AI Delivery to Enterprise via Technology Alliances: Which Vendors Own Each Piece of the Transformation

TBR Principal Analyst Boz Hristov joins “TBR Talks” to share his insights into how global systems integrators and management consultancies are partnering with ISVs, hyperscalers, model makers and OEMs to deliver solutions to enterprise.

Additionally, Patrick talks through industry specialization, permission to play, data management and transformation orchestration within the rapidly evolving AI marketplace.

Episode highlights:

• Three paths companies are taking with their AI strategy

• Change management for AI

• How to partner the right way

Listen and learn with TBR Talks!

Submit your Key Intelligence Questions for Patrick and his guests

Connect with Patrick on LinkedIn

Connect with Boz on LinkedIn

Learn more about TBR at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://tbri.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠

TBR Talks is produced by Technology Business Research, Inc.

Edited by Haley Demers

Music by Burty Sounds via Pixabay

Art by Amanda Hamilton Sy

AI Delivery to Enterprise via Technology Alliances: Which Vendors Own Each Piece of the Transformation

TBR Talks Host Patrick Heffernan: Welcome to TBR Talks: Decoding Strategies and Ecosystems of the Globe’s Top Tech Firms, where we talk business model disruption in the broad technology ecosystem from management consultancies to systems integrators, hyperscalers to independent software vendors, telecom operators to network and infrastructure vendors, and chip manufacturers to value-added resellers. We’ll be answering some of the key intelligence questions we’ve heard from executives and business unit leaders among the leading professional IT services and telecom vendors. 

I’m Patrick Heffernan, Principal Analyst, and today we’ll be talking about artificial intelligence, the ecosystem, and professional services with Boz Hristov, Principal Analyst for TBR’s Digital Transformation Practice. 

Three paths companies are taking with their AI strategy

Boz, welcome back to season four of TBR Talks. I know, wow, it’s kind of crazy. I think you might be the most frequent guest on TBR Talks, we’ll have to go back and check the data on that. But a lot of that is because your work here at TBR spans across almost all practices because of the ecosystem research that you lead up, that is actually an outgrowth of the digital transformation research that you led. So that means that we have to have you on as often as we can, and so early on in season four, we wanted to talk about two things in particular. One is that ecosystem, and when we say ecosystem, we’re talking about the interplay, the relationships between IT services companies and consultancies, cloud vendors, software vendors, infrastructure vendors, OEMs, VARs, everybody. And that’s topic number one. And topic number two, because we can’t get away from it, is artificial intelligence, which just comes up all the time. 

And you know what, let’s start with, let’s start with artificial intelligence, because I was just in San Francisco a few weeks ago, and every single billboard on the highway, physical, hard copy billboard, was about AI, often agentic AI, but always AI. So I’m curious, it’s easy to sort of say there’s a bubble happening, and it’s easy to get caught up in some of the hype, but more importantly, because of the way we look at this and the way we come at it, thinking about companies first, what are some of the things that you’ve seen over the course of this year so far that are concrete, that are real, that are meaningful? And what do you think is coming in 2026?

Bozhidar Hristov, TBR Principal Analyst: Yeah, thank you for having me. Always good to be here and talk about what we see in the market and the companies we cover. AI, I mean, it’s definitely, I would say it’s a transition year, number one, so far what we’ve seen. Looking from 2022, kind of the hype, kind of everyone’s trying to understand where the investments are being placed and how it’s going to evolve. And there’s certainly a heightened expectation for ROI in 2026, but I’m sure we’re going to talk that about when 2026 comes around. What we’ve seen so far, it’s interesting just to think about the evolution of the AI market and the way GenAI started. And I would say fast forward, pivoted into the whole agentic AI notion, right? And what it means to the companies’ business models, we track how they interact with their alliance partners. So there certainly has been a lot more push around agentic and companies making a choice, either investing and building the pre-configured agents or staying in their swim lane and trying to be more into the agent orchestration game, agent management services game. And then the last group of vendors, which is often the consultancies, are trying to stay more in the upper echelon and trying to be little bit more of the business transformation discussion and trying to stay a little bit providing that wrapper for like the consulting led, the industry led. I mean, they all invest in some way, shape, or form in some certain capacities in their agentic AI capabilities, but largely more into the enhancing the consulting value proposition. So three camps of vendors, again, more on the business side, agent development side, investment side, and then the agent orchestration side, which I think is probably not surprising given the convergence of how the market has evolved and how some of the more bold companies, meaning they’re trying to test new operating models and new commercial models, are trying to go, especially in the agent development side. So that’s kind of, this is the big trend. 

