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5 Key Questions on Big Four Evolution and Strategy
The Big Four professional services firms — Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC — have all been undergoing organizational changes in the last couple years. TBR regularly hears five questions about how these firms manage themselves, grow and change. Taking a longitudinal view allows TBR to see that recent restructurings, layoffs and offerings all reflect how these firms are trying to address the following: who gets the best talent, who decides what’s next, who sells, how everyone in a firm knows what everyone else does, and what role will managed services play.

DOGE Federal IT Vendor Impact Series: Accenture Federal Services
The full impact of the 10 canceled task orders on Accenture Federal Services (AFS) remains unclear, but TBR’s secondary research indicates the terminated work has a total contract value of nearly $93 million, including a $35 million order from DOE’s CIO office and a $2 million order for geospatial services. If we assume all $93 million worth of orders was booked by AFS as the prime awardee, that sum would represent just under 2% of AFS’ estimated FY24 revenue of $5.4 billion.

DOGE Federal IT Vendor Impact Series: SAIC
TBR was surprised by SAIC’s FY26 (CY25) outlook, which was consistent with CEO Toni Townes-Whitley’s comment during the company’s 4Q24 earnings call that SAIC’s “current revenue with agencies under particular scrutiny by DOGE is immaterial.” In fact, SAIC elevated several elements of its FY26 guidance in 4Q24.

Google Recognizes Critical Role of Security, and Its Standing in the Cloud Market, in Acquisition of Wiz
With the business environment changing and cybersecurity perhaps more relevant than ever, Google saw an opportunity to repursue the Wiz acquisition, and a $32 billion offer, marking a major uptick in valuation, was simply too good for Wiz to ignore. Should the deal close in 2026 as expected, Wiz — with roughly 1,800 employees and ties to half the Fortune 500 — will join the Google Cloud division, offering synergies with Mandiant, an added layer of protection for the Google Security Operations platform, and the potential to help Google Cloud formalize cybersecurity as an agentic AI use case.

Hardware-centric Vendors Continue to Make Their Move Into Software
Though revenue mixes are increasingly shifting in favor of software, driven in part by acquisitions (e.g., Cisco’s purchase of Splunk), hardware continues to dominate the market, accounting for 80% of benchmarked vendor revenue in 3Q24. Industry-standard servers being sold to cloud and GPU “as a Service” providers are overwhelmingly fueling market growth, more than offsetting unfavorable cyclical demand weakness in the storage and networking markets.

PwC Middle East Experts Weigh In on Economic Trends and Transaction Activity
PwC Middle East’s webcast provides excellent monthly insights into the region’s economies, but it is not the only active Big Four firm. As TBR reported in our Fall 2024 Management Consulting Benchmark, KPMG “announced the opening of Risk Hub in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in collaboration with Microsoft and IBM, paving the way for more in-person, tech-enabled GRC [governance, risk and compliance] discussions with regional clients embarking on their digital transformation programs.” TBR also learned in February that KPMG intends to open a new Ignition Center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in 2025, building on the firm’s global network of innovation and transformation centers.

Deployment Services in Telecom Face Post-5G Slowdown, Shifting Market Dynamics and Growth in Fiber Expansion
The deployment services market faces growing headwinds, including communication service provider (CSP) consolidation, open vRAN’s lower installation costs, and reduced demand for site location and construction (SL&C), offset somewhat by hyperscaler spend and 5G rollouts in select developing markets. Hyperscaler investments provide incremental volume to the market, and TBR notes these companies are increasing their investments in access technologies (e.g., Google Fiber).

TBR Case Study: Price Benchmarking
Explore this competitive pricing example from TBR's Tailored Services team, which helped this global Top 3 hardware OEM capitalize on their investment in pricing research.
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Samsung heads in the right direction
/by TBRSamsung introduced its new Galaxy Note 9 smartphone and two other products at a big event, Samsung Unpacked 2018, at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Aug. 9. The Galaxy Note 9 is a beautiful thing. It is better than last year’s model in many ways, and it has new features, including a remote control […]
Is ‘cloud repatriation’ real?
/by Angela Lambert, Principal Analyst and Practice ManagerCloud 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
/by adminYes, 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
/by adminReports 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
/by Allan Krans, Practice Manager and Principal AnalystAlthough 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
/by TBRGoogle’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
/by TBROne 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
/by TBRGeneral 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
/by Allan Krans, Practice Manager and Principal AnalystGoing 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
/by adminDespite 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 […]