TBR’s Business Insights

Who Will Win the AI Services Race in the Next Wave of AI?

04.21.26

This quarter, TBR FourCast looks at Accenture, Capgemini, HCLTech and IBM Consulting, comparing how their underlying data strategies, especially related to engineering and integration, prepares them for advanced AI adoption.

Anthropic, OpenAI and Palantir: Who Gains and Who Loses in the Federal Fallout

04.16.26

Insights into how important the recent developments between Anthropic, OpenAI and Palantir are considering the implications for the largest agency (DOD), within the single largest buyer of IT in the world (U.S. Federal Government), relating to the single largest technology priority (AI).

Technology Business Research, Inc.

Salesforce Highlights Strengths in Innovation and Relationships at Agentforce World Tour

04.14.26

With the recent hype around the “death of SaaS” and other pressures on the business models of technology companies, Salesforce’s growing presence, success, and apparent disruption of competitors and alliance partners alike underscore Salesforce’s strengths in creating stickier client relationships and continually innovating, two qualities essential in the agentic AI age.

Pexels, Canva Pro

Federal IT Spending Trends: Why Growth Is Contracting and Where It Is Shifting

03.30.26

The Trump administration has proposed a double-digit increase in defense spending, which will flow through to IT budgets in the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community, particularly in areas of national security, which will receive top priority. Federal IT acquisition is also slowly pivoting to embrace outcome-based contracting, while the DOD looks to accelerate IT purchasing by adopting new and innovative IT procurement approaches.

Katherinasim, Canva Pro

Governance Becomes a Prerequisite for Success with AI

03.30.26

Governance was a recurring theme across content sessions and executive meetings at Mobile World Congress 2026. As telecom operators move from experimentation to operational in AI, creating a corporatewide, centralized framework for data management, model oversight and regulatory compliance is becoming essential. Without clear governance, AI initiatives often remain fragmented across business units, leading to inconsistent outcomes, duplicated efforts and limited enterprise impact.

Getty Images via Canva Pro

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.

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Twins born early in 2020

01.07.20/by Bozhidar Hristov, Principal Analyst

New year, new buys. And if your name is Accenture, it may be not too surprising to see twin acquisitions within the first week of 2020. In back-to-back announcements less than 24 hours apart, Accenture unveiled its plans to acquire Germany-based SAP shop maihiro and Symantec’s Cyber Security Services business. Maihiro will deepen Accenture’s SAP […]

Informatica empowers business users and improves customer success in its Winter ’20 release

12.20.19/by Allan Krans, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

The new capabilities of Informatica’s winter release make data more consumable for business users Organizations have a bevy of data spanning their on-premises and cloud environments and a growing number of employees utilizing that data — from more technical personnel, such as data scientists who are using the data to create AI and machine learning […]

Proximity or scale? Will Latin America’s startup scene challenge India’s?

12.18.19/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Here’s a simple question: Can a startup scene in nearshore Americas rival the one in India? Could countries and markets geographically closer to the U.S. provide the kind of energy and entrepreneurship coming from India, particularly in emerging technologies? A few weeks ago, TBR analysts spoke at length with a PwC partner in India about […]

As digital transformation matures, customers voice their concerns about data and scale

12.18.19/by admin

This week TBR wraps up its 2019 digital transformation insights research with our Voice of the Customer report, in which Senior Analyst Boz Hristov notes, “More buyers are beginning to embark on full transformations as new technologies promising faster, scalable outcomes push buyers to ramp investments and AI and analytics gain mindshare. Vendors can take […]

Traditional business models continue shifting for management consultancies

12.09.19/by admin

This week TBR publishes its semiannual Management Consulting Benchmark, and Senior Analyst Elitsa Bakalova notes the following: “Vendors compete for holistic transformation opportunities and expand the breadth of their portfolios and resources to provide clients with offerings that augment consulting value propositions by integrating consulting with IP-based solutions and managed services. As consulting teams continue […]

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 […]

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