So those agents, as it pertains to the development, let’s start with those. We’ve seen a lot more focus on agents that have industry flavor. We start first with the horizontal and functional specific agents, which is still the case like supply chain and customer experience and sales automation, we’re starting to see that industry specialization. We know often IT services companies talk about industry knowledge, industry specialization as a way to differentiate, which will be very interesting. Now it’s going to be really tested because agents essentially are very similar, because that’s the whole idea behind the AI’s leveling the knowledge field. So now the vendors that really have a deep industry knowledge and specialization will really have to come up and show and demonstrate that either by themselves or partner with specialized partners, could be in healthcare, financial services, telecom, you name it, right, specific vendors that play in that space. 

The agent orchestration side is kind of a continuation, I would say, in a way of how some of the IT services vendors and consultancies have tried to position themselves as ecosystem orchestrators, essentially, multiple technologies, trying to understand who is best positioned to serve a particular client need and how the role of and how the framework around multi-party alliances is starting to play. Now we’re talking about multi-agent setup, the different agent stacks that needs to be connected, certain protocols such as MCP and others that are coming up in the market that are being deployed. So what this goal boils down to is those vendors that are trying to position themselves as more of agent orchestrators is how well and how much permission they have access to of the data and the relationship with the line of business buyers as well as kind of the C-suite buyers that are often in charge of managing that client data because your agent is as good as your data access. So, getting that access and ensuring that data access is not just within the line of business, but it’s cross enterprise wide, it will be so critical. And obviously the last piece is the business transformation side, as I mentioned more on the consulting side.

Are industry specific agents a fad?

Patrick: Yeah, so I want to back up to the industry stuff, because the industry specialization and industry flavored or industry specific agents. So, we’ve been down this road before. Industry cloud was a thing, and then it wasn’t anymore. So, is anything different this time where agents are going to be different than a fad like industry cloud was?

Boz: I think the labeling of the agents is part of the fad part, personally. But I think it gets boiled down to how vendors are positioning them and how they are looking to charge for the capabilities that the industry agents are going to be addressing certain needs, essentially, right? So, it’s not just labeling an agent for agents’ sake being a financial services agent, what’s your value proposition? How do you ensure that, you know- is it the domain? So that domain knowledge, context engineering is becoming kind of the new “SKU” that’s the evolution from prompt engineering, right? 

Patrick: Right.

Boz: That’s the next wave of context engineering that we’re starting to see and hear how- and essentially what it is, in my view, is IT services companies enhancing their consultants’ value proposition being trained on the technology and the translation layer, so that- 

Patrick: Right.

Boz: Think of it that way, the industry specialization in 2026 will be equal or greater, you know, or will be more enhanced by, or kinda like the- I don’t even formalize the formula in my own head, but it’s essentially it’s the context engineering, so that the new industry consultants- 

Patrick: Right.

Boz: That’s the new way of thinking about it, so that’s where I think it is. It’s about how fast, how well can you translate what the agent is doing, because typically the agents is saving you time, so now you have more time to present a greater insight.

The data access challenge

Patrick: Right, okay, so that’s something to keep an eye on for 2026, like the context engineering and industry. 

With respect to data orchestration and ecosystem orchestration, that again, we can look back 10 years and say there were IT services companies and consultancies that were positioning themselves as orchestration layers 10 years ago. And if you had said 10 years ago that the data access problem is still going to be unsolved in 2025, even with the advent of incredible technologies like ChatGPT and GenAI and all that, you’d look like a fool, and yet that’s exactly where we are right now. So why is the data access challenge so persistent for IT services companies and consultancies?

