TBR’s Business Insights

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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Amdocs Is Well Positioned to Continue Absorbing Market Share in the Telecom Industry; AI Is a Key Growth Vector

09.24.25

Although TBR believes it is very early days for agentic AI branding, Amdocs’ early foray into this emerging area and thought leadership underscore how the company is seeking to move into new and adjacent areas as it expands its offerings, especially around consulting, design and transformation enablement.

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HCLTech’s Expanding KYC Journey: From Technology Provider to Trusted Compliance Partner

09.11.25

By evolving its KYC offerings across platforms and clients, HCLTech has shifted from tech implementer to outcomes-driven partner.

DOGE drives civil sector slowdown; defense contractors gear up as Trump’s budget shifts billions to military priorities

08.04.25

The Trump administration’s recent “skinny” budget proposal for FFY26 suggests that nondefense spending will fall from around $720 billion in FFY25 to approximately $557 billion in FFY26, representing a 23% decline. Contractors with any level of exposure to the civilian sector can expect agency reorganizations, layoffs, budget reductions and in-depth contract reviews within civil agencies for the remainder of FFY25 and likely into at least the first half of FFY26. The pace of new awards has already slowed significantly at some civilian agencies, as has the rate of new bookings on existing civilian engagements.

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Geopolitics with Purpose: EY-Parthenon Drives Strategy, Not Just Awareness

07.17.25

TBR has long maintained that the Big Four firms have an inherent advantage against all competitors when it comes to understanding and advising on geopolitical risk. Perhaps only the U.S. government has the same global spread of talent, with professionals in nearly every country, most intimately aware of local business, economic and even political trends. When EY-Parthenon showed off its Geopolitical Advisory team recently, TBR wanted to know: Is this something special?

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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, […]

When your car becomes your smartphone, who handles your cybersecurity risk?

12.04.18/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

In discussing EY’s recently released Global Information Security Survey with the firm’s Americas Cybersecurity leaders, TBR heard a compelling case for an industry-led approach to anticipating the future of cybersecurity and overall risk. The EY leaders noted the firm echoes its overall industry-led go-to-market approach in cybersecurity, adding that understanding security gaps to be addressed […]

What’s going on in Texas with Atos?

12.04.18/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

TBR’s Patrick Heffernan and Boz Hristov share highlights from a November 2018 visit to Texas to hear directly from Atos and Syntel executives on their strategies and expectations for 2019. Boz brings up Atos’ competitors and how the acquisition of Syntel could change the competitive landscape. Patrick discusses what scale will mean for Atos and […]

Services Weekly Preview: December 3-7

12.03.18/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

As we wrap up the quarter, just a few key items are left including the four reports listed below, the Management Consulting Benchmark and predictions for 2019. Here’s what’s coming this week: Thursday: Our semiannual deep dive on DXC Technology’s healthcare IT services (HITS) practice includes our assessment that DXC’s long-awaited return to HITS growth […]

AWS shakes up the private cloud infrastructure market with Outposts

12.01.18/by admin

Outposts enable AWS to meet clients’ demand for private cloud Amazon Web Services (AWS) unveiled at re:Invent in Las Vegas its new Outposts on-premises cloud infrastructure, which will enable AWS to become the sole cloud infrastructure provider for its clients. The underlying Outposts infrastructure closely resembles AWS’ public cloud data center infrastructure. Since the infrastructure […]

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