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5 Key Questions on Big Four Evolution and Strategy
The Big Four professional services firms — Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC — have all been undergoing organizational changes in the last couple years. TBR regularly hears five questions about how these firms manage themselves, grow and change. Taking a longitudinal view allows TBR to see that recent restructurings, layoffs and offerings all reflect how these firms are trying to address the following: who gets the best talent, who decides what’s next, who sells, how everyone in a firm knows what everyone else does, and what role will managed services play.

DOGE Federal IT Vendor Impact Series: Accenture Federal Services
The full impact of the 10 canceled task orders on Accenture Federal Services (AFS) remains unclear, but TBR’s secondary research indicates the terminated work has a total contract value of nearly $93 million, including a $35 million order from DOE’s CIO office and a $2 million order for geospatial services. If we assume all $93 million worth of orders was booked by AFS as the prime awardee, that sum would represent just under 2% of AFS’ estimated FY24 revenue of $5.4 billion.

DOGE Federal IT Vendor Impact Series: SAIC
TBR was surprised by SAIC’s FY26 (CY25) outlook, which was consistent with CEO Toni Townes-Whitley’s comment during the company’s 4Q24 earnings call that SAIC’s “current revenue with agencies under particular scrutiny by DOGE is immaterial.” In fact, SAIC elevated several elements of its FY26 guidance in 4Q24.

Google Recognizes Critical Role of Security, and Its Standing in the Cloud Market, in Acquisition of Wiz
With the business environment changing and cybersecurity perhaps more relevant than ever, Google saw an opportunity to repursue the Wiz acquisition, and a $32 billion offer, marking a major uptick in valuation, was simply too good for Wiz to ignore. Should the deal close in 2026 as expected, Wiz — with roughly 1,800 employees and ties to half the Fortune 500 — will join the Google Cloud division, offering synergies with Mandiant, an added layer of protection for the Google Security Operations platform, and the potential to help Google Cloud formalize cybersecurity as an agentic AI use case.

Hardware-centric Vendors Continue to Make Their Move Into Software
Though revenue mixes are increasingly shifting in favor of software, driven in part by acquisitions (e.g., Cisco’s purchase of Splunk), hardware continues to dominate the market, accounting for 80% of benchmarked vendor revenue in 3Q24. Industry-standard servers being sold to cloud and GPU “as a Service” providers are overwhelmingly fueling market growth, more than offsetting unfavorable cyclical demand weakness in the storage and networking markets.

PwC Middle East Experts Weigh In on Economic Trends and Transaction Activity
PwC Middle East’s webcast provides excellent monthly insights into the region’s economies, but it is not the only active Big Four firm. As TBR reported in our Fall 2024 Management Consulting Benchmark, KPMG “announced the opening of Risk Hub in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in collaboration with Microsoft and IBM, paving the way for more in-person, tech-enabled GRC [governance, risk and compliance] discussions with regional clients embarking on their digital transformation programs.” TBR also learned in February that KPMG intends to open a new Ignition Center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in 2025, building on the firm’s global network of innovation and transformation centers.

Deployment Services in Telecom Face Post-5G Slowdown, Shifting Market Dynamics and Growth in Fiber Expansion
The deployment services market faces growing headwinds, including communication service provider (CSP) consolidation, open vRAN’s lower installation costs, and reduced demand for site location and construction (SL&C), offset somewhat by hyperscaler spend and 5G rollouts in select developing markets. Hyperscaler investments provide incremental volume to the market, and TBR notes these companies are increasing their investments in access technologies (e.g., Google Fiber).

TBR Case Study: Price Benchmarking
Explore this competitive pricing example from TBR's Tailored Services team, which helped this global Top 3 hardware OEM capitalize on their investment in pricing research.
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TBR’s Quantum Computing Market Landscape details emerging uses cases, economic disruption and alliances
/by adminTBR’s first Quantum Computing Market Landscape focuses on multiple facets of the quantum computing market, exploring the vendor landscape of a variety of competing hardware vendors with differing quantum theories, as well as software services and security vendors playing in the quantum computing space. Emerging customer sentiments, as well as recent alliances, emerging use cases […]
Integration challenges ahead for Perspecta and SAIC as federal sector IT services vendors position for the rest of 2019
/by adminPublishing this week from TBR’s federal IT research program are our initial assessments of SAIC’s and Perspecta’s 1Q19 earnings performances. Perspecta is wrapping up its first complete fiscal year as an independent business entity. Its inaugural year has been characterized by significant challenges integrating a trio of large-scale legacy federal IT competitors, and we expect […]
Booz Allen Hamilton keeps winning, even when the government shuts down
/by adminTBR’s initial response to Booz Allen Hamilton’s (BAH’s) 1Q19 earnings published on Tuesday, and we expect another strong quarter from BAH to close out its FY19. BAH boasts a soundly differentiated market position and multilayered alignment of its technology and advisory portfolio with the primary objectives of its federal customers. Consulting-led offerings are increasingly interwoven […]
TBR Weekly Preview: May 20-24
/by adminBefore the long weekend here in the U.S., our teams will be publishing deeper analysis on some of the vendors that released earnings earlier this quarter. As always, our approach starts with the individual companies, then builds to an understanding of the larger market. Additionally, don’t miss this Wednesday’s webinar Bringing the best: Talent and […]
HPE buys Cray: Is this the definition of insanity?
/by adminWe know Moore’s law drives consolidation in the industry. What we do not know, however, is if any two hardware-centric vendors can come together and build a business accretive to the top line. Michael Blumenthal tried this strategy by combining Burroughs and Sperry to create Unisys, and that certainly did not work. More recently Dell […]
Kick-starting innovation takes smart thinking, not just action
/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal AnalystAn innovation leader at a fast-growing Europe-centric consultancy shared with me tactics his firm uses to make its innovation engagements creative and pragmatic, with principles centered on adding real business value while capturing as much opportunity as possible for meaningful change. First, pick one area to innovate, based largely on where you can expect value […]
TBR Weekly Preview: May 13-17
/by adminAs we move further into May, we will shift from initial earnings reports to larger, detailed reports on the vendors we cover, plus the benchmarks and market forecasts for the broader areas, such as cloud and telecom. And definitely do not miss Wednesday’s webinar on digital transformation. Monday The IBM Cloud report highlights how cloud […]
Off the road and on your screen: A webinar featuring our latest look at digital transformation
/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal AnalystSeven of the last nine weeks spent traveling has included an incalculable number of meetings and countless great stories, ranging from ground-breaking IoT solutions and stand-out blockchain presentations to a surprising utilities-selection app. All the events confirmed, for me, that we’re on the right track with how TBR has structured its research and analysis around […]
TBR Weekly Preview: May 6-10
/by adminWe are still cranking through our initial analysis of vendors’ earnings for the first quarter, with more detailed analysis available two weeks after the announcements. Monday Growth of Wipro IT Services’ (ITS) emerging business lines, such as Digital Ops and Platforms, shows recent investments are paying dividends; however, steep declines in its legacy outsourcing […]
Three years after launching Google One, Google Cloud nears enterprise readiness with Anthos
/by Allan Krans, Practice Manager and Principal AnalystGoogle Cloud’s enterprise journey started with Diane Greene and the ‘One Google’ strategy When Google entered the public cloud market it leveraged the company’s positive reputation among developers as well as technological expertise around machine learning and data analytics from its Search business. However, as a cloud vendor, the company had yet to establish a […]