In 2025 IT services companies and consultancies will refine their alliances, winnowing lists of 100-plus technology partners to the handful that drive more than 90% of their business, articulate a clear joint value proposition, and align at both the leadership and sales force levels. A technology- and partner-agnostic approach was always a bit of a fiction and in the coming years will become a relic of the past. To make all that happen, IT services companies, cloud and on-premises infrastructure vendors, and consultancies will invest in ecosystem intelligence and elevate alliance management within their organizations.

Of the three major focus areas for TBR’s 2025 predictions — strategy consulting, generative AI (GenAI) and ecosystem intelligence — the first may seem a long shot, the second too obvious to be new, and the third too well established to be changing much. All three will upend expectations in 2025 with wildly varying results for the IT services companies and consultancies that TBR tracks and for their technology partners.

When OEMs first started releasing AI PCs, they shared expectations that the advent of this new product category would help drive the next major PC refresh cycle. However, even as vendors continue to roll out new generations of AI PCs containing increasingly powerful NPUs, adoption remains relatively slow. To build out the market and drive greater adoption of AI PCs over the next few years, silicon providers, PC OEMs and ISVs will need to collaborate around and invest in developing applications that increase the functionality of these devices beyond what can be achieved by a traditional, non-AI PC.