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.

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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.

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?

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Atos expands reach in North America through the acquisition of Syntel

11.06.18/by Elitsa Bakalova, Senior Analyst

On Oct. 9, Atos completed the acquisition of Syntel, adding close to $1 billion in revenues, 89% of which were generated in North America in 2017, as well as over 23,000 employees. This month, TBR analysts will travel to Dallas to hear further details on Atos’ plans with Syntel and further assess what this will […]

Services weekly preview: Nov. 5-9, 2018

11.05.18/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Well into the third quarter of industry earnings and our periodic assessments of IT services vendors, TBR’s analysts this week will also share their semiannual analysis on vendors in the management consulting space Monday: In 3Q18 Infosys signed 12 large deals with a total contract value over $2 billion, but the company’s delivery framework remains fragile as Infosys […]

Voice assistant volume is increasing

10.31.18/by admin

A survey conducted by Adobe Analytics found that 32% of U.S. consumers owned a smart speaker in September 2018, compared to 28% in December 2017. The report also projected that near half of the U.S. consumer base could own one by the end of December 2018, supported by Adobe Analytics’ finding that nearly 80% of […]

Big Blue opens its arms, and its wallet, to Red Hat

10.30.18/by Allan Krans, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Red Hat’s projected growth is enough to justify the hefty purchase price On Oct. 28, IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) executives announced a proposed acquisition ― one that will be the industry’s third-largest acquisition should it gain approval. The deal, valued at $34 billion, would bring Red Hat into IBM’s hybrid cloud […]

Whether by R&D or acquisition, money can’t buy SaaS performance

10.26.18/by Allan Krans, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

The SaaS market appears to provide an easy opportunity for vendors to garner significant revenue and growth. SaaS is the largest segment of the cloud market — bigger than the IaaS space, which draws so much attention due to leaders Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. The SaaS market is also much more fragmented, littered […]

Customer preferences are forming around hybrid and shifting around open source as vendors focus on acquisitions

10.23.18/by Allan Krans, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Prebuilt devices are a ray of clarity amid the fogginess of hybrid Hybrid can be a difficult thing to define in cloud computing. The term “hybrid” is overused by vendors but underused by customers, causing general confusion over its definition as well as solid examples of hybrid solutions. An area of the market that cuts […]

ICO as a ‘medicine show’: EY finds abysmal performance in wild west of initial coin offerings

10.19.18/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Last December, EY Global Blockchain Leader Paul Brody recognized the breakout market for initial coin offerings (ICOs) and launched a longitudinal study, centered on class of 2017 companies that is fueled by this new way of raising money for software startups. One year later, as detailed in EY’s report published today, market valuations for the […]

Four by four by four equals four

10.10.18/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Four straight weeks of traveling for work, to four different cities to meet with four different clients, brought out four thoughts about where the IT services and consulting markets stand as we move into the autumn rush of 2018. First, the next few years will finally bring the shift in the consulting model that we’ve […]

Postcards from the edge: Complexity is here — wish it were not

09.27.18/by admin

“Analog dollars to digital pennies” is a phrase used to discuss the continued compression on technology price points as Moore’s Law economics, coupled with continued IP abstraction, creates economic trigger events aimed squarely at legacy business model best practices. Recently, I attended analyst events in New York City — one sponsored by Lenovo and one […]

As the 2018 finish line nears, will McKinsey continue its breakaway or slip back into the peloton?

09.26.18/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Every six months, we review McKinsey’s performance, analyze its strategy and consider likely scenarios for the firm in the near term Back in June, we said, “If McKinsey truly gains market permission to take digital transformation from design through execution, its peers will be pressured to emulate the firm.” In advance of the November profile, […]

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