Boz: I think it’s a two-fold thing. One is change management. That’s from the buyer’s side, right? So, line of business, leadership, anyone who understands, you know, that they may see it as a threat, potentially a threat. Now, why am I sharing my data with my peers’ data and, kind of, what does that mean to me? Is it going to be a consolidation and how- humans don’t like to lose control, especially when they’re in charge, you know, that, you know, trying to, they’re in that position because they are good at managing processes, or people or otherwise. So that’s a change management, it’s a factor. The other piece is the, I think, over the years, and I think it’s kind of with the first one, is the inability for vendors to demonstrate the scalable ROI. And that’s a challenge because, you know, vendors can argue and say, well, we didn’t have the right data to show the ROI because the buyers didn’t share the right data with us and the right amount of data. So, I think it’s kind of like a chicken and the egg kind of a problem in this case. I think we’re going to probably see a new wave of data re-architecture and focus on the data orchestration and governance as we’re thinking about how everyone that is looking into the bigger landscape, what it all means and companies that are being on the buyer’s side that are a little bit more further ahead in their “digital transformation” I mean, they’ve used cloud for years and they’ve, kind of, have set up their right data architecture to take the opportunity from agentic. They are going to be the ones with the test beds. But that’s probably less than 10% of the market right now, I would say. So it’s still a long way to go for a lot of opportunities, which generates for the IT services companies to still do a lot of that foundational work around data and kind of the way the restructuring and getting the structured and un-structured data being in the right position, the different data pools and how feeds and stacks up and- which again presents new opportunities for new alliance ecosystem partnerships because there’s a new- they’re not so somewhat new, but they’re kind of like more of important players, I guess, in the space, from the Snowflake and Databricks of the world, but now you’re looking at like the different model developers, the OpenAI, and all these kind of like, model developers. So, they are to be, look up and see how do they play in that whole data stack orchestration as well, because they’re great to provide the POC to start the conversation, but are they preparing themselves to be the right partners. And do we see the likes of Accenture, Deloitte, or anybody in the IT services stack partnering the right way with those companies? Are they training their staff on Anthropic technology or OpenAI practices the way we saw with the advent of hyperscalers and then the ISV providers. So, I think that’s where we’re going to see the back and forth between the various parts of the ecosystem, the push and pull relationship, understanding like who is ready to invest and how the technology partners are seeing the services partners, services companies. Do they see them as an opportunity to open doors for them? Or they may be saying, you know what, we can do it all by ourselves, why do we need you? So, there’s that conversation that I think we’re going to start seeing in the next year or three years, just as the market evolves, as those model companies become a little bit more important players. Not that they’re not important right now, but they’ll definitely need to be paid more attention to as we move forward.

Patrick: So, I want to get back to partnering the right way, because I think that’s both something we need to dive deep into, and it’s a perfect segue into the ecosystem discussion. 

Change management for AI

But before we leave this idea that you laid out sort of three different things. There’s the folks that are developing the agents, and there are the folks that are developing the ecosystem. And then at the top end of it, or at the other end of it, is the change management, the consulting part, the business reinvention, business model reinvention, all that stuff. When you look at those three, it seems to me that the change management piece may actually have the most sort of long-term revenue because those other two pieces are going to constantly be in flux. And so when you look at the companies that we cover, are there, I mean, not that you have to name names, but if you want to go right ahead, are there companies that you think stand out for their, both capabilities and their position with respect to providing change management specifically in a AI/agentic AI/GenAI age?

Boz: Yeah. I mean, obviously, you have the, if you go back to what we always preach is stay in your own swim lane, the usual suspects, the McKinsey’s, the BCG’s, the Bain’s of the world, they have deep roots in change management, right? So, you’d expect them to be as the natural kind of vendor to tap into and to explore that. But which puts a little bit more pressure on them, how well do they understand the agentic AI space? Because they know operations, they know change management, they know organization and change inside and out, and they have the relationship and proven use cases. But they also need to better understand the impact of agentic on the client’s business workflows and whatnot. So there’s a little bit of a, as much as a low-hanging fruit, it’s more of a test of their willingness to change themselves because they need to be able to demonstrate that knowledge, which means that they have to bring in people with certain skill sets in the mix so, it’s not just a consultant at the table, but a consultant plus maybe a context engineer that they may be sitting next to along the way. So that’s going to put some pressure on their business model as well as they try to tap into the opportunity. Others from the IT services spectrum, like the Accenture’s of the world and the Deloitte’s of the world, they’re very strong at HR management. We know Accenture has been investing in their learning services for some time now, which I think it’s in a way a door opener for some change management, kind of the Accenture way. *laughs* You know, maybe you have to take a couple of steps before you actually lead to that, but that’s just a way of doing business. 

