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Jill Cookinham2026-04-21 09:21:582026-04-21 15:15:36Who Will Win the AI Services Race in the Next Wave of AI?You are here: Home1 / Competitive Insights – Analyst Perspectives – TBR2 / Competitive Insights and Analyses Blog
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Jill Cookinham2026-04-21 09:21:582026-04-21 15:15:36Who Will Win the AI Services Race in the Next Wave of AI?
Anthropic, OpenAI and Palantir: Who Gains and Who Loses in the Federal Fallout
Insights into how important the recent developments between Anthropic, OpenAI and Palantir are considering the implications for the largest agency (DOD), within the single largest buyer of IT in the world (U.S. Federal Government), relating to the single largest technology priority (AI).
Technology Business Research, Inc.Salesforce Highlights Strengths in Innovation and Relationships at Agentforce World Tour
With the recent hype around the “death of SaaS” and other pressures on the business models of technology companies, Salesforce’s growing presence, success, and apparent disruption of competitors and alliance partners alike underscore Salesforce’s strengths in creating stickier client relationships and continually innovating, two qualities essential in the agentic AI age.
Pexels, Canva ProFederal IT Spending Trends: Why Growth Is Contracting and Where It Is Shifting
The Trump administration has proposed a double-digit increase in defense spending, which will flow through to IT budgets in the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community, particularly in areas of national security, which will receive top priority. Federal IT acquisition is also slowly pivoting to embrace outcome-based contracting, while the DOD looks to accelerate IT purchasing by adopting new and innovative IT procurement approaches.
Katherinasim, Canva ProGovernance Becomes a Prerequisite for Success with AI
Governance was a recurring theme across content sessions and executive meetings at Mobile World Congress 2026. As telecom operators move from experimentation to operational in AI, creating a corporatewide, centralized framework for data management, model oversight and regulatory compliance is becoming essential. Without clear governance, AI initiatives often remain fragmented across business units, leading to inconsistent outcomes, duplicated efforts and limited enterprise impact.
Getty Images via Canva ProNew Growth in Consulting Is Emerging from an Unexpected Place: Managed Services
A scaled managed services practice trained in spotting consulting opportunities and armed with AI-enabled solutions will unquestionably win some management consulting market share. More significantly, from TBR’s objective view, is whether the Big Four firms can manage their staffing, brand promise and technology alliances to take advantage of the managed services practices they’ve already built and use those opportunities to return to robust management consulting growth. Maybe, but probably not all four. The next two years will be telling, and TBR expects the existing differences between the Big Four will become even more pronounced.

Skills Shortage Will Challenge the Scaling of Sovereign AI in 2026
AI-related skills will remain scarce across both buyers and ecosystem partners as the rapid pace of innovation and the technical complexity required to enable sovereign AI continue to hinder adoption. These challenges, combined with a lack of clearly defined and compliant use cases among sovereign customers, gaps in sovereign cloud infrastructure availability and steep AI learning curve faced by ecosystem partners, will constrain meaningful investment and implementation of sovereign AI throughout 2026.

PaaS Revenue Will Outpace SaaS Revenue for Cloud Software Vendors
Enterprise customers are prioritizing the modernization of their existing SaaS estates rather than adding new applications, driven by market saturation, accumulated technical debt, and a growing imperative to become AI-ready. As IT buyers shift their focus toward modern platforms, traditional SaaS leaders should expect their PaaS segments to continue significantly outperforming their core SaaS businesses in revenue growth.
Dee Angela, Canva ProAlliances Will Extend Beyond Core Offerings as AI-driven Sales and Marketing Reshape Ecosystems
IT services companies have their limits, and clients have preferred technology vendors, leading IT services companies to look to alliances to drive new growth. We have seen this pattern before, but in 2026 we will see IT services companies extend those alliances into devices, connectivity and even silicon, requiring a multiparty alliance approach that will strain commercial models, sales strategies and alliance leaders across the ecosystem.
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DOGE Federal IT Vendor Impact Series: Accenture Federal Services
/by John Caucis, Senior AnalystThe 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
/by John Caucis, Senior AnalystTBR 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
/by Catie Merrill, Senior AnalystWith 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
/by Catie Merrill, Senior AnalystThough 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
/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal AnalystPwC 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
/by Michael Soper, Senior AnalystThe 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
/by TBRExplore 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.
Saudi Arabia’s Message to Global Firms: Deliver Real Value or Step Aside
/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal AnalystBottom line upfront: Understand that this is a Saudi story, not a PwC story, although undoubtedly it doesn’t feel that way in PwC’s corridors right now. Saudi Arabia has an opportunity to send some critical messages to players in the country, in the region and globally, and the kingdom is taking advantage.
SaaS Vendors Bet on AI Agents to Unlock New Revenue Streams
/by Alex Demeule, Senior AnalystFor SaaS vendors, the long-term opportunity lies in the ability to upsell GenAI solutions integrated directly into their existing workflows. While all major SaaS providers have made such solutions generally available, revenue from GenAI tools has not been enough to offset the slowing top-line growth many vendors are experiencing. Issues like cost, reliability, data governance and use-case validation remain obstacles to broader adoption, preventing the technology from becoming the growth driver vendors had hoped. Nevertheless, enterprise SaaS vendors continue to hold an optimistic long-term outlook, with many believing the technology will become a strategic necessary.
Who Is the Market Leader in IT Services?
/by Elitsa Bakalova, Senior AnalystEight of the top 10 IT services revenue leaders in TBR’s IT Services Vendor Benchmark reported accelerated positive trailing 12-month (TTM) revenue growth year-to-year in U.S. dollars (USD) during 3Q25, indicating vendors are capturing pockets of growth opportunities despite lingering growth challenges caused by macroeconomic uncertainty, tight discretionary spending, and constrained spending in the U.S. federal sector.