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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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 […]

Relaunched Security Benchmark highlights emerging security trends

09.25.19/by admin

TBR’s Security Benchmark makes its return to the data center portfolio this week, covering many of the current trends impacting the enterprise security market. With a new look and feel, the Security Benchmark now covers insights into emerging security trends, in addition to the traditional eight TBR segments of the enterprise security market. For example, […]

Acquisitions and internal changes strengthen Capgemini in consulting

09.18.19/by admin

Every spring and fall, TBR releases a Management Consulting Benchmark with details on 13 leading vendors, including strategies, performance, positioning, and expectations for the next few years. For most of those consultancies, TBR also publishes individual profiles, providing additional details and analysis. The first of those profiles, on Capgemini, will be released this week, with […]

BPO 2.0 is alive at TELUS International in Bulgaria

09.10.19/by Bozhidar Hristov, Principal Analyst

On a recent trip to my native Bulgaria, my colleague Elitsa Bakalova and I visited one of TELUS International’s local sites. Country Managing Director Kristina Ivanova and Director of Operations Gergana Ralchovska hosted us in the recently opened TELUS Tower in downtown Sofia. With over 3,000 staff members in Bulgaria split between three offices, TELUS […]

Technology products enable Atos to get closer to IT buyers

09.03.19/by Elitsa Bakalova, Senior Analyst

Atos takes a pragmatic approach to executing digital transformation initiatives through the BullSequana Edge server Consumerization of business applications, demand for data quality and governance, and the adoption of connected technologies compel vendors such as Atos to explore opportunities around managing customer data and to invest in solutions that can help clients protect their competitive […]

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