TBR’s Business Insights

What Spectrum Will 6G Use?

01.13.25

The telecom industry continues to struggle with realizing new revenue and deriving ROI from 5G, even after five years of market development. TBR continues to see no solution to this persistent challenge, and with no catalyst on the horizon to change the situation, CSPs’ appetite for and scope of investment in 6G will likely be limited.

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AI Agents: What Are They, and How Will They Impact the AI PC Space in 2025?

01.09.25

Over the past several quarters, OEMs have focused on incorporating local AI-powered features into their new PC releases, with initial neural processing unit (NPU)-enabled use cases leveraging AI to further enhance collaboration experiences and extend battery life. However, AI agents take the NPU’s functionality a step further, combining the capabilities of large language models (LLMs) with other resources to partially or fully automate a wide range of tasks, including responding to emails, booking hotel stays, or opening and closing IT help desk tickets.

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AI Buzz Sparks IT Infrastructure Shifts, but Privacy and Strategic Challenges Are Impacting Adoption

12.20.24

The industry enthusiasm surrounding AI has quickly led to shifts in organizations’ strategic priorities and expected investments such as demand for servers. Despite the hype, few organizations have operationalized GenAI to date. Instead, most are focused on overcoming initial barriers to adoption, including understanding the business implications of this new technology frontier.

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GenAI, IT Modernization and Strategic M&A Drive Infrastructure as a Service and Platform as a Service Growth

12.19.24

Top hyperscalers Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft are capturing legacy Oracle and SAP workloads as customers continue to migrate to the cloud to not only outsource their IT operations but also drive lasting business value. Though the geopolitical outlook is increasingly uncertain, we expect customers will continue to prioritize more traditional “lift and shift” migrations, and steps vendors are taking to deliver more integrated solutions could help.

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Harnessing AI and Automation in Business Process Outsourcing to Drive Growth Amid Shifting Buyer Priorities

12.13.24

Vendors’ business process outsourcing (BPO) businesses continue to benefit from the ongoing shift in buyer priorities from innovation and growth toward business resiliency and optimization. Buyers are investing in automating business processes to free up costs, providing pathways to growth for vendors with AI-powered and platform-based offerings.

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Emerging Consultancy Trends: Talent Management and Innovation in the Spotlight

12.12.24

Technology continues to threaten the nature of consulting engagements, requiring consultancies to showcase value and deliver on outcomes. Greater investment in talent frameworks, structure and skill will equip staff to lead client discussions and effectively leverage technology to assist workflows. Partnerships remain a core piece of the technology integration, bringing in new expertise and go-to-market opportunities that enable consultancies to meet a wider variety of client needs. Client retention remains a priority across consultancies but will require the firms to effectively deliver value through services.

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Federal IT Spending Will Remain Robust in FFY25 Amid AI Prioritization

12.06.24

Since coming into office, the Biden administration has fueled an unprecedented federal IT bull market. While the White House’s proposed federal civilian technology budget of $75.1 billion for federal fiscal year 2025 (FFY25) is the smallest increase in several years (up less than 1% compared to $74.5 billion in FFY24), it is still an increase of more than 14% from $65.8 billion in FFY23, and up 25% from $60.1 billion in FFY21, the last year of the prior administration. FFY25 has started with a continuing resolution (CR), as have most of the last several fiscal year. The impact of the latest CR on the largest federal systems integrators may be limited to shorter-cycle programs in their order books, but some disruptions to larger, longer-term engagements are not out of the question.

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Meet MAMAA: The Top 5 Hyperscalers Shaping the Future of Digital Ecosystems

11.20.24

TBR research shows only the Tier 1 hyperscalers can transcend most, if not all, of the major lifestyle categories to provide a seamless end-to-end ecosystem experience, touching all aspects of people’s lives, primarily due to their scale and access to resources.

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Growing Infrastructure as a Service Commitments and Competitive Dynamics

11.19.24

Market leaders Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft have highlighted that customers are signing larger cloud contracts with longer terms. At least in the case of AWS, customers are increasingly applying their cloud credits toward one- or three-year subscription offerings like Savings Plans and Reserved Instances.

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Enterprise Storage Remains a Highly Competitive Space in 2023

09.08.23/by Angela Lambert, Principal Analyst and Practice Manager

Disruptive vendors are adding pressure to incumbents with targeted strategies to push into enterprise storage accounts

Telecom Industry Navigated Weakening Macro Backdrop Well in 1H23, but 2H23 and 2024 Will Likely be a More Challenging Situation

09.07.23/by Chris Antlitz, Principal Analyst

Despite holding up relatively well thus far in 2023, CSPs face significant challenges in managing their debt — the pressure is on to grow revenue and monetize their 5G investments

Human at the Center: EY Combines Data and Corporate Social Responsibility to Solve World Hunger

07.14.23/by Bozhidar Hristov, Principal Analyst

In June TBR attended an awards ceremony for the EY Open Science Data Challenge, which gave a glimpse into how well the firm mixes data and corporate social responsibility programs to solve society’s biggest problems, including world hunger.

How Are IT Infrastructure Vendors Helping Customers Navigate Uncertain Economic Conditions?

07.13.23/by TBR

Automation of management tasks has risen in priority as IT organizations seek to shift the balance from tactical to strategic actions while adapting to post-pandemic ways of working.

Exploring the Industrial Metaverse: A Glimpse into the Future

07.05.23/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Offering users an immersive, real-time experience, the industrial metaverse draws on existing cloud-to-edge technologies to simulate, optimize and simplify complex systems across industries, predominantly manufacturing.

Facilitating Simplicity: KnowledgeRiver’s Analytics Tool and Its Secret to IT Services

06.30.23/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

More technical minds can argue about simplicity for simplicity’s sake; I’m interested in the various approaches IT services vendors have been deploying to meet that growing client demand, and I’m constantly contrasting what I hear and see to a firm we spoke to late in 2022, KnowledgeRiver.

Conducting Competitive Intelligence Research – A How To

06.26.23/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Patrick M. Heffernan, Principal Analyst and Practice Manager, has strong opinions on what it takes to conduct useful competitive intelligence research, and in this blog, he dives into three steps for producing research that will support your business goals and help you win in your industry.

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