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.

Getty Images via Canva Pro

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.

Getty Images via Canva Pro

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.

Getty Images via Canva Pro

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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TBR Weekly Preview: May 20-24

05.21.19/by admin

Before 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?

05.17.19/by admin

We 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

05.17.19/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

An 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

05.14.19/by admin

As 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

05.13.19/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Seven 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

05.07.19/by admin

We 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

05.06.19/by Allan Krans, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Google 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 […]

TBR Weekly Preview: April 29-May 3

04.29.19/by admin

Two weeks in a row cranking out tons of analysis around technology companies, their strategies and performances, and how we see the market changing constantly. As always, connect directly with the analysts if you have questions. Monday In TBR’s 1Q19 Fujitsu Cloud Initial Response, we discuss Fujitsu’s strategy and next moves after its decision last […]

TBR Weekly Preview: April 22-26

04.22.19/by admin

This week is one of the busiest weeks of the year for us, with plenty of earnings calls and scheduled benchmark publications. Tuesday TBR’s Cloud Professional Services Benchmark highlights the leading vendors — and strategies — in each cloud professional services market as well as how evolving customer demands are fundamentally disruptive to the market […]

Infosys must learn from missteps over the past 5 years to become a partner of choice for managed services

04.16.19/by Bozhidar Hristov, Principal Analyst

From time will tell to now is the time In late 2013 TBR published The next 5 years: A successful strategy for Infosys that examined what it would take for Infosys to catch up with multinational corporation rivals such as Accenture and IBM. We believed Infosys needed to build up nearshore Americas capacity and capabilities, […]

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