TBR’s Business Insights

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.

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.

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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 […]

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 […]

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