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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TBR Weekly Preview: March 4-8

03.04.19/by admin

As we start winding down beginning-of-the-year earnings calls, here’s what you can expect from the TBR team this week: Tuesday: In 3Q18 TBR noted Salesforce built on its industry-specific strategies by releasing Financial Services Cloud for retail banking and by expanding its target audience for Education Cloud. Salesforce’s ongoing innovation to address vertical use cases […]

Key findings from TBR’s 2H18 Hyperconverged Platforms Customer Research

02.19.19/by admin

TBR forecasts the HCI market will reach $15 billion by 2023, representing a significant growth opportunity for data center vendors. Survey incidence data indicate that the majority of potential customers have not yet begun their hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) journey. Emerging solutions, such as Lenovo’s TruScale Infrastructure Services and AWS Outposts have the potential to shake […]

Lenovo unveils TruScale Infrastructure Services, consumption-based data center pricing

02.12.19/by admin

In February Lenovo’s Data Center Group (DCG) unveiled TruScale Infrastructure Services. A Hardware as a Service (HaaS) solution with subscription-based pricing, TruScale makes DCG’s entire ThinkSystem and ThinkAgile portfolio available to customers “as a Service” through both Lenovo sales associates and channel partners. For a monthly fee, customers will gain access to data center infrastructure, […]

Reconsidering TCS’ SWOT assessment: M&A comes alive

01.16.19/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

In November our detailed report on Tata Consultancy Services’ (TCS) performance and strategy included a SWOT slide with the following item in the Threat category: “Competitors are building assets and scale quickly through acquisitions; TCS retains a conservative M&A stance.” Just a couple of weeks into 2019, we’re seeing a change from the company: a […]

Services Weekly Preview: January 14-18

01.14.19/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

As the first quarter of the new year gets rolling, TBR’s Services team will be reporting on IT services vendors’ 4Q18 earnings, evaluating their performance and strategies, and pulling through trends across the entire IT services space. A recap of TBR’s 3Q18 findings can be found in the IT Services Vendor Benchmark, now available for […]

Deeper convergence of mobility, broadband and video services creates revenue opportunities and disruption for CSPs

12.27.18/by Steve Vachon, Senior Analyst

The digital era is bringing fundamental, disruptive changes to traditional business models for communication service providers (CSPs), including telecom operators and cable providers, as the mobility, broadband and video industries converge more deeply. These shifts are driven by the following trends, which will gain further traction over the next several years: The rise of cable […]

HCL Technologies’ reinforces technical and engineering roots with the addition of IBM Software products

12.18.18/by Kelly Lesiczka, Senior Analyst

HCLT’s acquisition provides entry into emerging areas Building off its long-standing partnership with IBM, on Dec. 6 HCL Technologies (HCLT) announced the acquisition of seven IBM Software products for $1.8 billion. The acquisition, which is expected to close in February 2019, includes IBM’s AppScan, BigFix, Notes/Domino, Connections, Digital Experience (DX), Unica and Commerce as well […]

DXC Technology lands award in the Middle East, highlighting long-standing core strengths of its solution suite for the health payer sector

12.13.18/by John Caucis, Senior Analyst

In 2016 United Arab Emirates (UAE)-based insurer United Insurance Co. (UIC) hired a new CIO and tasked him with digitally transforming the company’s IT infrastructure and operations to a cloud-based infrastructure (see below for a snapshot of UIC). Within the CIO’s first five months, UIC migrated its core IT applications (e.g., Office 365) to the […]

Cyber-sweet Carolina: Capgemini’s new SOC

12.10.18/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Last month my colleagues Bozhidar Hristov and Elitsa Bakalova joined me for a chat with the Capgemini executives who are leading the company’s new security operations center (SOC) in Columbia, S.C. Drew Morefield and Ninad Purohit explained that the new SOC will become part of a global network of 10 SOCs and close to 4,500 […]

Telecom IoT and edge computing: Developing focus areas in the telecom industry

12.05.18/by admin

As we look to 2019, TBR’s Telecom team has completed some insightful brainstorming sessions where we discussed industry trends and topics. We identified two nascent areas about which we are receiving increased questions and will spend more time researching as we move into the new year: telecom IoT and telecom edge compute. We welcome input, […]

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