TBR’s Business Insights

What Spectrum Will 6G Use?

01.13.25

The telecom industry continues to struggle with realizing new revenue and deriving ROI from 5G, even after five years of market development. TBR continues to see no solution to this persistent challenge, and with no catalyst on the horizon to change the situation, CSPs’ appetite for and scope of investment in 6G will likely be limited.

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AI Agents: What Are They, and How Will They Impact the AI PC Space in 2025?

01.09.25

Over the past several quarters, OEMs have focused on incorporating local AI-powered features into their new PC releases, with initial neural processing unit (NPU)-enabled use cases leveraging AI to further enhance collaboration experiences and extend battery life. However, AI agents take the NPU’s functionality a step further, combining the capabilities of large language models (LLMs) with other resources to partially or fully automate a wide range of tasks, including responding to emails, booking hotel stays, or opening and closing IT help desk tickets.

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AI Buzz Sparks IT Infrastructure Shifts, but Privacy and Strategic Challenges Are Impacting Adoption

12.20.24

The industry enthusiasm surrounding AI has quickly led to shifts in organizations’ strategic priorities and expected investments such as demand for servers. Despite the hype, few organizations have operationalized GenAI to date. Instead, most are focused on overcoming initial barriers to adoption, including understanding the business implications of this new technology frontier.

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GenAI, IT Modernization and Strategic M&A Drive Infrastructure as a Service and Platform as a Service Growth

12.19.24

Top hyperscalers Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft are capturing legacy Oracle and SAP workloads as customers continue to migrate to the cloud to not only outsource their IT operations but also drive lasting business value. Though the geopolitical outlook is increasingly uncertain, we expect customers will continue to prioritize more traditional “lift and shift” migrations, and steps vendors are taking to deliver more integrated solutions could help.

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Harnessing AI and Automation in Business Process Outsourcing to Drive Growth Amid Shifting Buyer Priorities

12.13.24

Vendors’ business process outsourcing (BPO) businesses continue to benefit from the ongoing shift in buyer priorities from innovation and growth toward business resiliency and optimization. Buyers are investing in automating business processes to free up costs, providing pathways to growth for vendors with AI-powered and platform-based offerings.

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Emerging Consultancy Trends: Talent Management and Innovation in the Spotlight

12.12.24

Technology continues to threaten the nature of consulting engagements, requiring consultancies to showcase value and deliver on outcomes. Greater investment in talent frameworks, structure and skill will equip staff to lead client discussions and effectively leverage technology to assist workflows. Partnerships remain a core piece of the technology integration, bringing in new expertise and go-to-market opportunities that enable consultancies to meet a wider variety of client needs. Client retention remains a priority across consultancies but will require the firms to effectively deliver value through services.

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Federal IT Spending Will Remain Robust in FFY25 Amid AI Prioritization

12.06.24

Since coming into office, the Biden administration has fueled an unprecedented federal IT bull market. While the White House’s proposed federal civilian technology budget of $75.1 billion for federal fiscal year 2025 (FFY25) is the smallest increase in several years (up less than 1% compared to $74.5 billion in FFY24), it is still an increase of more than 14% from $65.8 billion in FFY23, and up 25% from $60.1 billion in FFY21, the last year of the prior administration. FFY25 has started with a continuing resolution (CR), as have most of the last several fiscal year. The impact of the latest CR on the largest federal systems integrators may be limited to shorter-cycle programs in their order books, but some disruptions to larger, longer-term engagements are not out of the question.

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Meet MAMAA: The Top 5 Hyperscalers Shaping the Future of Digital Ecosystems

11.20.24

TBR research shows only the Tier 1 hyperscalers can transcend most, if not all, of the major lifestyle categories to provide a seamless end-to-end ecosystem experience, touching all aspects of people’s lives, primarily due to their scale and access to resources.

