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AI Agents: What Are They, and How Will They Impact the AI PC Space in 2025?
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.
AI Buzz Sparks IT Infrastructure Shifts, but Privacy and Strategic Challenges Are Impacting Adoption
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.
GenAI, IT Modernization and Strategic M&A Drive Infrastructure as a Service and Platform as a Service Growth
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.
Harnessing AI and Automation in Business Process Outsourcing to Drive Growth Amid Shifting Buyer Priorities
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.
Emerging Consultancy Trends: Talent Management and Innovation in the Spotlight
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.
Federal IT Spending Will Remain Robust in FFY25 Amid AI Prioritization
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.
Meet MAMAA: The Top 5 Hyperscalers Shaping the Future of Digital Ecosystems
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.
Growing Infrastructure as a Service Commitments and Competitive Dynamics
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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Challenges Facing Telecom Infrastructure Services Vendors
/by adminWhile the specific challenges differ by vendor, geography and/or TIS service line, TBR consistently hears about four major pain points that are broadly impacting most providers of telecom infrastructure services: wage and benefits inflation, worker and subcontractor shortages, navigating government incentives and stimulus, and ability to differentiate.
Where to Start with an Alliance Partnership
/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal AnalystAlliance partner prospecting will start with requests from the stakeholders for more information about a specific vendor — a request, basically to understand, Who are those guys?
Technology Alliances Are Evolving
/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal AnalystTBR has been evaluating the changing nature of technology alliances through its subscription and commissioned research for decades. A series of best practices have emerged, most often developed by young technology companies, while the commercial impediments seem more acute for legacy vendors with their employees’ resistance to change. The balance of this document will discuss the successful approaches vendors have shared with TBR, and what end customers and small technology companies have shared with us as the anachronisms associated with legacy partner program structures.
Assessing Vendor Partnerships
/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal AnalystTBR interviews with leaders of small SaaS vendors have shown a consistent blueprint for successful engagement with big vendors that consists of three major elements: Are you a strategic fit with the large vendor? How do you approach the large vendor for top-down attention within the firm? And how do you initially engage the large organization for positive, bottom-up, word-of-mouth marketing inside the large vendor?
Build a Successful GSI Alliance Program in 5 Steps
/by adminTBR views the path to a successful GSI alliance program as a five-step process, with many small steps, tasks and requirements associated with each step. Technology vendors may be anywhere in this journey, depending on the maturity of their GSI alliance program, if they have one. It should be noted that this is our perspective, based on the support we have given companies along this journey with our research and advisory services. We have drawn elements of this framework from ASAP’s Alliance Life Cycle framework to make it specific to ISV-GSI partnerships.
PwC India Update: Sustained Outcomes and Trust
/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal AnalystIn early March, TBR met with Arnab Basu, PwC India’s Consulting Leader to discuss developments in India and how the firm’s presence and activities have changed in recent years. The following reflects that conversation, as well as TBR’s ongoing research around PwC, the other Big Four firms, and the broader management consulting and IT services market.
Analytics, AI and digital transformation reach tipping point in acceleration
/by TBRDiscover the two main forces shaping TBR’s outlook for the digital transformation market and how they can help you capture analytics and insights opportunities while reducing and managing expenses
Top 5 Questions To Ask When Creating Market And Competitive KIQs
/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal AnalystDeveloping and deploying KIQs requires creativity and precision, mixed with experience, so we wanted to share five tips we’re learned from over 20 years in this business
Ensuring Competitive & Market Intelligence Models Suit Your Needs
/by adminThere’s no one playbook or set of “hacks” that can help you build models that are actionable for addressing your business challenges. For that, only collaboration and iteration (read: hard work) will do. However, there are a number of key success factors that we believe can help ensure that a CI/MI.
The Top Metrics You Should Be Modeling In Competitive/Market Intelligence (CI/MI)
/by adminTBR dives into the top categories of metrics and specific metrics that we typically see as part of a foundational CI/MI modeling program