I think another change management we may see is the idea of trying to drive a kind of back-to-front consulting, using operations and workaround managed services as driving consulting. Because in the change management there’ll be a different starting point there around work processes and workflows optimization, which when I say, you know, that’s more of a technology discussion, but I think that’s, you know, if you’re able to reverse engineer what the process is and try to think about how it actually impacts your skills in your organization, that’s where you can do that. So, we know that someone like Capgemini recently announced the acquisition of WNS, big splashy acquisition. We see it a little bit more of a test to see what Capgemini can actually do in a world where BPO is getting commoditized, knowing what we know about WNS, a business space, you know, but it’s certainly a space to keep an eye on, as we know the likes of Deloitte is looking a little closer to drive that kind of back-to-front consulting with driving and expanding to operate business overall. So, there’s certain aspects that are, you know, again different starting points and different tests when it comes to, you know, the companies that we usually track to see how well they can do change management and what does change management mean to them as a way how it fits into the bigger, broader play if they are going to be the agent orchestrator versus agent builder and is the goal being an agent managed service provider versus, you know, business transformation discussion.

Patrick: Right, and honestly, from everything you just said, if I had to guess, we’ve spent a lot of time in 2025 answering our clients’ questions about AI. And I think we’re going to spend a lot more time in 2026 answering client questions about managed services to consulting. Like converting that managed services space into consulting opportunities. Because it’s coming up again and again, and the companies that you mentioned are the ones that are sort of at the forefront of being able to tap into that. And they’re doing that themselves, and yet there are a lot of competitors that they have that we don’t need to mention, but everybody knows them, that have massive managed services contracts in place now that they need to either renew or find ways to leverage into consulting opportunities around change management around whatever else. 

Boz: Yup.

How to partner the right way

Patrick: So, excellent. Let’s pivot here to ecosystems. So, we talk about this a lot because we talk about ecosystems a lot. One of the things, I’m curious, in the last year of thinking about ecosystems and all the reports that you published, there’s gotta be a couple things that stand out for when you said companies that partner well or partner the right way. What exactly does that mean? Like what are the two or three things that partnering the right way actually comes down to?

Boz: Yeah, I think it’s a moving target, I would say, but there’s certain common, you know, attributes that we see and we do, as we’ve spoken in the past, you know, we do have the Voice of the Partner report, which the latest results came in September now, but so, it’s where we survey groups of vendors, OEM providers, cloud and software providers, and professional service providers, and we try to better understand what are they, the big question is what are they missing from their partners when we talk to OEM providers, how do they work with the other two groups and vice versa, right? So, I think we know some of the common practices still remain true today around knowledge management, it remains the foundation. It’s a big gap. Co-investments in terms of developing resources, trying to be, you know, skilling and upskilling and reskilling, portfolio development, co-innovation, that’s the part of it. And obviously there’s a lot of like that alignment, thinking about how, you know, leadership sees it because we often find there’s a disconnect between leadership alignment, but then also the field salespeople have a little bit of different priorities. So, aligning, you know, priorities from, you know, just the vision and go-to market, but also incentives and sales motions. 

And we said before, how well can your partners tell your story? Can they say it as good as you can? And we saw some of that changing in the last Voice of the Partner report, where we see some of the, like the OEMs, for example, were looking to, at least they are saying that they’re willing to be a little more agile, a little bit more open. We know historically that group of vendors as a whole has been kind of doing their own way where they do direct sales. Now they’re a little bit more open to the channel, a little bit more looking for support and willing to collaborate in even the multi-party alliances set up with the services providers and the cloud providers. Which I think a common denominator we identify obviously is the likes of NVIDIA that provides the great opportunity right now around AI, going back to the AI comments, but it seems like that’s kind of the common layer that everyone is gravitating towards. And it’s a good way to test how much those companies are really willing to be as flexible as they say they might be in the first place. 