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Growing Infrastructure as a Service Commitments and Competitive Dynamics

11.19.24

Market leaders Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft have highlighted that customers are signing larger cloud contracts with longer terms. At least in the case of AWS, customers are increasingly applying their cloud credits toward one- or three-year subscription offerings like Savings Plans and Reserved Instances.

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Is ‘cloud repatriation’ real?

08.13.18/by Angela Lambert, Principal Analyst and Practice Manager

Cloud repatriation is real, but not real enough to change the prevailing cloud trajectory. Think of it as the exception, and not the rule. It’s a question I’ve heard multiple times: “We heard that [insert giant company name] is taking their apps/data off [insert giant public cloud vendor name] and moving it back into their […]

It’s time to stop calling IoT a technology

08.03.18/by admin

Yes, we all do it. Every analyst, vendor and customer has referred to Internet of Things (IoT) as a technology. I have done it countless times, and so have my extremely talented and informed peers. However, it’s a misnomer, a shortcut, and a cop out, and if we actually think of IoT as a technology, […]

Predix is looking for a new owner

08.01.18/by admin

Reports surfaced on July 30 that General Electric (GE) has contracted an investment bank to auction off the company’s GE Digital unit. When former CEO Jeff Immelt aimed to diversify GE into the software space to take advantage of the synergies between Internet of Things (IoT) and the company’s industrial machinery footprint, GE Digital was […]

Earnings recap: Amazon, Microsoft and Google grow fast and keep hold on the market — for now

07.31.18/by Allan Krans, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Although the market is consolidating around AWS, Microsoft Azure and GCP, the trailing vendors are unable to match AWS’ quarterly revenue gains Consolidation is occurring across cloud segments, with the most notable convergence occurring around the five leading PaaS and IaaS players, blending the lines between PaaS and IaaS. Customers and applications vendors are flocking […]

Google goes after IHVs with Cloud IoT Edge

07.26.18/by TBR

Google’s Cloud IoT Edge hardware-software package for edge devices, announced on July 25, aims to be a comprehensive bundle for the edge ― for devices and for gateways. In this offering, Google leverages its two big assets in machine learning, TensorFlow software and the tensor processing unit (TPU) processor, to stake a position in edge […]

It’s hard to grow up in IoT

07.25.18/by TBR

One of the most important governing factors in the adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) is the maturity of the companies considering, buying and implementing IoT. Vendors can improve their go-to-market (GTM) tactics by varying their approach to potential customers with different degrees of maturity. Assessment of maturity helps in predicting and targeting growth opportunities […]

GE and Microsoft are getting more serious

07.20.18/by TBR

General Electric Co. (GE) and Microsoft have been strengthening their Internet of Things (IoT) partnership for at least a year, and a July 16 announcement documents a new, closer stage in their relationship. TBR believes this partnership benefits both parties. GE makes its Predix IoT platform more attractive to the growing number of customers standardizing […]

Hybrid, multicloud, reunited partners featured in TBR’s upcoming cloud & software research

07.18.18/by Allan Krans, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Going into the second half of 2018, TBR’s Cloud and Software Practice anticipates providing additional research around a few issues that have been top of mind among TBR’s clients and our analysts. The common theme across the three issues highlighted in this report is the growing focus on how cloud and software are jointly being […]

Telecom operators drill down on IoT opportunity in logistics

07.17.18/by admin

Despite the hype to the contrary, in commercial Internet of Things (IoT), not all verticals are created equal in terms of opportunity. There is near-term opportunity in some verticals, while opportunity in other verticals will take a few years to mature. The verticals with the longest and deepest histories of using IoT are oil and […]

EY, SAP and Microsoft: A powerful triad for the Business of One era

07.16.18/by admin

Attending several EY analyst events in the past month has been a real eye-opener to the changing dynamics of a company that has traditionally been viewed as an advisory-led firm with strong credentials in the tax, audit and advisory domains, yet until recently offered precious little in the way of IT-centric services. This is not […]

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