.26

A scaled managed services practice trained in spotting consulting opportunities and armed with AI-enabled solutions will unquestionably win some management consulting market share. More significantly, from TBR’s objective view, is whether the Big Four firms can manage their staffing, brand promise and technology alliances to take advantage of the managed services practices they’ve already built and use those opportunities to return to robust management consulting growth. Maybe, but probably not all four. The next two years will be telling, and TBR expects the existing differences between the Big Four will become even more pronounced.

Skills Shortage Will Challenge the Scaling of Sovereign AI in 2026

02.20.26

AI-related skills will remain scarce across both buyers and ecosystem partners as the rapid pace of innovation and the technical complexity required to enable sovereign AI continue to hinder adoption. These challenges, combined with a lack of clearly defined and compliant use cases among sovereign customers, gaps in sovereign cloud infrastructure availability and steep AI learning curve faced by ecosystem partners, will constrain meaningful investment and implementation of sovereign AI throughout 2026.

PaaS Revenue Will Outpace SaaS Revenue for Cloud Software Vendors

02.17.26

Enterprise customers are prioritizing the modernization of their existing SaaS estates rather than adding new applications, driven by market saturation, accumulated technical debt, and a growing imperative to become AI-ready. As IT buyers shift their focus toward modern platforms, traditional SaaS leaders should expect their PaaS segments to continue significantly outperforming their core SaaS businesses in revenue growth.

Dee Angela, Canva Pro

Alliances Will Extend Beyond Core Offerings as AI-driven Sales and Marketing Reshape Ecosystems

02.12.26

IT services companies have their limits, and clients have preferred technology vendors, leading IT services companies to look to alliances to drive new growth. We have seen this pattern before, but in 2026 we will see IT services companies extend those alliances into devices, connectivity and even silicon, requiring a multiparty alliance approach that will strain commercial models, sales strategies and alliance leaders across the ecosystem.

Consulting Will Rebound in 2026

02.10.26

After a period of relative softness, consulting revenues are expected to rebound to high-single- or low-double-digit growth as pervasive uncertainty pushes enterprises to seek external guidance. Demand will be particularly strong around risk mitigation, strategic planning and AI adoption, positioning forward-deployed engineers, supply chain management and people advisory services as leading revenue drivers in 2026.

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.

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Quick Quantum Quips: Hardware entrants gain VC funds while established innovators partner across architectures to secure a place in the broader quantum ecosystem

12.04.19/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. Contact Stephanie […]

Traditional ports and quantum computing: The now and the future

12.03.19/by admin

Principal Analysts Geoff Woollacott and Patrick Heffernan are each publishing a piece this week that touches on the business of digital transformation. Geoff focuses on the massive change expected from quantum computing as the business applications begin to catch up to the science. In his opinion, “Quantum is on the cusp of delivering economic advantage. […]

Test bed for smart cities: One port’s potential

12.02.19/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

At a recent event in Oulu, Finland, I heard about the local port’s efforts to undergo a full-scale digital transformation, to include everything from 5G connectivity to analytics to drones to enhanced customer experience, sparking a kind of epiphany, for me, on the potential for a relatively small port to serve as a test bed […]

Traditional management consultancies continue evolving toward the digital transformation future

11.26.19/by admin

This week TBR will publish recent insights on two of the management consultancies we cover: The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and McKinsey & Co. Regarding BCG, Analyst Kelly Lesiczkanotes, “Earning consistent rankings as a top employer and avoiding negative publicity enable BCG to attract and retain employees and to support innovation efforts and delivery of […]

HCL Technologies’ onshore centers provide entry points for larger-scale upselling opportunities tied to cloud, AI and cybersecurity

11.20.19/by Kelly Lesiczka, Senior Analyst

Vendors are strengthening offshore and low-cost talent, particularly in India, to offset investment costs related to infusing digital into their portfolios as well as to supplement delivery and innovation efforts. For example, Atos opened a delivery center in the city of Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu, India, that is expected to house 2,300 software engineers, and […]

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

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