But again, commercial models, I think is the next thing, because it’s about- as much as technology alignment is important, making sure you have the portfolio and the speeds and feeds. Again, if your commercial model is not aligned, this makes it much more challenging. I think AI and agentic AI will further test that commercial model alignment because we hear from the professional IT services companies often talk about outcome-based pricing. But then at the same time, we still hear from the technology partners, license-based or SKU-based sales, subscription-based sales. So, there’s a disconnect between that. So, It will be very hard for the technology partners to move into the outcome-based world, and we don’t think that even IT services companies will go full on outcome-based because clients are not willing to go full on. So, it’s like a domino effect. But I think there’s opportunities in certain industries and certain function areas that that could work. And so, we start hearing more about that consumption-based pricing as the common ground where everyone is maybe willing to compromise for the good of the partnership and for, kind of, creating winning scenarios for all parties.

Where the value for customers is

Patrick: Right. I want to get to customers, because I think everything you’ve just said is very much focused on the relationships between the companies that you’re talking about, the different kinds of companies you’re talking about, but it’s how they behave together, and I want to get to what does that mean for the customer. Well, one thing I think you said that’s really important is the difference in the views of pricing, outcomes-based pricing versus a subscription or some other model, for software. And that actually is reflective of the higher value or the more strategic metrics, which is around, and we heard this directly when we were on the road together in California back in the beginning of the summer, like a software company that is saying, hey, net new contract value is the only thing that matters to us. 

Boz: Yep.

Patrick: And an IT services company saying, it’s the relationship that’s the only thing that matters to us because the relationship means renewal or new opportunities for us. So, having those two things align and then below that is the pricing. I know we have Voice of the Customer coming up in December, we’ll be publishing in December. So, what from the customer’s perspective, because this will be like the fourth or fifth Voice of the Customer at this point, maybe even sixth or seventh. 

Boz: Yeah.

Patrick: It’s a lot. What value does the customer get from an aligned ecosystem of two or three or four, an IT services company, a cloud vendor, a software vendor, and an OEM, all coming together and working well together? What’s the value that a customer gets out of that? Or do they even care? I mean, that’s what it is.

Boz: Well, yeah, I was going to say, because here’s the thing. So, we know historically enterprise buyers don’t like vendor lock-in, right? That has been the thing, you know, it’s a risk management, essentially. That’s what it’s all about. about risk management. So, they have tried that model for years and they continue to do so. They still try to segregate vendors in categories, the way they know them, they work best and the way they see them fit the most. It could be on the consulting side, could be on the managed services side. That’s still the case for the most part right now. But for multi-party alliances structure, one area that we have when we talk to the buyers is, and there’s a recognition that is very challenging that that will happen at the company-wide level. It’s so much more risk to put OUX on one company versus-

Patrick: Sure.

Boz: But when you click down on the line of business level, I think this is where there’s an opportunity for better collaboration, because now you have fewer vendors that do things really well, and with AI and agentic AI, that’s the expectation is in that direction, because you need to do more with less, right, essentially. And so, we’ve seen that vendor consolidation and technology consolidation going on for the last several years now. And I think when you have three, four vendor in consortium going to market and say, we are tackling financial services, you know, supply chain, whatever the case might be, we are the top, you know, three, top five, premier, most use cases vendors, and they can tell each other’s story the best way. I think that’s where it provides that depth and we talked earlier about industry specialization, that’s another layer that can come in. So, vendors can- so buyers can actually get value that for the buyers potentially is really to get the most out of it. That ROI that everybody is talking about, they can now really measure it. Obviously, there’s going to be a greater need for transparency around pricing, accountability, who is overseeing that relationship and whatnot. So, I think that’s going to be behind the scenes, you know, think about what agents could do is essentially is to, hey, these are my agents versus your agents, right? So now you’re talking about whose agents are you orchestrating, how you’re doing all that stuff. But if you have the trust, if you have the permission to demonstrate that value, I think it’s a good opportunity for the buyers to really drive, elevate, you know, internal value within their own stakeholders within the company and shareholders externally as well, just by the nature of the structure. Because we know that all these line of business leaders and others, they have struggled with getting the most out of their investments from cloud and other technologies. 

