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

Ogichobanov, Getty Images via Canva Pro

Telecom Infrastructure Services Operating Margin Climbs as Shift to Maintenance Services Offsets U.S. Market Decline

10.16.24/by Michael Soper, Senior Analyst

Automation, analytics, AI and machine learning will prove critical to helping vendors improve margins. Examples include portions of Nokia’s AVA (Analytics, Virtualization and Automation) portfolio and Ericsson’s Operations Engine. However, with a significant portion of revenue coming from deployment services, RAN-centric vendors will be unable to expand overall telecom infrastructure services margins significantly.

How IT Services Companies Are Preparing to Capture Surge of Local Opportunities in India

10.11.24/by Jill Cookinham

A look at how global companies in the IT and communications sectors are shifting focus from outsourcing to tapping into India’s domestic market due to its rapid growth

GenAI Use Cases: Where Enterprises Are Investing Now and What’s Next for Multimodal AI

10.07.24/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Generative AI (GenAI) clients are looking for offerings that complement existing technologies and use cases built around customer zero and that deliver fast ROI. In this blog, we highlight some of the GenAI use cases currently seen in the professional and IT services, cloud, IT infrastructure, and telecom industries.

Kohlerphoto, Getty Images Signature via Canva Pro

What to Expect: Cloud Provider Market Share Through 2027

10.04.24/by Catie Merrill, Senior Analyst

TBR expects to see incremental strengthening of the professional services capabilities of hyperscalers as well as traditional software players; however, professional services companies, along with India-centric players, have demonstrated their ability to scale vast talent benches to serve clients and act as go-to partners for the biggest cloud vendors.

Umnat Seebuaphan, Canva Pro

Digital Transformation Examples: How Vendors Are Adapting to GenAI and Market Shifts

10.02.24/by Bozhidar Hristov, Principal Analyst

As the most mature digital transformation component, customer experience (CX) has compelled buyers to embark on omnichannel projects to unify insights and processes across the customer life cycle for years now. Vendors have plenty of use cases to rely on, but slower discretionary spend is pressure-testing vendors’ value propositions rooted in trusted algorithms.

TBR Fourcast - IT services vendor strategies and performance comparison

Liulolo, Getty Images via Canva Pro

IT Service Vendors Shift Focus to Operational Efficiency and GenAI Investments Amid Economic Uncertainty

09.30.24/by Jill Cookinham

In this quarter’s Fourcast we compare the performance, strategies and industry standing of Accenture, Deloitte, IBM Consulting and Infosys, including a look at Accenture’s extensive investment in GenAI and IBM Consulting’s and Infosys’ risk of falling into a downward trajectory

Airdone, Getty Images via Canva Pro

How India-centric IT Services Vendors Are Navigating Economic Pressures in 2024

09.25.24/by Kelly Lesiczka, Senior Analyst

In late 2023 and thus far in 2024, the companies within TBR’s IT Services coverage faced pressures within their respective financial services practices, experiencing industry declines from a revenue perspective as higher interest rates limited opportunities and hindered growth trajectories. The India-centric vendors TBR covers — Cognizant, HCLTech, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Wipro IT Services (ITS) — experienced these financial services revenue declines, despite their efforts to embed automation, AI and efficiency-driven services

Just_Super, Getty Images via Canva Pro

Edge Computing’s Role in Tackling Latency, Privacy and Resiliency Challenges

09.09.24/by Catie Merrill, Senior Analyst

Cloud adoption is on the rise, but for many customers, particularly those deploying workloads across multiple clouds, latency, data flow, privacy and overall business resiliency remain core challenges. Edge computing is an emerging segment in IT, giving customers a way to supplement their cloud and IT core investments by processing data locally for minimum latency and backing it up to an adjacent environment for use cases like analytics and application development.

Annatodica, Getty Images via Canva Pro

How Agility and Governance Are Key to Thriving in the Evolving Partner Ecosystem

09.08.24/by Bozhidar Hristov, Principal Analyst

Mature alliance partnerships have enabled vendors across the spectrum to collaborate as they realize the value of the ecosystem. Cultural, portfolio and leadership DNA have shaped vendors’ behavior when it comes to go-to-market efforts and partner strategies, which is not surprising given that vendors often lean on what they do best when pursuing opportunities.

Daniel Tadevosyan, Getty Images via Canva Pro

Accenture Partners: Niche Providers Add Depth to Drive Long-Term Opportunities

09.05.24/by Bozhidar Hristov, Principal Analyst

As Accenture’s revenue continues to grow, so does the share of revenue from its top 10 partners, reducing the share of sales from the rest of its alliance partners. With Accenture’s top 10 alliance partners helping to generate close to 50% of the company’s total sales, it remains to be seen whether Accenture will be able to retain its other partner relationships in the long term.

Free Data & Analysis

Subscribe to Insights Flight today!