You are here: Home1 / Competitive Insights – Analyst Perspectives – TBR2 / Competitive Insights and Analyses Blog
AI Agents: What Are They, and How Will They Impact the AI PC Space in 2025?
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.
AI Buzz Sparks IT Infrastructure Shifts, but Privacy and Strategic Challenges Are Impacting Adoption
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.
GenAI, IT Modernization and Strategic M&A Drive Infrastructure as a Service and Platform as a Service Growth
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.
Harnessing AI and Automation in Business Process Outsourcing to Drive Growth Amid Shifting Buyer Priorities
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.
Emerging Consultancy Trends: Talent Management and Innovation in the Spotlight
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.
Federal IT Spending Will Remain Robust in FFY25 Amid AI Prioritization
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.
Meet MAMAA: The Top 5 Hyperscalers Shaping the Future of Digital Ecosystems
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.
Growing Infrastructure as a Service Commitments and Competitive Dynamics
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.
Our most-read analysis, free in your inbox each week!
Fill out the form to the right to subscribe to Insights Flight today
Letting your clients pick you: Tweaking the digital transformation center model
/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst“Start with a new space, furnish it with funky chairs, nontraditional work spaces and all the latest technologies. Recruit creative talent, mixed with some data scientists and wonder-tech folks, plus seasoned strategists. Bring in current clients and consult on digital transformation.” The last time I talked about getting leadership right at digital transformation centers, I […]
Time to get industrial about healthcare
/by adminInternet of Things (IoT) hesitation in the healthcare vertical stems from the industry’s complexity, as it is chained by liability and privacy issues, a general unease about change, legacy equipment, and unevolved processes. These complexities are all rooted in real concerns of customers and vendors in the healthcare space. However, the “Industrial IoT Analytics for […]
Smart city solutions have to think outside the trash bin
/by adminThe “Connecting Your Business to the Smart Cities We All Live In” panel during PTC’s LiveWorx event included ideas consistent with TBR’s previous views on smart cities. One of the most interesting speakers was Nigel Jacob, the co-founder of the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics, an R&D organization within Boston’s City Hall. Jacob gave […]
‘Popcorn market’ and ‘shrink-wrapped’ IoT: TBR gets creative with industry terms
/by adminObservers of emerging tech trends often seek the “hockey stick” moment, or that period when the market takes off following an explosion of activity. However, as TBR Principal Analyst Ezra Gottheil explains in his special report ‘Shrink-wrapped’ IoT will drive accelerating growth; an explosion of activity, or huge moment of growth, will likely never occur in the overall […]
Your digital transformation center needs leadership
/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal AnalystStart with a new space, furnish it with funky chairs, nontraditional work spaces and all the latest technologies. Recruit creative talent, mixed with some data scientists and wonder-tech folks, plus seasoned strategists. Bring in current clients and consult on digital transformation. As companies implement this playbook, a couple of common themes and challenges are emerging, […]
Will digital transformation be the catalyst for adoption of new outcome-based pricing models?
/by adminEvery day I find myself reading about the developments happening in business-to-consumer (B2C) pricing. Here’s a sample of those that jumped out recently: Uber announced a feature that would allow more price-sensitive customers to wait longer for rides in exchange for cheaper fares. Disney recently pursued a similar approach, creating a “sneak peek” package of […]
Pricing research is not always about price
/by adminI recently read an article summarizing an onstage interview with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos at the George Bush President Center. During the interview, Bezos described Amazon’s data mindset: “We have tons of metrics. When you are shipping billions of packages a year, you need good data and metrics: Are you delivering on time? Delivering on […]
Is the IT hardware market ready for Hardware as a Service?
/by Angela Lambert, Principal Analyst and Practice ManagerHardware as a Service — or maybe you call it PCaaS, DaaS or XaaS — is basically referring to bundling some type of hardware (e.g., phones, PCs, servers) with life cycle services and charging a recurring fee over a multiyear contract. The customer never really owns the hardware, and the vendor takes it back at […]
Key findings from TBR’s upcoming HCI customer research
/by adminHyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) is a growing market ripe with opportunity for vendors. TBR forecasts the market will reach $11.7 billion by 2022. Although TBR research indicates that incumbent vendors with a strong presence in the converged infrastructure (CI) market, such as Dell EMC and Cisco, have an advantage in the space, findings also indicate that […]
Democratization now: It’s good for business
/by TBRData democratization is a hot topic now. Spokespeople from Google, SAP, Capgemini and other tech companies have spoken and written about how making data available to as many people as possible will both unleash the power of technology and prevent abuse of closely held data. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella sprinkles his talks and interviews with […]