Patrick: Right.

Boz: So now is the time for vendors to demonstrate that this is not just yet another technology in the cycle, but we actually can prove value. That’s kind of where, but again, it’s going to go down to change management. 

Patrick: Okay, yeah.

Boz: Circling right back to because line of business leaders then thinking about the procurement that gets involved, how do they handle, you know, whose contract the paper is on and who’s being held accountable? So, it is certainly being tested. We’re aware of use cases like that. Is it the norm yet? No, it’s not. But can it become? Yes, it can. And especially as the generational buyers are rotating as well.

Patrick: So next time we chat, we’re going to talk about Voice of the Customer. But if we chat before December, we’re going to talk about change management as a service for startups in the AI space. We’re going to talk about pricing. And we’re going to talk about too much technology and technology burnout. Those are going to be our three topics next time. 

Final thoughts

I have a last question for you, because I know you did a lot of traveling this year, 2025. So, not counting what’s coming up and your anticipation of events to come, what was the best work trip from the best event from 2025? Totally unfair question, but I have to answer that.

Boz: No, it’s not fair at all. Well, I mean, it’s, I gotta say, I mean, probably definitely one of the highlights, you know, of the year, my trip to Japan with PwC.

Patrick: Oh yeah.

Boz: Certainly very much, you know, appreciate it, the time spent with the company, seeing things from a completely different culture perspective being brought up, more change management, how things have been applied internally and externally. So, obviously appreciate the food there in Japan, so that’s always an important factor traveling, so very much liked that. The trip to California with Fujitsu, I know- we know it was great. I think it was a really well-structured event as well. In terms of content, I gotta say I give kudos to the analyst relations team there, just being very receptive to the feedback that we and others have shared with them, and applying that feedback throughout the two-day event we spent with them, and the opportunity to connect with them, so definitely, yeah.

Patrick: It is kind of fun to pat ourselves on the back and say we provided feedback, and then we saw it. Of course, KPMG Lakehouse is at the very beginning of the year.

Boz: KPMG Lakehouse, so I was going there. I was going to say, yeah.

Patrick: Last, last question, because this one kind of fascinates me. So, we talk about AI a lot, and when we talk about AI, and actually the broader discussion around AI is often around how it’s going to replace jobs, it’s going to take away jobs. And so, then the next piece of that is, all right, what are the skills? What are the things that humans can do that AI can’t do, won’t ever do? So, then you think, okay, what are the skills that I would need to make sure that I’m not replaced by a robot, that I’m not replaced by a digital full-time employee? So, if you had 10,000 hours, if you have from now until the end of the year to just simply perfect one skill, and it can be anything. It could be like playing the guitar. It could be speaking four more languages. It could be turning yourself invisible. What is the one skill that you want to have that AI will never be able to do, but you’ll be able to do?

Boz: Wow. Gotta think about that. The languages have definitely crossed my mind as you were saying that, because I just have affinity to study new languages, but-

Patrick: AI can speak new languages.

Boz: AI can speak new languages as well, but I still have that trust factor, we still see people that’s meeting, we don’t see AI talking, translating, there’s people next to them that does the translation, right? 

Patrick: That’s true.

Boz: But anyway, so from- oh ha, swimming.

Both: *laughs*

Patrick: You wish you could swim like across the English Channel 

Boz: Yeah.

Patrick: or swim all the way up the Hudson River.

Boz: I don’t think AI can do that.

Patrick: I don’t think AI can do that. Fair enough.

Boz: Something that requires physical interaction than actually mental I would say.

Patrick: Excellent. Excellent. All right, Boz, thank you so much. Great chat as always. We’ll talk soon.

Boz: Yep. Thank you.

TBR Talks: Decoding Strategies and Ecosystems of the Globe’s Top Tech Firms

Join TBR Principal Analyst Patrick Heffernan weekly for conversations on disruptions in the broader technology ecosystem and answers to key intelligence questions TBR analysts hear from executives and business unit leaders among top IT professional services firms, IT vendors, and telecom vendors and operators.

“TBR Talks” is available on all major podcast platforms. Subscribe today!