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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Thoughts from the blockchain intellectual junk drawer

04.12.19/by admin

“We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next 10. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.” — Bill Gates I think about this statement from one of our industry titans often in the course of my work, and I am […]

TBR Weekly Preview: April 1-5

04.01.19/by admin

As we start into the second quarter, we will be examining companies’ 1Q19 earnings as they release. For this week, look for more benchmarks and special reports. Friday In our quarterly Healthcare IT Services Benchmark, we note that healthcare IT services vendors are finding it increasing difficult to scale revenues from existing provider clients […]

Channel partner ecosystems evolve to support digital disruption

03.28.19/by admin

Over the past several months, TBR has seen increased activity and interest around the topic of channel and alliance strategy across our 12 ICT industry coverage domains. While channel and alliance strategy is a pervasive topic, the intensity and tenor of the questions posed recently signal an increased focus around deploying industry-leading partnering strategies to […]

TBR Weekly Preview: March 25-29

03.27.19/by admin

We’re in a slower earnings period, which means fewer vendor-centric reports and more benchmarks and market landscapes. And at the end of the week, Accenture gets the early jump on 1Q19, as we analyze the company’s cloud-centric portfolio and overall performance. Thursday Accenture will kick off the 1Q19 earnings season for services companies. While we […]

Pivoting to industry offerings and managing disruption: Not everyone can keep pace

03.26.19/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Over the last two weeks, TBR has spent time with three leading IT services and consulting vendors, discussing their strategies for evolving digital transformation and hearing from their clients about what has worked and where frustrations remain. Two common themes came out of these discussions: industry-specific offerings and market disruption. While we’ve frequently commented on […]

TBR Weekly Preview: March 18-22

03.19.19/by admin

In addition to this week’s vendor analysis, TBR Senior Analyst John Caucis will host a webinar Wednesday, March 20, sharing his insights on the state of the healthcare IT services market and the 2019 HIMSS mega-event. Furthermore, TBR analysts will be attending several events this week, so be on the lookout for special reports on […]

IBM makes major strides in quantum with Volume and AI

03.18.19/by admin

IBM Quantum Volume creates a new way to assess a quantum computer’s capabilities as a whole system, rather than just based on its number of qubits. IBM unveils research into the intersection between quantum computing and machine learning. IBM, ever present in the development of cutting-edge technology, is a leader in the quantum computing space […]

Genpact adapts its service delivery model to help customers succeed with their digital transformations

03.14.19/by Kevin Collupy, Senior Analyst

Internal shift positions Genpact to capture digital demand Genpact hosted approximately 50 analysts on March 13 in Boston’s Seaport district to provide an update on its business and transition to the digital age. Additionally, the company highlighted its service design capabilities and how it’s differentiating from peers. Genpact continually invests in its business and delivery […]

Three years later: PwC’s Miami Experience Center led the way

03.13.19/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Three years ago, almost to the day, we went to Miami and saw something truly new, an “Experience Center” that PwC built to physically embody its emerging idea of coalescing consulting engagements around business, experience and technology. Saying we were impressed would be an understatement. Here’s what we said in our March 2016 special report […]

TBR Weekly Preview: March 11-15

03.11.19/by admin

We’re going all over the technology space this week, with reports spanning U.S. federal government IT services to long-established hardware and data center providers, plus a couple of European-centric companies. Wednesday: Talent continues to be the constraining factor on ManTech’s bright revenue growth outlook. Focus in defense and intelligence segments of the U.S. federal market […]

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