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.

Getty Images via Canva Pro

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.

Getty Images via Canva Pro

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.

Getty Images via Canva Pro

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?

Previous Next

Our most-read analysis, free in your inbox each week!

Fill out the form to the right to subscribe to Insights Flight today

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 […]

Digital and Compaq: A cautionary tale for IBM and Red Hat

11.30.18/by admin

Big mergers bring big risks: Compaq and Digital Equipment Corporation, a tragicomedy Compaq proved in the early 1980s you could buy non-IBM hardware and not get fired in the process by creating a portable PC that could be lugged around by weightlifters. Ultimately, Compaq struggled trying to move up the stack into the peer-to-peer networking […]

Cognizant’s 3 new acquisitions enhance digital and global reach

11.28.18/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Cognizant has made seven acquisitions since the beginning of 2017, adding between 2,200 and 2,300 employees and over $500 million in acquired revenue (by TBR estimates). The company’s acquisition spree continued in recent months with three additional purchases. In August Cognizant bought SaaSfocus, a Salesforce consultancy based in Noida, India, with operations in Delhi and […]

Services Weekly Preview: November 26-30, 2018

11.26.18/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

In this magical time between Thanksgiving and Christmas, despite racing to get as much analysis and as many predictions published before the new year, we’re able to enjoy a slight pause in the usual news cycle and company activity to reflect on 2018 and predict what will be coming in 2019. In two upcoming webinars, […]

Services Weekly Preview: November 19-21

11.19.18/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Before we celebrate Thanksgiving on Thursday and recover from all that food on Friday, we will publish some of our periodic analysis of IT services vendors, management consulting profiles, and special reports. Here’s what’s coming: Monday: TBR’s 3Q18 Booz Allen Hamilton full report will provide analysis on one of the federal market’s most forward-thinking and risk-taking […]

Services Weekly Preview: Nov. 11-16, 2018

11.12.18/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

As we build toward the middle of the quarter, we’re wrapping up our periodic assessments of IT services vendors. Like last week, we also have some semiannual analysis on vendors in the management consulting space. Monday: KPMG’s risk-averse culture pressured its performance, causing the firm to drop a spot in terms of revenue size among […]

Cloud repatriation follow-up: Do you really know the value proposition of cloud?

11.07.18/by Angela Lambert, Principal Analyst and Practice Manager

A few weeks ago, I blogged my thoughts about cloud repatriation and how it feels like an over-emphasized trend. In my professional analysis amid researching various reports and interacting with data center vendors, one of the key pieces of the cloud repatriation narrative is that customers will move to cloud without a full picture of […]

Free Data & Analysis

Subscribe to Insights Flight today!